There is something both strange and ironic going on right now. Remember the heated debate about the proposed increase in H1B visas just the other week? Well, earlier today Mary Hayes Weier made some interesting comments regarding the IT talent shortage in India. Among other things, research firm Gartner has gone so far as advising Indian CIOs to — wait for it! — outsource IT work.

Yes, you read that right. At the same time as American IT workers are up in arms about a perceived army of cheap, foreign competition charging the castle Gates (sorry!), the very same Indians that tend to drift into the crosshairs are now looking to send their own IT jobs offshore. It’s an odd twist, to be sure. From Weier’s article:

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that shows India on the verge of a talent crisis […] they start looking offshore, to Hong Kong and Singapore, for IT workers rather than fight for talent within their own country. The growing economy in India has created big IT budgets, yet India CIOs often can’t beat the big service companies like Tata and IBM at the recruiting game.

SAP career expert Jon Reed shared his thoughts on the initial H1B debate last month, so we figured it was time to check back in for an update on this latest development:

The irony of India soon having to offshore its own technical needs is a fascinating one. But how much does this really change the globalization of the information worker?

To get a handle on this story’s impact on the SAP market, we have to start with the assumption that offshoring trends in SAP follow a similar pattern to overall IT offshoring trends. Since the bulk of IT offshoring is done by large companies running either Oracle or SAP ERP platforms, this seems like a fair assumption.

So how does this news impact the SAP market? It’s a tricky question because the overall technical capacity across the world has not yet been fully leveraged by offshoring. However, this Information Week piece makes a good point: The cultural and language mix with India was perfect for U.S. based companies. Other countries may have the technical capacity but the cultural and language barriers might negatively impact the return on investment for offshoring.

Overall, I would say that this is good news in the short term for SAP consultants, in particular those based in the U.S. Any limits on the supply of qualified consultants means a corresponding uptick in rates is likely. But in the long run, as this author concedes, the
globalization trends are not going away. Ultimately, we are far from reaching worldwide technical capacity. It may take time to conquer some of the barriers, but I guarantee you there is a wave of entrepreneurs in Russia, Mexico, China and elsewhere working feverishly to do just that. I wouldn’t bet against them.

This means that the general advice I have always given SAP consultants about offshoring still holds: Try to avoid commodified skill sets, especially on the development side. Become indispensable by gaining a business process background, industry expertise, team lead experience, and crucial exposure to the latest SAP tools and releases. Yes, the offshoring question has gotten more complicated with India at capacity. But the long term trend of the globalization of the information worker is still in the adolescent stages. It will continue to grow, and functional work will eventually be impacted also.

There you have it: Potential short-term respite, but the worldwide globalization movement isn’t going to stop anytime soon. Use the time wisely — beef up your skills and make yourself outsourcing-proof before India increases capacity and/or other markets unlock the key to easier partnerships with U.S. companies.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

Most IT workers I talk to have trouble getting up to speed with Web 2.0. Isn’t it asking for trouble to start talking about Web 3.0 in that case? Apparently, SAP doesn’t seem to think so.

ZDNet’s Dan Farber reports a “dog and pony show” surrounding the opening of SAP’s new Palo Alto lab, where SAP execs predictably talked about stuff like the importance of collaboration, the upcoming SAP A1S ERP on-demand solution, and of course, Web 3.0. From Farber’s post:

“If you look to the services that we are defining with our enterprise SOA and things a bit beyond, we know that these type of enterprise services over time, in collaboration with many customers, associations and partners, a kind of standard can bring the Internet of business services,” Kagermann said. “We don’t have the semantics today that go beyond Web 2.0 and will allow software to to speak to each other.”

There’s the keyword: Semantics. The oft-cited example of Web 3.0 is a “smart” scheduling app that handles the eternal back-and-forth between meeting participants automatically. Problem is, beyond that, Web 3.0 is rather fuzzy. How can you look at a product and say: “This here piece o’ software is Web 2.0, while that app over there is Web 3.0″? More importantly, what does this concept really mean for SAP shops, and what practical benefits vs. costs are we looking at?

While not SAP-specific, David Siegel provides a pretty good explanation on his blog. Everything in the future will be smart, he says, not just scheduling apps but mundane stuff like chasing down the best flight (enter your preferences and let the computer run the two dozen searches on Orbitz). He also uses an example of a team of construction engineers working a lighting challenge to highlight the potential collaboration benefits of Web 3.0.

The key to getting there is enabling computers to interpret “human-readable” phrases rather make a loose guess based on just keywords. For a SAP shop, this could be a boon to areas like analytics and reporting, or bringing truly personalized CRM into the world. Other areas that could use a boost of “smarts” would be logistics, SCM, or pretty much any scenario where you need to tap into multiple heterogenous solutions.

That’s the benefit portion. Cost and maintenance remains largely an unknown at this point. Of course, time will tell how far these theoretical scenarios will play out in reality, but we’re going to dive deeper into this in the weeks ahead. Stand by for a comprehensive Web 3.0 for SAP overview by Eric Samuels!

Matt Danielsson
Editor

Did SAP steal Oracle’s customers? As in, nefariously done on the sly as opposed to, oh I don’t know, offering better products? That’s what you’d conclude if you believe the over-the-top aggressive amended complaint filed by Oracle the other day. But the reality of the case is anything but clear-cut. Dennis Byron, who has provided insightful guest columns on SearchSAP.com in the past, took a closer look at the issue in a recent blog post.

Byron raised a couple issues that deserve consideration:

• If SAP used old Oracle customers’ passwords to gain access to Oracle’s systems, why didn’t Oracle disable those accounts when the contract expired? Is it standard practice to leave the barn doors wide open for years, and then be shocked — shocked, I tells ya! — when someone comes by and takes a peek inside?
• After raising hell with the initial complaint, why, exactly, did the really nasty talk about “aiding and abetting” and “conspiracy” suddenly evaporate in the second filing?

Furthermore, Byron points out, the customers covered here (former JDE, PeopleSoft etc.) stems from a frenzied series of acquisitions that happened years ago. Back then, there was a lot of uncertainty for the new Oracle users, and SAP was more than happy to bring concerned companies into the safe SAP fold. But the lawsuit focuses on the past couple months, when the dust had been settled for quite some time. Why are former PeopleSoft and JDE customers bailing out now, 2 years after the acquisition by Oracle?

Interesting stuff for sure. Stay tuned as the case goes to court and, we would imagine, a solid return-salvo from SAP in the weeks ahead.

Matt Danielsson
Editor

Just when things appear to die down a little bit, the Oracle-SAP lawsuit always seems to bubble back up. Today it was Oracle stirring the pot, as it tacked on copyright infringement and breach of contract complaints to its existing suit of SAP’s TommorrowNow division (SAP TN) in San Francisco federal District Court.

The amended complaint, which now checks in at 51 pages, makes particular note of some alleged similarities between Oracle’s and TomorrowNow’s Daylight Savings Time fixes. Quoting from the amended complaint:

In at least one instance, SAP TN has also, publicly displayed, distributed, and thereby profited from Oracle’s copyrighted Software and Support Materials. In December 2006, Oracle developed a knowledge solution related to the recent early change to Daylight Savings Time (the “DST Solution”). The DST Solution is a narrative document with specific instructions for how to conform certain Oracle software to the new Daylight Savings Time change. Oracle fielded more than a thousand service requests from its customers related to the Daylight Savings Time change, and its DST Solution helped resolve more than 750 of them.

SAP TN’s “solution” is substantially similar in total — and in large part appears to be copied identically from — Oracle’s DST Solution. SAP TN’s copied version even includes minor errors in the original DST Solution that Oracle later corrected. SAP TN’s version also substitutes an SAP TN logo in place of the original Oracle logo and copyright notice.

It’s no secret that these two enjoy tweaking each other whenever possible, and the language used throughout the complaint is a prime example. It’s worth going through and reading it for yourself, but here’s one example:

It was not clear how SAP TN could offer, as it did on its website and its other materials, “customized ongoing tax and regulatory updates,” “fixes for serious issues,” “full upgrade script support,” and, most remarkably, “30-minute response time, 24×7x365” on software programs for which it had no intellectual property rights. To compound the puzzle, SAP continued to offer this comprehensive support to hundreds of customers at the “cut rate” of 50 cents on the dollar, and purported to add full support for an entirely different product line – Siebel – with a wave of its hand. The economics, and the logic, simply did not add up.

Oracle has now solved this puzzle. To stave off the mounting competitive threat from Oracle and to do so without making the requisite investment, SAP unlawfully accessed, copied, and wrongfully used Oracle’s Software and Support Materials.

The gloves have been off for some time. Now it seems the combatants are reaching for the Louisville Slugger. We will, of course, continue to follow the lawsuit as it continues its long, slow boil towards a conclusion.

Jon Franke
News editor