SAP Asserts that Databases May Be Dead
October 29, 2009
For a company whose business is based on databases, the SAP executive’s statement struck me as either prescient, uninformed, or fatalistic. According to ZDNet’s “SAP: Days of the Database Are Numbered”, an SAP executive board member named Hagemann Snabe made this assertion. According to the write up, Mr. Snabe asserted:
as businesses move increasingly towards an “in-demand” world, there will be more demand for solutions that enable information to be accessed faster and faster. “I can imagine a future where people don’t even need a database,” said Hagemann Snabe, who heads up the business solutions and technology division at SAP, one of the world’s largest database developers.
For a company whose technology relies on traditional architectures, I found the remark intriguing. The Google continues to chug forward with its Googley approaches to data management that include infinite rows and other fascinating methods. I have written about companies such as Aster Data, Exalead, InfoBright, and MarkLogic. Each of these companies have technologies that offer data manager options for their customers. Conferences on very large database systems poke into various methods for dealing with petascale data flows.
But SAP!
SAP reported its third quarter 2009 results. The company was able to show a profit but sales were down. How far down? About 31 percent.
Let’s think about this brave new world.
SAP which has had a challenging year will have to rejig its system to deal with a spiffier data management system. That takes money and time. As SAP moves to a different data management system, customers have to be convinced that SAP has what it takes to make this shift. Time is also an issue. SAP has not made significant progress in delivering some core functionality that licensees need and want. One example is an information access system that reduces the time and hassles of finding information within an SAP system. Price hikes won’t calm restive SAP licensees.
In short, I agree that for petascale data management, the Codd database is not the the wrench for the job. The problem is that SAP is getting pressure from different points on the compass. Time may be running out for this large software company anchored firmly to the methods of the past.
Stephen Arnold, October 29. 2009
Do you think someone paid me to suggest that SAP may be in a state of decline?
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