back to article SAP users not happy about German giant's price rises

Nearly half of SAP users in its German-speaking heartlands are either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the software giant’s cloud pricing strategy, according to the latest survey. DSAG, the SAP user group with members in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, surveyed organizations to find 32 percent were dissatisfied with …

  1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    The headline never seen...

    Prices rise! Buyers happy!

  2. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

    GIve how crap SAP is, its a mysstery why anybody buys it.

    1. seven of five Silver badge

      They are no worse than the competition. iow: pretty terrible.

    2. hoola Silver badge

      Limited alternatives?

      It is pretty much in the same space as Microsoft & Office when it comes to their offering, it is the default "go-to".

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Enterprise accounting systems pretty much defined lock-in. That's why they'll always buy any serious competition, paying for it out of future licence fees.

      2. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

        The text UI, reports and more of SAP look absolutely terrible. The dir command from DOS looks beautiful compared to what a multi billion dollar company that has a history of decades has produced.

        Office may have a lot of problems but at least it doesnt look that bad. Did i mention the function keys and menus, they are the worst possible arrangement, i fail to understand who thought they were well arranged.

    3. Slipoch

      This is why they hire salespeople and call them 'technical staff' then get those ones to sell to management above the level it will be used or implemented at.

  3. Winkypop Silver badge
    Devil

    They all bought into SAP

    They knew what to expect.

  4. johnfbw

    SAP complaints start now

    Every time SAP is mentioned a lot of comments from people who have no experience in it or its competitors.

    (Yes the price rises are crap)

    1. Slipoch

      Re: SAP complaints start now

      I have a lot of exeperience in integrating with SAP from external software, both the older internal SAP systems and the cloud offerings. My brother has also had to use it in his last 3 jobs.

      Never have I encountered such a rubbish system, it has barely changed the overall methodology from the days when it was used on production lines for single-product and chemical companies in the 80's.

      I have seen so many times their idea of a db being non-normalised, unique-id hell.

      To give an example, one of the typical instances of SAP stupidity is the unique id per component per device, meaning that if you have shared components you don't just use one unique id for each component, but a different one for each device it is used in. (this is in a multinational instrument supplier that had their setup recommended /advised by SAP itself).

      to give another example TAFE Vic was implementing SAP for 10 years, at the end of that process it still could not take a single enrolement, SAP had this on their website as a 'success story'

      Another example is that the db lost (irrecoverably) the records in QLD DSS of 'at risk' children, leading to several deaths as they were then unmonitored

      QLD health had several security breaches that were tracked back to common issues (like sql injection attacks) in the SAP interface.

      Issues include:

      Insecure

      Non-validated input to endpoints allowing garbage to be submitted from external 'public' sources

      Spurious data ingestion (for CSM) - meaning that the data output was garbage and worse, misleading

      Poor performance (speed/memory) for amount of data input/output

      Salespeople being given technical titles

      'Technical' staff not understanding basic (I mean 3 line) SQL queries and the capabilities of the queries (often with clients being told what was being asked was impossible)

      Misleading sales pitches

      Taking executive staff on 'training' courses that just happen to be at resorts (not quite bribery, but close enough)

      Outright bribery in some cases

      ERP capabilities are very limited and restrictive

      ERP in this case stresases the 'enterprise' in that title, eg: garbage code where people were paid per line.

      The fact that only 20% of European customers believe SAP's offerings (SAP made the mistake of sending the login emails to their stats contractor so they got the staff that had to use it daily) are fit for their current purpose let alone future purposes says a lot.

      1. CowHorseFrog Silver badge

        Re: SAP complaints start now

        The above post is but a short summary about how everything technical and more about SAP is terrible and amateurish. Im sure they could expand on more items and point out how bad practice they are.

        SQL injections thats pathetic..

        1. Slipoch

          Re: SAP complaints start now

          Yeah nothing like a 1980's resolution being ignored. I have seen it elsewhere too, but not in something as expensive.

  5. Lonpfrb

    RPI

    Compared to RPI, the general measure of industrial greed, 3% sounds restrained.

    Compared to many service vendors with RPI+ annual rises, i.e. SAP customers, again quite modest.

    Nobody likes a price rise but anybody in business knows that increased costs can't be just absorbed without impact.

    The root cause of this is in the Kremlin not in Waldorf.

    1. Potemkine! Silver badge

      Re: RPI

      The root cause of this is in the Kremlin not in Waldorf.

      The root cause is in Frankfurt, London and New-York.

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