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Comment by chris_dcosta | Hacker News Reader

SAP was built in the seventies on seventies technology, which it still uses today (ABAP). None of it's front end reporting tools (even Business Objects) are anything like "modern", and every patch they release is more and more unstable.

TechCrunch people know this, I'm sure there are plenty of ex-SAP consultants who got pretty tired of badly run projects by badly educated middle managers who have no business being put in charge of enormous and complex SAP implementations.

I have worked for some of the biggest companies in the world fixing some of the rubbish out there, and you know why SAP has so much money? Because the business just order another instance to migrate to each time they mess it up.

And so it goes on...

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SAP seems to run a powerful Reality Distortion Field. I live in a municipality (Johannesburg) that is experiencing a huge multi-year billing crisis, following a flawed SAP implementation. Despite being a disaster, SAP gave it an award: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view...

Awards and spotlights at conferences are how companies like SAP (Oracle has done this too, I assume many "industry success stories" are nothing but this) award managers who generate big profits and who will probably generate even more cleaning up the mess they got into. By branding their failure as a success story, they reduce the likelihood of a change in direction to less flawed approaches and maximize their chances of tying the customer forever.

After being awarded "CTO of the year", the incompetent one will probably move on, away from the problem he/she created, and will possibly inflict the same damage to the next company that hires him/her, generating even more profit.

SAP was built in the seventies on seventies technology, which it still uses today (ABAP).

The Internet was built in the seventies on seventies tech, which it still uses today (IPv4).

I'm not disagreeing with the rest of your post, but this is a dumb yardstick to use.

You make my point perfectly.

The internet is a perfect example of technology that is constantly evolving inspite of it's roots.

The internet hasnt changed much since the 1970s, IPv4 and TCP/UDP are still the same standard. Only some physical layers have seen innovation.

cf. IPv6

Business Objects is very modern!

Every patch they release is not more unstable! They have so many software products, you can't say "Every" about any of their software.

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