As head of IT at Mercury Engineering and now chairman of SAP's UK and Ireland user group, Philip Adams has spent his first year pushing hard for changes and closer relations with the vendor. Computing sat down with Adams at the group's 25th annual conference in Birmingham to discuss the trials and tribulations of the past 12 months, and what SAP users expect from the road ahead.
Further reading SAP denies it has low expectations for its cloud strategy SAP kisses and makes up with user group over licence resistance SAP does not expect big money from the cloud - just yet
Computing: Congratulations on reaching the 25th year of the user group. And this is your first year as chair. How does that feel?
Philip Adams: Wow, yeah. 25 years. I just hope I don't mess it up from here!
CTG: Seems like you're doing quite well so far. For instance, things appear to be calming down with regard to the rather fierce debates about licensing that arose at last year's conference. Would you agree?
PA: It's getting sorted. We've made progress, which is important, because there's only so much energy you can put into this before you have to say it isn't worth it, and you should spend your time doing something else. But the key thing is to invest the time in it because I think it's going in the right direction. Certainly there's more work to do, as I said yesterday [in my keynote], but I hope SAP will work with us and engage with us so we can move there faster.
CTG: Are you still pushing for licence parking?
PA: We are, absolutely. And that's not just UK and Ireland. There are groups globally pushing the message equally. We have a global policy we're engaged with there. We described it as a pain point in a document 18 months ago, and that's still there. We'll continue to push for that one until we get an answer. And if they say no... well, I guess with the on-premise and cloud extension policy there's now an element of - not parking - but partial termination, but there's a clear difference between those.
Parking is where you can put it back on the shelf and use it later, whereas termination well, it's gone, and you'll have to repurchase if you want another. The only business that would probably ever choose [termination] as an option is if you've divested your organisation, significantly downsized, and are unlikely to see an upturn any time soon. So it's only useful if you're 100 per cent clear - still, at least it's now an option.
CTG: SP VP of cloud strategy, Sven Denecken, just reminded us there's a premium to pay when moving from on-premise to cloud, but that's a fair decision. Do you agree?
PA: Absolutely. Though we're looking forward to more information early next year, especially about the metrics and making all that a little clearer. We don't have the hard facts yet - there's some elements out there. It's difficult for [SAP], because since we started on this journey with them, they've bought three or four companies. And when they add to the portfolio, the metrics are already in place for those companies, and the costs go up, from no fault of SAP's. So I don't envy the guy trying to keep up with it.
If you're going from on-premise to cloud, SAP is supporting your whole infrastructure. It's not a like-for-like licencse model anymore. It's, I think, a factor of 1.2 to 1 to upgrade. It sounds attractive, but I haven't done it from my own business perspective. They've come out with a metric that makes sense, certainly for them, because that's the challenge for a lot of cloud companies.