Yes, it’s that time of the year again – The Masters is over and the golf courses are starting to get busy again. Depending where you live of course, the golf courses may be open year-round: but that would spoil my storyline…
Being from Scotland originally, I started golfing when I was around 6 and a couple of years later became a junior member of the golf course where my dad played: Hilton Park just a bit north of Glasgow. One of the things that I like best about golf is the concept of it being a gentleman’s (sorry ladies) game – whereby there is some honor involved in telling your opponent if you accidentally touch the ball – or if it moves of its own volition when your clubhead is closeby – hate when that happens!
Of course there is also an entire vocabulary unique to golf (as there is in many sports): Birdie, Bogie, Eagle, Par, etc. but there is also a term that I’m particularly fond of: Fore! – this is of course what you are meant to yell out as a warning if you hit the ball a bit further than you anticipated (or off-track) and it is hurtling towards an unsuspecting golfer ahead. So before we go on, I need to say something…
FORE!!!!
There. That feels a lot better. So who is this warning to? Where to begin…
SAP Business ByDesign (BBD)
Given the recent announcements at the SAP Sapphire event, I’m afraid this warning is a little too late. They seem to have finally woken up to smell the coffee i.e. admitted defeat (opens in new tab). But not only that – they also sent out warning to other vendors:
Jim Hagemann Snabe, SAP co-chief executive, said “trying to create cloud versions of on-premise applications, like SAP did with Business ByDesign, was not the right approach to the cloud. He said that Microsoft with its Dynamics offering, and Oracle with its Fusion alternative, would soon find this out.
"It is a fundamental mistake to take an app that is designed for on-premise and put it in the cloud,"
"We know this because we worked on Business ByDesign. The fact that they [Oracle and Microsoft] started to create them [Fusion and Dynamics] six years ago, tells you they cannot have been creating them with the cloud in mind."
Well thanks Mr. Snabe! I personally can report having worked with a couple of prospects recently who made the decision to buy BBD around a year ago and both are reporting the same issues: poor Performance, difficulty in obtaining reports and issues with setting appropriate permissions.
SAP’s response on performance in both cases was to move the location of the servers closer to the prospects location… What can I say? It all comes down to architecture…
FORE!
