March 28, 2006

“s.a.p. killer”?

9 Comments

From Niko:

Last Thurs­day Sigurd Rinde gave me a vir­tual demons­tra­tion of Thin­gamy, his work­flow appli­ca­tion. I mean busi­ness mode­ling appli­ca­tion. Err, data­base. No, repor­ting tool. Maybe an 

9 Responses to ““s.a.p. killer”?”

  1. Mike says:
    March 28, 2006 at 11:07 am

    Con­si­de­ring how much SAP costs, I hope it’s an SAP killer.

  2. Ben Askins says:
    March 28, 2006 at 11:33 am

    I’m genui­nely exci­ted about seeing Sig’s Thingamy.

  3. James Governor says:
    March 28, 2006 at 2:03 pm

    well can you get the card­board spa­ceship to review it — he being well enough qua­li­fied. and if its an SAP “killer” — he can jump ship to the future…

  4. Ric says:
    March 28, 2006 at 2:55 pm

    As I recall, Hamish has already had a look — and see­med rea­so­nably inte­res­ted:
    http://hnewlands.typepad.com/cardboard_spaceship/2006/02/im_an_introvert.html
    I’m not sure that he’ll be out of a job any­time soon, though — Thin­gamy is way too scary for most of the peo­ple who buy SAP (or any of the other “conc­rete boot” enter­prise pac­ka­ges). Thingamy’s takeup will begin with busi­nes­ses less scle­ro­tic than Hamish’s customers.

  5. Robert P. Krajewski says:
    March 28, 2006 at 3:22 pm

    I used to work at Lotus, and this reminds me a lot of Notes, which was so hard to sell. Was it email ? A data­base ? A scrip­ta­ble work­flow sys­tem ? Yes ! Cre­dit Jim Manzi with seeing its value and nur­tu­ring it along enough while wai­ting patiently for others to Get It. IBM bought Lotus for Notes, pure and sim­ple.
    Given the way the web speeds up the adop­tion of Novell soft­ware, your friend might not need to so much time to cross the adop­tion chasm, but even Groove, which is also a simarly plas­tic kind of soft­ware, did not (and arguably his still not) found a sus­tai­na­ble cus­to­mer base before being acqui­red by another deep-pocketed company.

  6. Robert P. Krajewski says:
    March 28, 2006 at 3:23 pm

    Erm, sub­si­tute “novel” for “Novell” up there !

  7. Niko says:
    March 28, 2006 at 7:09 pm

    I’m by no means tech­ni­cally qua­li­fied to announce the death of SAP either. Or the death of Lotus. Nor do I believe in dras­tic events like agile soft­ware wiping out dino­saur soft­ware in a blink. Calling Thin­gamy a “SAP killer” just sounds good and gives a nice indi­ca­tion of what I see Thin­gamy having the *poten­tial* to do.
    Still, having used SAP and Notes imple­men­ta­tions, as a user I wouldn’t shed a tear seeing them go. In fact, if I was rich, I would offer lunch on a yacht to anyone fin­ding me a happy SAP user. Not someone who gets paid using it, not someone who gets along with it, but someone who actually enjoys using it. Haven’t yet heard of that species.

  8. mike says:
    March 28, 2006 at 10:23 pm

    here’s my favo­rite story of why SAP needs to be killed: A long time ago I wor­ked at a big con­sul­ting firm that made a for­tune imple­men­ting SAP at their corp clients. The con­ver­sa­tion is bet­ween Big Firm’s part­ner and a SAP big­wig…
    BFP: This is not how the client wants to ope­rate (etc.)
    SAPBW: No!
    BFP: Par­don? This is what we’re thin­king… We need to have a little fle­xi­bi­lity here…
    SAPBW: [poun­ding on table] Vee are very fle­xi­ble! Vee vill do it exactly like zis!

  9. Hamish says:
    March 29, 2006 at 8:39 am

    I am thin­king about how to review Thin­gamy, and I think it needs to be dis­cus­sed in terms of Kot­lers four P’s — Price, Place, Pro­duct and Pro­mo­tion, because crac­king the mar­ket requi­res all four to be cove­red.
    Pro­bably hook it up tonight if I get the time.