SAP’s product chief Shai Agassi leaves the company this weekend. That’s 3 working days’ notice for a person who, at one time, was said to be in line for Henning Kagermann’s CEO crown at SAP but as it now transpires, was in line for a co-CEO role.
As regards Shai’s sudden departure, the press release says that Shai:
…who by mutual agreement with the company, will leave to more quickly commit himself to his personal agenda of environmental policy and alternative energy sources, and other issues.
Does that sound believable? Some sources say that Shai was seen making ‘green’ noises at the recent TED conference, an event SAP did not sponsor. Earlier in the year, Loic LeMeur caught Shai on camera at Davos talking about environmental issues and cleantech. However, there was no disguising co-founder Hasso Plattner’s disappointment at seeing his blue-eyed boy leave the fold. During yesterday’s conference call, Hasso said:
[Shai] most likely he wasn’t happy when I asked Henning to stay on into 2009. He said: ‘No, I’m not waiting.’
On this morning’s call Hasso Plattner said he thought that around the time of Davos, Shai was considering his position and:
He developed other ideas and he came to me and told me that he is not available for this position in 2009 and that I should consider different options. From then I tried to figure out what we do. Shai was working 120% but with a limited lifespan we could not work the same, we could not maintain the same pace. We both came to the same conclusion…It is sad.
SAP has said it will be making a big play in the SMB and saas spaces over the next few years and while Shai was more concerned with the back end heavy lifting type work SAP has been doing for its enterprise customers, there are risks ahead.Take 2 says:
The real problem becomes one of execution as Agassi’s realm is split between Kagermann and Leo Apotheker (the new deputy CEO.) By splitting what was a unified operation, SAP risks innovation, delivery, sales and marketing for individual or whole groups of planned and future products and initiatives running at different speeds or falling behind as they lose the focus provide by the stewardship of a single exec.
Josh Greenbaum is not convinced by this argument. He asserts:
The good news for SAP is the depth of its managerial bench is impressive.
And on this morning’s call, Henning Kagermann was quick to point to the consolidation of roles within the company. Listening to some of my enterprisey colleagues, Josh’s view is regarded as both accurate and comforting. I don’t see those issues as the real problem. I have little doubt that in the coming days, Oracle will throw FUD into the ring. Right around the time SAP releases its next quarter’s results and the start of SAPPHIRE 07. It’s the PR war that gives me cause for concern. In the US, PR matters because people listen to it in a different way to Europe. A lot of store is set by the way a company presents itself – overly so IMO.
Only last week, SAP found itself at the centre of a legal tussle with Oracle, which alleges ‘corporate theft on a grand scale.’ Regardless of the fallout, that is a distraction SAP doesn’t need yet such adverse publicity could frighten potential customers away.
SAP needs a person of Shai’s widely acknowledged charisma to take on the big Oracle PR guns. SAP doesn’t have that person right now and Hasso was quick to acknowledge the gap Shai’s departure leaves in that regard. However, when it came to questions about Oracle, Hasso returned to form:
They had a good quarter but they should be careful not to celebrate too visibly. Seven years ago, Larry (Ellison, CEO Oracle) said that Oracle would pass SAP in five years.
Oracle is still miles behind, despite having spent some $24 billion on acquisitions. When the dust settles, SAP will still be the powerhouse it is today. SAP is much more than the sum of the parts and in my view it is a Las Vegas loser who bets against the German giant. It is important to remember that SAP is the only business application technology vendor to have successfully traversed three fundamental technology shifts.
But…if you’re in the market for SAP products now would be a good time to think about how those negotiations are progressing. In any period of uncertainty, deals can be a lot easier to close to your satisfaction than you might imagine.
PS - Seeking Alpha has an entertaining analogy with baseball it uses to discuss how SAP has shuffled the management bench. I had a piece there earlier in the week though apparently I’m also called by another name -:)
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