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MICROSOFT SELLS PRODUCT; SAP SELLS VISION

This may not be the way the world sees it. But I believe this is the way that SAP sees the looming battle for platform dominance. Listening to Webcasts over the last two years, I hear a lot numbers at Microsoft; not much vision. SAP has the vision, whether that’s what sells remains another question but this is the place SAP is putting its chips. In its earnings conference this week, SAP repeatedly described “wrap and trap” and the strategy customers don’t want and that they want choice in product. I’d say this is how SAP describes Microsoft
. And it’s similar to how I would describe Microsoft – selling things people don’t need at prices they don’t want to pay because there hasn’t been choice. The thing the Microsoft did to win the world to Office was less giving people a chance to buy it, then getting into onto the computers . It did represent not the best set of products, but the best set of products that worked together and if Microsoft had actually had to sell the suite on minus the OEM agreements, you have to wonder how it would have done on its own, probably would have been harder. It’s still got a lot of really good products. But as a company with a vision, Microsoft’s days ended a few years ago. Listen to a Microsoft webcast and you hear a lot of numbers, and I think a focus that is fragmented by its efforts to do business applications and consumer software. I also think the company spends its time boosting about a product cycle that is primarily aimed at producing revenue by churning products. SAP is more focused and it talks about ideas, its pride in being green, its belief in openness.
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