Plattner On Oracle, Portals, And Multiple InterfacesPlattner On Oracle, Portals, And Multiple Interfaces

Multiple interfaces for the same SAP application: Good. Superior portal software: Better. Oracle buys PeopleSoft: Maybe best. That was the message from SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner during an unusual keynote talk Wednesday at the Sapphire SAP user conference.

It was unusual in that rather than taking the stage to give a speech, Plattner opened himself to a Q&A session with the audience. He's a former co-CEO of the software company and still a board member.

Not surprisingly, Oracle's increased bid for PeopleSoft (now at $19.50 a share) was a key topic. "That will probably force the PeopleSoft board to recommend to the shareholders to accept, and then PeopleSoft will be gone." That would be bad for the industry, Plattner predicted, but good for SAP.

Oracle likely would effectively dead-end PeopleSoft apps in favor of its own. "PeopleSoft is selling more than Oracle because its product is better. To replace Oracle 11.9 with PeopleSoft--that would be a move that makes sense." But the move would be good for SAP, Plattner said. "Oracle will have internal problems" caused by the acquisition just as SAP is revving up in an area where PeopleSoft is strong: human-resource management. In fact, Plattner admitted, SAP is erasing its sloppy user interface work. So, "we come out with a new version and they're struggling [with] what to do."

Plattner went so far as to suggest that SAP is at least partially responsible for Oracle's hostile bid. It "shows we've done something right and our major competitors must have missed something or there wouldn't be a reason for merger." He's going to focus on further refining the interface and other projects. While Henning Kagermann leads as sole CEO, Plattner's role "will be a personal one, to protect my investment in SAP, and that's substantial." SAP as a whole is embracing the idea of multiple user interfaces. The industry has "forgotten to look at the whole process in the company, how people work together. ... We have to write multiple user experiences--user interfaces on top of the same app." He called this the company's No. 1 issue. SAP functionality is already good and stable, he said, but the vendor still must hide complexity behind screens and fully automated processes. Still important, but secondary, is improving SAP software's total cost of ownership, Plattner said.

SAP and its customers are using NetWeaver software to build customized front ends when SAP's front ends are hurting usability. It's possible to write a new user front end without changing software because the Internet enables companies to build applications that don't sit on a database but work with other apps' services, pointing to, for instance, SAP's own invoice-checking application. Service-based apps, or composite apps, don't own the data and can use the same sign-on, portal, and integration infrastructure to integrate processes with other hubs. "Portal is the most important technology for us," he said. "We have to have the best portal in the world." It's key to SAP's goal of bringing all composite apps together. Plattner also addressed the issue du jour: whether IT matters. He rejected the idea that IT, and particularly software, is a commodity, and is actually very far from it. For instance, the ability to reuse applications through services or create composite apps that focus on workgroups inside a company, with all the ramifications of that, is just starting. "Software is closer to our mind, and the mind is not limited," he said. The gains brought by enterprise resource planning will continue, he said, adding, "There will be breakthrough steps of things we haven't thought about."