SAP was for a long time the top notch technology sign… those where the days, as far as we knew, but what are you doing now?, offering pseudo-standard web services and providing tools that make it nearly impossible to easily integrate your black box ABAP based systems with the modern World.

Please don’t tell me how your java API does the same that the ABAP API…please don’t even try it with all the dust I have already eaten from SAP integration projects!. Let’s just not get started with JCO.

What really grinds my gears is all the sectarianism coming from 25 to 35 year olds SAP consultants who paid 5 digits for their SAP masters and now see how their customers just want to have their data in XML format and move elsewhere where the licenses are cheaper and you are not billed at hello (yes, McGuire pun intended).

I have heard so many SAP consultants say customer data is SAP property, and that this data should not be exposed in standard ways that they almost sound like a witchcraft coven.

It is even more annoying in the public sector. This is where really there is absolutely no reason for such isolationism and such lack of respect for cooperation and standard. If you are going the SOA way, go the SOA way, and stop playing “black-box strategy” right now because the 2008 stock crash was a clear message to you… go open, or go bankrupt, it is that simple.