Dive Brief:
- The software development cycle at SAP is four time faster than it was just a few years ago, said Luka Mucic, chief financial officer of SAP, during a recent meeting with the Wall Street Journal.
- "A couple of years ago, SAP would have released a major update to their core business suite modules every two years. Nowadays we are down to half-yearly development cycles," Mucic said.
- SAP’s S4 HANA currently has about 220 customers, with many more preparing to go live, Mucic said.
Dive Insight:
The speed has caused older technology companies like SAP to rethink their strategies in order to remain competitive. Among other things, SAP has broken several of its offerings into component parts to allow companies to implement new pieces faster and more easily.
The strategy appears to be paying off. SAP is one of the legacy tech companies doing well in the current tech market because it recognized that today’s companies can no longer tolerate multi-year implementations of enterprise software systems.
S4 HANA, the business software suite, was launched last year and has taken off. SAP’s second quarter earnings beat analysts’ expectations, boosted in part by HANA.
"We have created a package of services that are designed to allow our customers to implement S4 as quickly as possible," said Mucic.
