How Elon Musk Approaches IT At Tesla

onehitwonder writes "In short, they build it themselves. When Tesla Motors needed to improve the back-end software that runs its business, CEO Elon Musk decided not to upgrade the company's SAP system. Instead, he told his CIO, Jay Vijayan, to have the IT organization build a new back-end system, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company's team of 25 software engineers developed the new system in about four months, and it provided the company with speed and agility at a time when it was experiencing costly delivery delays on its all-electric Model S."

Comments

SAP

[Anonymous Coward]

S - end
A - nother
P - ayment

Re:SAP

[Reverand Dave]

We always called it Sorry Ass Program.

Re:SAP

[ArsonSmith]

Sap n.

1. To undermine the foundations of (a fortification).
2. To deplete or weaken gradually.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sapping

Re:SAP

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Actually, it's a German company - I believe it means Scheissliche Anwederprogramme.

Does I run Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet it uses a beowulf cluster architecture. Just make sure some idiot from accounting doesn't spill a bowl of hot grits on the server. Even with a journaling filesystem like ext4, or the superior ReFS, hot grits can petrify most sys admin types.

I wish these Tesla folks the best of luck on this homebrew. In the end though the ROI and TCO will surely be much worse than a suitable off the shelf package from an established vendor like Microsoft or IBM. It may not matter, though, because Tesla will likely flameout and become the next Solyndra

Re:A risky gamble

[Anonymous Coward]

*Crickets*

Re:Now Open It

[NatasRevol]

SAP can easily run organizations an order of magnitude bigger

I lost it at easily.

Re:Now Open It

[Pope]

It is easy! The users and their business models are simply all wrong LOL

Re:Now Open It

[fatphil]

>> SAP can easily run organizations an order of magnitude bigger

> I lost it at easily.

I misread it as "SAP can easily ruin ..."

Re:Nor for Tesla next year. Build, Buy, FOSS

[turbidostato]

"Tesla should design their own cars, especially electrical subsystems of the cars, but buy trashcans, spreadsheets, and SAP."

Correct.

MBA-grade correct.

And that pesky Bezos should focus on his company's core competencies, selling books, and let the generic part, like IT, to the good known providers on the field, as all other e-companies in these dot-com boom days are doing.

After all, even if he ends up with a excellent IT group, what would he do with the spare capacity? Losing tons of money, I say.

Re: Keep In Mind...

[nwf]

That's the point. There is software that can be used to run any company in any field. It's called a compiler, although it does require a good deal of customization.