As a lowly tech worker, please help me understand this, how does a vulture capital firm now essentially runs the company by buying less than 1% of the stock? Is SAP's board and CEO really so weak and clueless that they need Gordon Gecko to tell them how to run the company?
This is like a bad cartoon.
That is not a flattering article, it's downright bad for SAP. Elliot pretty much comes in and eviscerates companies. Sounds like a deal with the devil. Crazy anyone would think that's good.
TS, that's why you'll always remain a lowly tech worker. Read this article by a pro-SAP site:
https://diginomica.com/elliott-management-targets-sap-the-background-and-big-picture/
"Our security group immediately disqualified SAP because HTTP 1.1 means that HTTP traffic containing payments and tax info will not be encrypted."
For secured communication and encryption, the standard implementation is using HTTPS. This is what is being used for all online payment transactions, email communication etc. Your security group should know that, right?
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS
about HTTP 2, based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP/2
"According to W3Techs, as of April 2019, 36.2% of the top 10 million websites supported HTTP/2"
.....
"Encryption
HTTP/2 is defined both for HTTP URIs (i.e. without encryption) and for HTTPS URIs (over TLS using ALPN extension where TLS 1.2 or newer is required).
Although the standard itself does not require usage of encryption, all major client implementations (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE, Edge) have stated that they will only support HTTP/2 over TLS, which makes encryption de facto mandatory.
......
Encryption
Initially, some members[who?] of the Working Group tried to introduce an encryption requirement in the protocol. This faced criticism.
Critics stated that encryption has non-negligible computing costs and that many HTTP applications have actually no need for encryption and their providers have no desire to spend additional resources on it. Encryption proponents have stated that this encryption overhead is negligible in practice.[36] Poul-Henning Kamp has criticised IETF for following a particular political agenda with HTTP/2.[35][37][38] The criticism of the agenda of mandatory encryption within the existing certificate framework is not new, nor is it unique to members of the open-source community – a Cisco employee stated in 2013 that the present certificate model is not compatible with small devices like routers, because the present model requires not only annual enrollment and remission of non-trivial fees for each certificate, but must be continually repeated on an annual basis.[39] Working Group finally did not reach consensus over the mandatory encryption,[32] although most client implementations require it, which makes encryption a de facto requirement.
The HTTP/2 protocol also faced criticism for not supporting opportunistic encryption, a measure against passive monitoring similar to the STARTTLS mechanism that has long been available in other Internet protocols like SMTP. Critics have stated that the HTTP/2 proposal goes in violation of IETF's own RFC7258 "Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack", which also has a status of Best Current Practice 188.[40] RFC7258/BCP188 mandates that passive monitoring be considered as an attack, and protocols designed by IETF should take steps to protect against passive monitoring (for example, through the use of opportunistic encryption). A number of specifications for opportunistic encryption of HTTP/2 have been provided,[41][42][43] of which draft-nottingham-http2-encryption was adopted as an official work item of the working group, leading to the publication of RFC 8164 in May 2017."
Maybe they can use HANA to mine bitcoin. At least that will be profitable.
What is a non-layoff?
Layoffs are caused by SAP's incompetent leadership.
You need to understand WHY layoffs happen NOT just how many were layed off and where.
If you don't understand, you keep making the wrong career mistake you made when you joined SAP.
Understanding why layoffs happen is more important than when/where/who.
Assuming you want to understand.
The only paranoia is evident by non-layoffs who are compelled to post on a lay-off blog.
Your CIO cares where you got the post!
Again, paranoia.
Thanks I got this post straight to my CIO as I know this example from SAP lay-off board will make him go with salesforce. Oh CIO asked why salesforce worried about SAP and on SAP lay-off board and I said maybeb because Elliot and Gordon Gecko.
My company recently evaluated SAP Hybris and Salesforce for e-commerce.
Hybris was designed in Germany so the integration with payment, tax, and shipping systems was non-existent compared to SFDC. To build integrations, the partner recommended SAP cloud platform. The data has to be exported as CSV into SCP then processed in batch.
Big surprise!
SCP still runs on HTTP 1.1 not 2.0
Our security group immediately disqualified SAP because HTTP 1.1 means that HTTP traffic containing payments and tax info will not be encrypted.
AWS, Azure, GCP, and SFDC use HTTP 2.0 since 2015.
SCP backend still runs on decades old Netweaver ABAP app servers.
OMG OMG OMG
All customers have to do is open browser developer tools - Click Network and look at PROTOCOL to see h1.
OMG OMG OMG
OMG HANA IS DEAD, SAP IS DEAD, NO ONE IS BUYING ANY OF THEIR PRODUCTS, ALL THE LEADERSHIP IS GONE, IT'S A SINKING SHIP EVERYONE IS JUMPING OFF, STICK A FORK IN THEM THEY'RE DONE OMG OMG OMG
SAP PR types are borderline paranoid.
They know once the NDA's expire, the truth will come out.
Right now, the plan is to divert attention away from the problems.
Failed SCP development
Failed cloud app integration
Failed cloud app HANA migration
Lost accounts to Salesforce & Workday
Piss poor adoption of S/4HANA
What's left?
The executive shake up is public.
Avoid the subject at all costs.
Talk about anything else.
Never talk about the problems.
Gust ignore the topic and talk about something or [[ someone ]] else.
The plan to use SCP for all Could-to-Cloud and all Cloud-to-On-Prem integrations makes perfect sense. I am sure there was tons of brilliant Powerpoint to explain it. The "only" issue is EXECUTION!!! SAP is very good at Strategy & Concepts on Ppt but very poor at real execution & real work. Shaking up Top management layers and reducing the number of Ppt-only people will for sure help in the long run. However, SAP needs more real hard working people that develop and code real products that work perfectly and can be implemented by customers.
Oh yeah an Elliott grand scheme, great tale ready to be put on a high quality blog. I was waiting to hear that HANA is dead, but disappointed that wasn't mentioned.
At least Salesforce can be a good tool if you keep it simple and management doesn't go crazy with it. But anyone unlucky enough to end up having to use Workday on a regular basis knows it's God awful.
The plan was set forth by Bjoern Goerke, chief technology officer and head of SAP’s cloud platform, that SCP will provide the integration platform between acquired SAP cloud apps ( SuccessFactors, Ariba, and Concur). Also, that SCP will provide an integration platform between on-premises apps and cloud apps. The plan was approved by Bernd Leukert who ran global services as the execution arm and Robert Enslin who ran SAP's cloud business.
Almost no progress was made despite many deadline extensions.
Meanwhile, Salesforce acquired MuleSoft (a leading integration platform) and quickly made progress with customers leveraging Mulesoft API network technology on the the Salesforce platform. In the last couple of years, SAP lost almost every competitive deal against SFDC and Workday launched a strong financial system in addition to HCM and analytics.
S/4HANA had a number of high profile failures in Europe and the US. These created a lot of FUD in the customer base about the ability of SAP to deliver and a number of pilots were consequently cancelled.
At the same time, the cost of developers and marketing spend on SCP and HANA escalated quickly.
The final blow came with SAP's internal project of migrating their own SuccessFactors Employee Central from Oracle to HANA. SuccessFactors was acquired in 2011 and the SuccessFactors CTO and developers resisted this idea from the get go. SAP pushed and SF sabotaged.
The solution was offered by Elliot to Bill. Blame the 3 execs in charge of SCP, HANA, and cloud business and remove enough cost (senior employees) to report a positive quarter to mask the abject failure in development and sales execution.
End of story.
Yawn.