Video: Plattner and Benioff on the future of enterprise software
At a Churchill Club event at the Computer History Museum in San Jose on April 3, Hasso Plattner, co-founder and chairman of SAP, and Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of Salesforce.com, debated the future of enterprise software. The debate was moderated by Quentin Hardy of Forbes.
I covered the debate here. Benioff challenged Plattner to run SAP's software on the salesforce.com platform. Plattner gave Benioff some counsel: "We have many things in common. Let me give you some advice, but you might not take it because you are younger: don't overestimate your platform."
Following is a video clip from the event. Benioff describes the new era of enterprise software, which "look to the functionality of the past but to values of the consumer companies like Google, eBay, Amazon and Yahoo, who have become massive companies serving millions of users with tremendous complexity but through a new technology model."
Plattner talked about the need for immutable Web service interfaces. "The most important thing to learn when using services is that we cannot really modify them." The future is building on top of services and meshing services with each other. He also noted that the new software paradigm will allow developers to monitor and see what users are doing.Listen to the entire debate here.
Dan Farber is editor in chief of CBS Interactive News, which includes CBSNews.com and CNET News. He has more than 25 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. E-mail Dan. 
What was perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of this debate occurs beyond Benioff?s chest-pounding bravado and on-demand proselytizing, and beyond Plattner?s obvious displeasure with being prodded by his impetuous younger opponent?both of which were reported on aplenty.
To be sure, the ?future of enterprise software? question was not definitively answered in this debate, but through the often heated exchanges of these two industry luminaries something of significant import was made manifest, though it was not what most sought -- a decided victor, be it in terms of Plattner vs. Benioff , SAP vs. Salesforce.com, or on-premise vs. on-demand.
It was the subtle yet salient shaping or framing (in German Fragestallung) of the ?future of enterprise software? question that Plattner orchestrated by asserting three words crucial to any meaningful exploration?past, present or future ?of the enterprise software industry: integration, customization and commoditization.
Plattner spoke the first two words directly and repeatedly to Benioff in his questioning of Salesforce.com?s ability to do all that Benioff claimed it could. The third word, commoditization, though not spoken aloud by Plattner, resonated just as meaningfully through its unavoidable inference should Salesforce.com not be able to deliver on the integration and customization fronts.
Without an inherent capacity for integration, a software?s value--however great it might initially be--is essentially limited, finite. More to the point, an application?s inability to integrate ultimately relegates it to becoming yet another costly siloed repository of data to be maintained.
Inflexibility in regard to customization is another death knell for enterprise software. Sell the same cookie-cutter, non-customizable software to every company on the planet and while your coffers will initially overflow, over time Nicholas Carr?s polemic prediction inevitably comes to pass?and your software becomes a non-differentiating IT commodity.
From its inception in 1972 to the present, SAP has developed and brought to market a comprehensive suite of integrated, highly customizable on-premise enterprise applications upon which many of the world?s largest global companies run their entire business. Over the past four years SAP has successfully transitioned its entire suite of business applications to the enterprise SOA-enabled NetWeaver platform. During roughly the same time period, SAP dedicated 2,500 developers to build Business ByDesign, the company?s new on-demand product for midsized companies.
Steering through all of this product development?on--premise as well as on-demand--is strict adherence to the enterprise software mandates of integration and customization. Whether it?s the 1,000 and growing enterprise services SAP has delivered for creating a virtually infinite number of SOA-based composite applications, or the 2,100 interfaces SAP plans to provide with Business ByDesign?integration and customization factor heavily in SAP?s present and future product development initiatives.
On the other hand we have Salesforce.com, basically an on-demand CRM application striving mightily (and a tad hubristically) to morph into the de facto on-demand delivery platform for a comprehensive offering of on-demand enterprise applications to be consumed by businesses of all sizes.
Salesforce.com?s success to date is impressive. The company?s revenue is nearing $1 billion. Most importantly, Benioff and Salesforce.com deserve genuine kudos for validating and advancing the model for on-demand enterprise software.
Yet Despite Benioff?s rhetoric of revolutionary change, the relative inability of his company to do just that, to break out of the CRM niche and through the midmarket barrier, attests to the formidable challenge before him.
At one point in the debate Benioff excitedly states: "I want to figure out how to get SAP to build on our platform," a comment intended as a dig at SAP?s Business ByDesign product, but one which, in effect, evidenced Benioff?s mounting fear and frustration over his platform?s potential limitations.
The comment also came across as somewhat of a desperate sales pitch to SAP, belying Benioff?s thunderous claim that Salesforce.com is ?at the verge of a breakthrough, and it is as big as the software-as-a-service business has been.? Clearly, Benioff and Salesforce.com will need considerable outside help to realize this ambitious vision.
Truth be told, with the exception of a tiny sliver of potentially competing on-demand offerings, these two individuals and their respective companies operate in entirely different worlds, universes even. (A forced David vs. Goliath analogy wouldn?t come close to conveying the vast differences in both personal accomplishments and respective company sizes/statures.)
Another telling moment in the debate came when Plattner offered Benioff a bit of sage advice, warning the upstart not to ?overestimate your platform.? And to this we might add Plattner?s unspoken thought: particularly if you?re flirting with commoditization because your product falls short in the vital areas of integration and customization.