SAP, for all its many faults, actually has some quite successful products.

Australia's banks have been focused on replacing their legacy IBM mainframe core banking systems (stuff like CSC Hogan) with something more modern and non-mainframe. CBA went with SAP, and their project was very successful. (At least it appears that way from the media, and CBA employees who I've talked to tell me that it isn't just some good PR, it really has been a great success.) By contrast, other banks who went with other vendors had less success – https://www.itnews.com.au/news/suncorps-oracle-core-finally-...

Counter example: Lidl tried SAP and scrapped the project after they already invested 1 billion Euro.

On the other hand, Aldi Nord now successfully runs SAP HANA/Retail. The at the same time attempted (and internally highly fought against) move from decentral to central organization is probably what killed Lidl's SAP project.

[1] suggests that part of the problem is that Lidl's business processes were non-standard, and Lidl decided, rather than change their processes to match what SAP's solution supported, to instead customise SAP's solution to support their non-standard processes – and that was the point at which the project came undone, the SAP customisations couldn't scale to high turnover (but surely vanilla/uncustomised SAP Retail would not have had this problem)

Lidl's non-standard processes may well be a big part of their business success. But maybe that was a sign they shouldn't have gone with an off-the-shelf solution like SAP, and should have stuck with their legacy in-house system, or tried to build a custom next generation in-house system. And their experience isn't necessarily transferable to another business whose processes might be more standard, or who might have more flexibility to alter their processes to meet the needs of an off-the-shelf solution. And if they'd gone for some other off-the-shelf solution instead of SAP (such as Oracle or Infor), they might have had just as many problems – the more customisation heavy an ERP implementation project is, the greater the risk of failure.

[1] https://www.henricodolfing.com/2020/05/case-study-lidl-sap-d...

Strangely enough, the same both SAP and Deutsche Telekom doing the german Corona app.

What's strange about it? SAP and T-Systems are by far the largest IT consulting shops in Germany. Of course they get almost every huge contract.

Now, I agree that a more diverse landscape in that industry would be preferable, but feigning surprise is not helping one bit.

The corona app doesn't need to be a huge contract. But SAP and T-Systems can sure waste a huge amount of time and charge a huge amount of money for it.

Everything the federal government does is a huge contract. Of course, in a hypothetical paradise it wouldn't have to be. But in the real world, it is. That's still no reason to be surprised.

From what I know, SAP and Deutsche Telekom were chosen because:

- SAP built an app on very short notice where Germans traveling abroad could register for one of the government-organized flights back to Germany. The government was satisfied with how this played out, therefore they were the first choice for building the app part.

- Telekom is already operating several backend services for the RKI (the German counterpart of the CDC) and the local health offices, so they were the first choice for building the backend part that needs to integrate with these systems.

Disclosure: I work at SAP, but not on the Corona app. I'm not referring to any internal knowledge. What I know, I know from public media.

Quick off topic question: How is the work culture at SAP?

Is the public sentiment that it's software is impossibly hard to manage and develop for based in reality?

(Disclosure the one time I had to access SAP Data via an API it felt like running against a wall of legacy tables and badly documented interactions -> My sentiment may be biased)

It's a good place to work. As with any large enterprise, there's quite some politics going on between org units and teams, but my direct managers are committed to shielding the team from most of it so that we can stay productive.

As for whether SAP software is "impossibly hard to manage and develop for", I cannot comment on it much since I'm working in cloud infrastructure, so I'm mostly dealing with Docker, Kubernetes, Openstack, etc.

I've seen a bit of SAP software, and IMO a good way to think about it is that an SAP system is kind of like a separate operating system. It's a completely different world. And just like I (a Unix guy) would be completely lost if you asked me to manage a Windows Server system or develop for it, same with the SAP system.

Most people only ever learn to use it in the same way most people who come in contract are only users with no deep admin/dev knowledge. So the question is if you can find someone who has deep-enough knowledge of the system to implement or configure what you need.

That's hard especially for the kernel. If you're running Linux, it's not that hard to hire someone with kernel development experience. For the SAP kernel, it's next to impossible. All these guys work for SAP.

Developing a tool to be used by 80 million people to help fight a global pandemic under big time pressure is not a huge contract?

It isn't if you do it well. Think of WhatsApp that had about 55 people when it was bought for several billions. Especially if you need it done quickly, many mediocre developers are no substitute for a few good developers.

Maybe SAP and Telekon can be arsed to gather their best if it's actually important. For Toll Collect, the usual suspects failed very hard. Much effort, buggy and very late results.

The Italian app is on GitHub. You can check the size of the project.

The iOS app has 3 main contributors https://github.com/immuni-app/immuni-app-ios/graphs/contribu...

The Android app has one with 50+% of commit https://github.com/immuni-app/immuni-app-android/graphs/cont...

Then there are several backend. All considered it's not a small project but not a large one.

The Swiss app is developed by a small independent development studio, and for what it's worth they seem to be doing a better and faster job than SAP & Telekom:

https://www.ubique.ch/index.html

I know for a fact that there was no formal tender process, it was just a matter of having the right contacts and being at the right place. Sadly connections still matter much more than experience in Germany.

As a brit it is especially hilarious, they rail at american monopolies only to want to replace them with their german ones.

Yawn, laugh at the failures.

Well in the EU we still have opportunities to fight against other's monopolies and try to impose ours. Which a single small country can't and, at the end, is expected to become vassal of the US or China.

> laugh at the failures

Talking about failures, there are so many in the UK right now that the Brits, rather than laughing, should first focus on their own internal issues, which by the way, are seriously impacting the future of Europe.

>Well in the EU we still have opportunities to fight against other's monopolies and try to impose ours. Which a single small country can't...<

Except for Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc.

>Talking about failures, there are so many in the UK right now<

This is why it's good Britain got out sooner than later. Europe, especially France and Germany, can't handle the idea that their 'European way' of doing things hasn't kept pace with the times. It's easier for these people to attack those trying something new than to accept the possibility of change. At least catch up with SEA before taking cheap shots at the UK.

> Except for Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc.

Korea and Japan, being great, ancient and ultra-modern civilizations are totally depending on the US ruler for their own defence while they have to face a very dangerous neighborhood with N-Korea, China and Russia. And they're not very happy about it... And Singapore is a dicatorial city state less populated than London or Paris (an less rich). We could have expected a more ambitious model and destiny for a nation which once ruled the world.

> can't handle the idea that their 'European way' of doing things hasn't kept pace with the times.

Good luck with keeping pace with the times with Boris Johnson, Cummings and Patel... And to get back to the initial topic : what is the plan in UK for a sovereign cloud ? Well I guess the main idea is to give all your data to US companies and abandon any ambition to control your data privacy.

> taking cheap shots at the UK

For a couple of years Britannia has been wandering in the streets with a target painted on her dress and a message: "Hey, don't you dare shoot me, EU assholes"