[cookiengineer]

> So they end up with bad, missing or massively overpriced software as a result.

Immediately, SAP NetWeaver comes to mind. The whole architecture, concept and experience is violating every possible UX guideline of any operating system - and has never been updated since the 80s.

Every single person I've talked to hates SAP for various reasons. Nobody understands why there's no alternative, and nobody understands why SAP exists in the first place. And everybody hates that SAP created the optimum lock-in scenario; where they fictionally created the maximum amount of cost for companies trying to switch to another, more modern, system.

[josephg]

This is a bit offtopic but, can anyone explain what SAP is and why its used? I've heard people mention SAP for well over a decade and I've never gotten a clear story on what it actually does for the companies which use it.

[cookiengineer]

SAP is a large-scale system for resource planning. It nails down to managing development/engineering/human resources in a waterfall-managed company, and usually the workforce have to maintain their own "digital stamping" like enter/leave the company and/or on what projects they've been working on, so the workers use SAP in order to do their own accounting.

The advantage SAP has from an enterprise's point of view is "automated" accounting that theoretically can be integrated into third-party software, like the software that sends out bills via mail to customers.

Usually SAP is too bloated for everyone, in Germany we would say "mit Kanonen auf Spatzen schiessen" because it's too much overhead for maintaining/licensing the system vs. just using a simpler alternative that likely even is open source and can be modified quickly to your needs.

From a selling point of view, SAP is always sold as "it can do anything out of the box" without any development resources necessary. While that's far away from the actual truth, most CEOs believe that kind of stuff and just buy the service; which is contracted in a way that it has a minimum lifetime of years (usually 10 years+) until you're allowed to change to an alternative.

Legal requirement to archive all bills 10 years does the rest, et voila, you have a working Dip nobody can exit out of.

[selfhoster11]

FYI, "mit Kanonen auf Spatzen schiessen" seems to be widely translated as the English idiom "cracking a nut with a sledgehammer". Also, rarely seen but IMO much more amusing in the imagery it evokes, "breaking a butterfly on a [torture] wheel".

[nikolaipaul]

I think the magic ingredient of SAP is: The accounting works cross-country because it supports all the different tax laws. It makes certain things easier for multinational corps.

[Joker_vD]

Today, SAP exists so that SAP sales managers and, more importantly, SAP integration engineers, can earn lots of money. Oh, and the people who authorize the purchase of SAP, too: kickbacks and all that jazz, you know. Perhaps there were some other motivations, but today, that's mostly it.