SAP CEO Rails Against Software Integration

Touting a one-platform agenda, Kagermann Tuesday opened Sapphire 2003 here by telling attendees that "IT not only enables growth and business transformation, but it can kick off the next revolution and reshape business processes to be more competitive."

Kagermann provided little additional detail about SAP's upcoming XApps, slated to be released this week. Aimed at the midmarket XApps are designed to manage resources and programs, product definition and other business processes, as reported in CRN. But Kagermann did position the XApps as way for established businesses to extend and streamline their business processes.

Kagermann also talked up the company's MySAP Business Suite, which includes CRM, product life-cycle management, supplier relationship management and supply chain management around SAP's core ERP products. "The suite is a collection of best practices and end-to-end scenarios," he said.

SAP is releasing the next revision of its CRM software in the next few weeks, according to executives. It will have an updated user interface, Kagermann said.

Kagermann refrained from commenting on the legal imbroglio involving SAP rivals J.D. Edwards, Oracle and PeopleSoft but did say that building an ERP system that is "a zoo of different products" can be cost twice as much as buying components from one vendor: customers pay first to implement the software and again to consolidate the offerings somewhere down the road.

"Consolidation should not be an objective by itself, because it has no business value," Kagermann said. "It's just cleaning up the mess we made in the past.

Integration--and EAI in particular--"is the next budget killer," Kagermann added.