Microsoft's proposal last year to merge with SAP reveals a somewhat desperate Microsoft, anxious to gain a huge footprint in enterprise applications as other sources of revenue are under siege. Given Microsoft's past dealings with the Department of Justice, I wonder how easily the company could get past federal regulators with such as merger. Subsequent to the SAP talks, Microsoft reportedly gave a sworn statement to the DOJ that it wouldn't compete in the upper tier of the enterprise software market for two years. Is Microsoft flip-flopping--or just confused about its own stategy? On one hand, the company wanted to buy its way into the enterprise apps market with SAP; then it says that it won't enter the market for a while--which tends to give succor to the DOJ's antitrust gambit of opposing Oracle's hostile bid for PeopleSoft.
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This Month
Dan Farber is a vice president at CNET Networks and Editor in Chief of ZDNet. Year Archive
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Tuesday, June 8
MS and SAP mulled merger
by
Dan
on Tue 08 Jun 2004 11:33 AM PDT
Wednesday, May 12
SAP: People, not just transactions
by
Dan
on Wed 12 May 2004 07:46 AM PDT
 At SAP's annual customer event--SAPPHIRE--CEO Henning Kagermann touted the development partnership with Microsoft and an agreement with several hardware vendors to provide virtualization services for Netweaver. Fundamentally, SAP is leading the push toward a more complete service-oriented architecture with Netweaver and SAP's suite of applications, such as mySAP ERP.. "It's [mySAP ERP] a transaction system built around people," Kagermann said. "If we want to go for growth, the best we can do is make our people more knowledgeable and take the most out of your knowledgeable people. The paradigm of the future is a system that pushes relevant information to you--not management by transcation, but by exception. In Kagermann's vision the user gets the alerts, KPIs, filtered information with embedded analysis and what he called 'guided self services' to help make decisions better and take appropriate action. There isn't much new or original in Kagermann's vision, but SAP is actually doing more than competitors to make it happen across platforms (Java and .Net) and industries.
Monday, May 10
Put your apps to the test--or someone else will
by
Dan
on Mon 10 May 2004 05:14 PM PDT
David Berlind: Mercury Interactive's brand of business technology optimization (BTO) is mission critical.
Friday, May 7
SAP quick fix for less than $30,000
by
Dan
on Fri 07 May 2004 10:26 AM PDT
 SAP launched 50 individual "quick fix" packages of software and services. The packages cover task such as launched a set of "quick fix" integrating fax and e-mail applications or data archiving tools with SAP's enterprise. The company will promise a 30-day turnaround for most projects, and no payments until the package is up and running. That sounds like a good approach, although priced at 'less than $30,000' sounds like an expensive quick fix. How difficult is it to plug e-mail services into SAP's platform or those from other companies. It's the old problem of companies paying a huge cost to integrate applications and services that should naturually work together. Maybe Web services will help with that problem, but a what cost?
Thursday, May 6
Note to Mono watchers: Remember Yamhill
by
Dan
on Thu 06 May 2004 01:32 PM PDT
David Berlind: This week marked a crucial milestone in in the open source community's question for Linux-based version of Microsoft's .Net. Yesterday, Novell, which through its acquisition of Ximian inherited the Mono project that's devoted to that cause, announced the availability of the first test release of the open source project. The release supports development of .Net applications in the C# language, which, up until now, were of little use outside of Windows. Availability to more platforms than Windows could help to level the playing field between .Net and Java. As Mono draws closer to a ship date, it may pressure Microsoft to do one of two things: try to slow it down from a legal perspective on the basis of patent or copyright infringement or, it may release Linux and Unix compatibile versions under its own brand. Much the same way Intel kept its response (Yamhill) to AMD's 32/64-bit Opeteron a secret, my guess is that there's a Microsoft-endorsed Unix/Linux-based .Net skunkworks project going on somewhere. That somewhere could be in one of Microsoft's many R&D labs or it could at Sun as a result of the recent detente between the two companies. Wednesday, May 5
Retail trade group calls SCO's claims baseless
by
Dan
on Wed 05 May 2004 02:50 PM PDT
The SCO Group's legal action against Linux is unfounded, the National Retail Federation told members Wednesday, a new blow to the company's litigation strategy.
Getting the fundamentals right
by
Dan
on Wed 05 May 2004 11:14 AM PDT
Improving the user experience has been one of computing's most vexing problems, and digital convergence is raising the stakes big time. Consumers will not tolerate the control-alt-delete and configuration nightmares. Microsoft wants to carry its dominance from the traditional PC world into this new era of converged digital, IP-based infrastructure. At WinHEC, Microsoft vp Jim Allchin noted that the company's success depends on mastering the fundamentals of simplicity and reliability. He's right: Without getting the fundamentals under control--including security--the next generation Microsoft platform could fall on its face. Microsoft has the money to outlast competitors, but it won't win the hearts and minds of customers. Check out my notes from WinHEC.
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