13 Feb 2010 SAP CEO Out – What Does This Mean for the Procurement of Enterprise Software?
You know the world has changed. You embrace change. You help to manage change. But there’s sometimes a change that is just a little too far and a little too fast. Your experience and wisdom has taught you to be circumspect and to only create change with your eyes wide open.
Cloud computing is a case in point. With technology in 2010 the question “Can it do this?” is irrelevant – the answer is always yes – it’s just a function of time and money and with the growth and increasing ubiquity of the cloud, it is becoming less money and a shorter time. But at an enterprise level, embracing cloud computing is far from a no-brainer. Cloud computing represents the delegation of business process – not to a trusted third party – but to a cloud of connected third parties. Managing the risk of outsourcing to this model is potentially a nightmare. Is this making you feel old?
The board room shake-out at SAP this week had numerous causes. Poor sales figures and a world recession no doubt made major contributions but the single most important factor was SAP’s failure to innovate. SAP have been overly cautious in their hesitancy to adopt the cloud and SaaS models and their executive team has paid the price.
Be in no doubt – cloud computing will dominate your organization’s IT strategy this decade and for those managing IT services procurement, the imperative will be to crack some of those stubborn risk management nuts associated with third party IT service providers. Escrow? Forget it! There’s no off-the-shelf answers but one thing is for sure, you better find some. The train has already left and you’re on it whether you know it or not.
