SAP wants an open Java process (pot, meet kettle)

Vishal Sikka, SAP's CTO

(Credit: SAP)

It's a fundamental tenet of classical economics that vendors want complementary goods to be cheap and plentiful.

It's therefore not surprising that SAP Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka is calling for a more open Java Community Process (JCP).

What is surprising is that it is SAP, the bastion of proprietary software, that delivers this message.

Irony, thy name is SAP.

SAP, after all, is hardly the most open-source or open-process friendly company on the planet. Despite early involvement in Eclipse, some interaction with MySQL (MaxDB), and a new commitment to the Apache Software Foundation, SAP remains a firmly proprietary company.

Even Microsoft, which arguably has the most to lose from open source, has consistently and continually experimented with greater open-source involvement.

SAP? Not so much. In large part, SAP hasn't been forced to embrace open source because it hasn't been threatened by it. ERP (enterprise resource planning) is such a complex beast that it has remained largely impervious to open source (with the exception of open-source start-ups like Compiere and Openbravo, to which I'm an adviser).

A few years ago I was asked to speak at SAP's Palo Alto campus. I spent an hour talking about open source's commodity influence on the industry. During the question-and-answer period, one attendee said: "This is all fine, but open source has not touched our business. ERP is different."

Apparently, that thinking prevails, as Sikka's argument about a more open JCP process fails to apply the logic to SAP's own software. He wrote Monday in a blog, laced with italics and bolds:

The Java industry is currently going through important changes, and there are many discussions around the openness of Java and the Java Community Process (JCP). To date, the JCP is heavily dominated by Sun Microsystems which was not always to the benefit of all parties interested in Java. Java is the lifeblood of the IT industry, and IT is a fundamental underpinning of the way business is conducted in the 21st century....

To ensure the continued role of Java in driving economic growth, we believe it is essential to transition the stewardship of the language and platform into an authentically open body that is not dominated by an individual corporation. Java should be free of any encumbrances to permit fair competition between compatible implementations for the benefit of customers. By preserving the integrity of Java, the IT industry can ensure a vibrant developer community and continued innovation for enterprise software customers. This ensures the continued global economic success brought about through open innovation.

It's a good argument, but it sounds funny coming from an SAP executive. After all, Sikka starts his argument by asserting that SAP's software is indispensable to the world's IT systems: "SAP systems are at the core of large parts of global IT, and are powering more than 65 percent of the transactions that make up the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP)."

Surely any system upon which 65 percent of the world's GDP depends should be open, right?

Apparently not. SAP NetWeaver and, well, everything the company ships remain firmly proprietary last time I checked. Complements to SAP's proprietary products should be open, however--or so the argument goes.

Sikka does suggest that "SAP software also needs to be open and adaptable in order to allow customers and partners to be nimble and benefit from the speed of innovation within the SAP ecosystem," but apparently he means that everything but SAP's software should be open and adaptable.

Complements are best when they're free and plentiful, after all.

Again, Sikka's message is not wrong. It's the messenger who has the problem.

Disclosure: I will be presenting at SAP in Walldorf, Germany, on Thursday on SAP's track record with open source and open standards. Please share your thoughts on how SAP is doing.

[PC_Mike]

Good article. And yes, this is the pot calling the kettle black. SAP wants their cake and eat it to. Wonder what they would think if Java required SAP to be open source in order for them to do the same.....run I bet.

[ddesy]

Considering the fact that SAP is a popular package that decreases efficiency and costs businesses tons of money best spent elsewhere, I don't think they're in any position to talk about being open either.

Having worked for a company that moved to SAP and knowing someone else who worked for a company that moved to SAP, I have nothing good to say about them.

[jchanski21]

I will preface this with saying that I'm not a super techie or programmer who knows all about open source and whatnot.

I'm a functional SAP analyst at a very successful medium-sized company that converted to SAP several years ago. The very nature of SAP is to be, at its core, a standard and validated way to conduct and track your business transactions in a *more efficient* manner, by reducing duplicate work and increasing visibility and communication between departments. There are plenty of companies that try to switch to SAP and fail or suffer, but that is because their implementation team didn't take the proper steps to ensure a successful transition... not because SAP is a poor product.

I'm not sure where you think that money is better spent. You can have a stacks of paper sales orders filling an entire warehouse, but if you can't process them quickly and efficiently (with ERP software like SAP), you won't make a dime. Every company runs some sort of ERP software. SAP is just one option, but happens to be the industry leader.

[jlamkw]

To jchanski21:

It's easy to blame the implementation team, but could it not be that those 'proper steps' are made so difficult to follow for many companies? Isn't the ease of implementation a criteria for a good product?

[cdwilliams1]

@jchanski21 - You're one of the lucky ones then. Depending on who's stats you believe the failure rate for ERP implementations is between 66% and 81%. Here's the thing, these packages force you to re-learn and redesign everythign in your business processes. Everything from filling out your timesheet, to requesting vacation, to billing suppliers, to requesting project funding, to testing methodoligies. It's a top to bottom reimplementation of all your business processes with the idea of getting to a magic crystal ball dashboard at the end of the implementation process that will let the PHB's look at thier TPS reports. What ddesy is pointing out is that given the fact that this project is either moderately to highly likely to fail, those dollars could be better spent on projects that won't tie up IT's money and resources for the next serveral years chasing a doomed project.

[fbellamine]

I think, SAP move is more related to Oracle acquisition of SUN

[odubtaig]

Speaking of which, there is no way Oracle will lessen control of Java; they'd gain a great advantage by integrating it more tightly with OracleDB in the same way MS has integrated C# with SQL Server. I don't see it being easy for Oracle to build Java bytecode stored procedures into OracleDB in the proprietary fashion they'll probably want without total ownership of the code's copyright. This immediately negates any move to separate off the ownership of the code into a genuinely independent body.

[jlamkw]

quite true I think...
in the past no one was too worried about Java being driven by Sun because Sun was mostly a hardware/platform vendor competing against Wintel and it's too weak to pose much threat anyway. But Oracle is a much different beast that many Java-dependent solution vendors should start to worry.

[softwarepro]

pretty good...

SAP is one of the worst company on planet because they have totally wrong business practice. Once you get our product & we will suck your blood even if you want it or not.

Now they will cry louder because Oracle might get control of Java and that's why SAP crying (like baby off course)

Thief don't teach others what is honestly????

[jpenninkhof]

It doesn't matter that this time it is SAP that is asking for Java to be free. SAP is just joining the line of folks that would like to see this happen. IBM's Rod Smith and Eric S. Raymond of the Open Source Initiative are just examples of executive that asked for a free java before, and represent many more individual Java developers that aren't backed with a huge company name. Bottom line is that Java should be freed to get serious innovations to happen again, and it doesn't matter who is asking this time.

Besides, SAP sentiment towards open source is changing significantly. They now have a VP specifically responsible for open source and open standards. As a result of this change, they have increased the number of open source contribution approvals from 1 in 2007, to 8 in 2008 and more than 20 in 2009. I predict that this trend is going up even further next year and that the open source community is going to see a lot more good stuff from SAP.

[Remo_Williams]

The remedy is to work on an open-source ERP project, and force change in the entire ERP landscape.

-R

[amcg2508]

I am a in a Business Support role using SAP for the last 10 years. Businesses have a choice. They can go for a fully integrated system which will provide all of the business functionality they are likely to need and accept that change is essential to meet that objective. Alternatively they can choose a dozen different applications which will work the way that the business does currently and accept reduced integration with minimal business interruption. Many pro's and con's in both choices. Where businesses appear to fall down is in analysing their businesses needs and ability to change. If they understood their business and people better - then maybe there would be less system implementation failures. SAP is successful because many companies understand their business processes and ability to change and have talented people that can implement. On the other hand some companies are smart enough to know and recognise that SAP is not for them. Those that are not in either category have issues.

[driehle]

There is another important reason why SAP isn't open source and its users/customers haven't pushed hard for it: SAP's business software is already available to customers in source code form (and has been, for 20 years), just not under an open source license. Customers have always customized and adapted the software to their heart's content. See you tomorrow! --Dirk

[Expatriot]

On November 5th, The Wall Street Journal Europe had an interesting piece headlined "SAP's 'Invitation' to Oracle," which causes one to wonder if the EU is not running a corrupt approval process to benefit SAP.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704013004574517600808958862.html

[JMOnCnet]

SAP remembered to get involved in the community only after it felt it in her revenues.
I think the company did not make the mind-shift to understand what open source means and the responsibility that come with it. I'm afraid the SAP, as SAP usualy do, will turn things into her benefit with a narrow look at its industry.

What does SAP have to contribute to the open source community besides precious $$$?
SAPs understanding is mostly in the business process, they know how a business should be managed. Developing products? development processes? that is left far behind, at least with the Java stack.

So, no. SAP had the chance to be involved for years, it dismissed it with arrogance thinking that it has no impact on her business. I didn't hear or notice anything to prove this attitude has truly changed. A fear from having your platform in the hands of your biggest competitor does not count as a good enough reason to convince me something has changed.

[businesscontacts]

Is it just me or this guy looks like the indian version of Mr Bean?

[bschaich]

Well, "SAP" is not a single person and as such an organization with heterogenous minds (nevertheless there are some people who drive the company). And the mind of many developers has always been to do more in the direction of open source. Fortunately new management appeared that now understands this approach much better and supports such efforts.

Doing this doesn't have impact overnight: being from a large company does not automatically qualify you as a good contributor. And so my fellow colleagues have to start as bug fixing committers in OS projects, as anybody else (and right this is).
Keep your eyes open, and you *will* notice.

Regards,
Benny Schaich
(apparently working for SAP)

[sap-dba]

"Some" interaction with MySQL? SAP bought a database and open sourced it. They didn't have to do that, and wouldn't have done so had they not believed in open source.

I don't think you have a clue how much SAP is involved with open source. As a member of the SAP community for almost 15 years now, I have seen the transition going on for over a decade now. It is not a new thing.

And Sun/Java is not about open source, it's about open standards. Java is more a standard than a product, and vendors have been pushing Sun to make it formally so for a long time. It may be that companies that have built business upon Java now face the cold reality that their business models will dramatically change for the worse due to the fact that Sun never did so.