We Hereby Declare Ourselves Awesome

The Presidential Medal of Business Value ROI Synergy Cross-Platform Revenue Delivery Profit Optimization

We've been hearing about SAP Build for a couple years now. The three main flavors capture a great deal of what ERP/enterprise development boils down to these days. But what I'm always looking for are stories - do vendors' claims about their products match the reality on the ground? And while I hear good things from folks I know at Mindset, I haven't heard much outside those hallowed walls.

I saw a thing float by from GigaOm: "CxO Decision Brief: SAP Build", and was intrigued. But as I read, the intrigued-ness faded. I'd hoped to hear outside knowledge, but it's a report…commissioned by SAP. When the vendor sponsors the report, you have to take all claims with a grain of salt. A few things I flagged, positive and otherwise:

• "Scarcity of experienced developers, particularly senior-level talent where salaries have risen over 25%...force organizations to make critical decisions" - if the scarcity bit is true, why mention the rising salaries? Are the people scarce, or are orgs willing to pay people scarce?

• Report says there's a 4-6 week platform onboarding period where dev velocity slightly decreases, and then after that, increases. Even on a paid-for report, I believe that factoid.

• "...the Joule AI assistant can accelerate key development tasks…by up to 30%" (emphases mine). "Can" and "up to" are often hints that there's no solid information. I would love to learn about Build’s AI assisting developers, but it’s not happening here.

• "Existing custom frameworks may require refactoring to align with CAP architectural patterns." This is not a strike against Build or CAP - it would be true of any platform change.

Real people who are really using Build, please speak up. I want to hear outside of my comfort/colleague zone. PM