IT industry doesn't always have the stomach for its own dogfood: SAP exec lets slip that Microsoft is a customer
- Reference: 1616405404
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/03/22/microsoft_on_sap/
- Source link:
It was revealing, then, when Microsoft admitted that it is, in fact, reliant on software from another vendor.
[1]
Despite being a supplier of a suite of enterprise software under the Dynamics 365 banner which, the world-dominating software octopus says, "empowers your organisation to deliver operational excellence and delight every customer", Microsoft is an SAP user.
The fact slipped out, one assumes not by accident, during a [2]virtual fireside chat this month between SAP chief financial officer Luka Mucic and Adam Wood of investment bank Morgan Stanley.
[3]
The German software company's work with the DOS inventor on developing collaboration software Teams for SAP would "amplify for the benefit of both companies" bringing "a seamless interaction".
Then, considering the issue of colluding with the competition in business applications, Mucic went on to say: "Thinking about Dynamics: it's more a solution that is geared toward the mid-market. Microsoft itself is actually running on SAP for their own internal operations. And I think that there is a much bigger fish to fry here…"
Quizzed by The Register , a Microsoft spokeswoman said: "Microsoft uses its own Dynamics 365 as well as a wide range of business applications from other vendors, including SAP."
The incident probes the particularly sticky issue of dogfooding.
The origins of the phrase are apocryphal but may or may not relate to the president of Kal Kan Pet Food offering to eat his produce in front of a shareholders' meeting.
Its migration into tech jargon [4]may well have begun with Microsoft , of all companies, when 1988 manager Paul Maritz sent Brian Valentine, test manager for Microsoft LAN Manager, an email titled "Eating our own Dogfood", challenging him to increase internal usage of the company's product.
Whatever the origin, American English has decided to turn the lexical car-crash into a verb and hence dogfooding was born.
Examples of dogfooding, or lack thereof, are not limited to Microsoft. Bill McDermott, CEO of workflow specialist ServiceNow, revealed on a conference call last month that his "wonderful former company SAP" just went live on ServiceNow.
SAP made the move "with customer service management and ITSMs because they know that the IT backbone is mission critical in making sure the customer satisfaction, the net promoter score and the retention is rock solid," McDermott opined.
This is despite the fact that SAP has its [5]own workflow management technology which it sells as part of its Business Technology Platform.
[6]
Given the interwoven histories of the majority of tech vendors, it seems like the dogfooding question is one that will never really go away. At this point, The Register cannot resist the proposition of getting all the industry's CEOs together in a secret location to have them feed each other their own dogfood in some kind of heinously unpalatable circle jerk you will struggle to erase from your mind. ®
Get our [7]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YFh43LZcX40yMqrqCRBjSQAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://morganstanley.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1429902&tp_key=34913b7f64
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YFh43LZcX40yMqrqCRBjSQAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food
[5] https://news.sap.com/2021/01/rise-with-sap-business-transformation-as-a-service/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YFh43LZcX40yMqrqCRBjSQAAAEY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: As you note...
The larger an organization is the more likely it has a wide range of software, much of which will have come from mergers and acquisitions, or from departments or operating companies selecting their own solutions. For large companies like Microsoft the answer to the question "does your company use product X" is almost always going to be yes, as it only needs one small team to be using it.
This is why I pay very little attention to logo slides in vendor presentations. You will regularly see the same large companies cited as clients of 3 or more software vendors in the same industry because different teams select different products.
A useful turn of phrase
My boss invented the term "craptivity"
Craptivity is a state of being for those using an software and systems that are so crap and unfit for purpose that they suck in all available resources. The firm spends so much treasure and talent keeping the business alive - despite the crap - that no resources are available to talk procure a better solution.
At the time we were in a state of craptivity, at the hands of SAP
Re: A useful turn of phrase
craptivuumity - the propensity to collapse in a vacuum created by forcing out the biggest crap ever created by the vendor organisation. usually followed by immediate acquisition hunger to fill the void left by the colosolutionoscavitation
30 year old news
Microsoft became a SAP Customer more than 30 years ago running R2 on an IBM mainframe, and used to do development on a DEC VAX.
I'm somewhat surprised that this might still be the case given how capable Dynamics is (since Great Plains was migrated away from Btrieve files).
"dog fooding" first referred to the move to OS/2 and LAN Manager
Re: Colin Wilson 2 - Apple have got this right!
... when MS accounting department was still running on OS/2 when the company stopped its collaboration with IBM...
As you note...
This is nothing new. There are many - quite possibly most - tech firms that not only don't use their own software. But also can barely cobble together a functional solution for their own needs whilst selling consulting services that promise to do just that for you.