Sorry, one other thing. Other platforms - Sun, HP unix, IBM mainframe - can have SD numbers in the 1000's; my last site ran Sun E10000's (previously Cray machines) and those were benchmarked at around 3000 at the time.
check out http://www.sap.com/ and search for 'Benchmark' for more details.
That's how SAP benchmarks are done. The platform is loaded up with users (SD = Sales and Distribution) until the response time pushes 2 sec. They have a standard test suite that each user runs - creating SO's, changing SO's, picking goods, etc. Usually they're done by the hardware vendor, they usually tweak the underlying platform all to hell but they're not allowed to modify SAP.
On the mainframe fees, I don't know about the cost for a new system, but I know lots of shops that are paying literally millions in fees for relatively small mainframe systems. On the women front, sorry, no help.
A couple of comments. First, I definitely agree with your analysis that SAP projects are 'cathedral style', at least in the sense that there's a limited number of implementations for the whole organization, and it's centrally planned. I guess it'd be nice to have an ERP be evolved in a decentralized manner into existance... but I'm not sure if it possible.
The big benefits of putting in an ERP are usually two fold. One, the current systems are obviously broke in some way (Y2K, expensive licensing fees to IBM for the mainframe - remember them? - etc). Two, the basic business processes are in trouble - such as, everyone in the organization has a total different view of the organization data, or the info from the manufacturing system isn't visible from the HR system, etc. I don't know if you can fix the data decentralization problems with a decentralized approach.
At the risk of total flamebait... I've been working with SAP software for about 5 years now, doing a number of installations, so maybe I can help clarify things a bit here. My view of SAP:
- It's really big: it covers almost all back-office functionality that you would want (everything from accounting to HR to manufacturing automation), and as a result it's huge - about 3 GB of code source alone, for example
- implementing it all for a large organization is very expensive - for Fortune 500 companies, a complete installation will be close to $100m including everything
- but for a small company, with limited functionality, it's not expensive - I've seen it done for $200k at a startup before, which isn't bad considering that it runs the whole business
- it's semi-open source - essentially all the business logic is written in ABAP, SAP's language; all the source code comes with the system (only a minimal amount of core code comes as pre-compiled c exes)
So those are the facts... I'll hold on the opinions.
Yes, SAP bought rights to the Adabas DB a couple of years ago. SAP DB is Adabas, as far as I know. But let me go to the source - I have a friend in SAP working in the Adabas group, I'll ask him to confirm.
And no, basically no one in the US uses SAP DB. I've done about 10 SAP installations, and in that whole time no one from SAP has mentioned SAP DB/adabas, and none of the customers have asked for it.
Yep, that's huge overkill for a startup business, unless it's got a fair amount of backing. I've been working on SAP implementations for a while now, and I've never seen SAP put in for less than a months work by actual SAP-experienced consultants. And then there's the license cost...
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Sorry, one other thing. Other platforms - Sun, HP unix, IBM mainframe - can have SD numbers in the 1000's; my last site ran Sun E10000's (previously Cray machines) and those were benchmarked at around 3000 at the time.
check out http://www.sap.com/ and search for 'Benchmark' for more details.
Theo
That's how SAP benchmarks are done. The platform is loaded up with users (SD = Sales and Distribution) until the response time pushes 2 sec. They have a standard test suite that each user runs - creating SO's, changing SO's, picking goods, etc. Usually they're done by the hardware vendor, they usually tweak the underlying platform all to hell but they're not allowed to modify SAP.
On the mainframe fees, I don't know about the cost for a new system, but I know lots of shops that are paying literally millions in fees for relatively small mainframe systems. On the women front, sorry, no help.
A couple of comments. First, I definitely agree with your analysis that SAP projects are 'cathedral style', at least in the sense that there's a limited number of implementations for the whole organization, and it's centrally planned. I guess it'd be nice to have an ERP be evolved in a decentralized manner into existance... but I'm not sure if it possible.
The big benefits of putting in an ERP are usually two fold. One, the current systems are obviously broke in some way (Y2K, expensive licensing fees to IBM for the mainframe - remember them? - etc). Two, the basic business processes are in trouble - such as, everyone in the organization has a total different view of the organization data, or the info from the manufacturing system isn't visible from the HR system, etc. I don't know if you can fix the data decentralization problems with a decentralized approach.
Theo
At the risk of total flamebait... I've been working with SAP software for about 5 years now, doing a number of installations, so maybe I can help clarify things a bit here. My view of SAP:
- It's really big: it covers almost all back-office functionality that you would want (everything from accounting to HR to manufacturing automation), and as a result it's huge - about 3 GB of code source alone, for example
- implementing it all for a large organization is very expensive - for Fortune 500 companies, a complete installation will be close to $100m including everything
- but for a small company, with limited functionality, it's not expensive - I've seen it done for $200k at a startup before, which isn't bad considering that it runs the whole business
- it's semi-open source - essentially all the business logic is written in ABAP, SAP's language; all the source code comes with the system (only a minimal amount of core code comes as pre-compiled c exes)
So those are the facts... I'll hold on the opinions.
Theo
Yes, SAP bought rights to the Adabas DB a couple of years ago. SAP DB is Adabas, as far as I know. But let me go to the source - I have a friend in SAP working in the Adabas group, I'll ask him to confirm.
And no, basically no one in the US uses SAP DB. I've done about 10 SAP installations, and in that whole time no one from SAP has mentioned SAP DB/adabas, and none of the customers have asked for it.
Yep, that's huge overkill for a startup business, unless it's got a fair amount of backing. I've been working on SAP implementations for a while now, and I've never seen SAP put in for less than a months work by actual SAP-experienced consultants. And then there's the license cost...
Theo