What Happened to SAP Personas?
What This Article Covers
- The Gartner Paper on Fiori
- Gartner Introducing The Topic of SAP Personas
Introduction
In a previous article What is Actually in the Fiori Box? I went through Fiori in detail and explained some features of Fiori which are not understood. In this previous article I stated that in my analysis, Fiori’s future is much more tenuous that one would think.
The Gartner Paper on Fiori
In performing this analysis, I repeatedly came across references for Gartner’s article, titled SAP Fiori UX: It is Not a Matter of if, but When.
This proposal of inevitability has been a common theme used by SAP recently when selling anything from HANA to S/4, etc.. It does not at all appear coincidental the SAP’s selling messaging is just about the same as Gartner’s title of an article on Fiori. In fact, in several areas, Gartner’s article did not read so much as an independent article, but more of an article that SAP partially wrote. This is reminiscent of an article I critiqued years ago where Aberdeen Research published an article that was apparently paid for by IBM.
Now it is well known that Gartner takes money from vendors, and it makes the most money from the largest providers. Gartner says this has no effect on their output.
However, on some occasions is evident through the analysis they release that these payments do affect them. And this article I will critique on Fiori is a perfect example of this financial bias. Gartner did a poor job of covering up their bias in this article, which is why I have decided to analyze the article in depth.
Gartner Introducing The Topic of SAP Personas
Later in the article Gartner waxes philosophically about how Fiori should be looked at differently than SAP’s previous (and failed) UI attempt — called SAP Personas.
Well, wait a second — what happened to SAP Personas??
Just last year I was proposing SAP Personas as part of a sales team as a new way to use SAP that was much better than the SAPGUI. (SAP Personas is now dead by the way) The article goes on to praise Hasso Plattner for his philanthropic donations to the Hasso Plattner School of Design. Furthermore, how Fiori should be seen as a culmination of his commitment to this high-minded principle or that high-minded principle.
I teared up at one point. I then found my old copy of the soundtrack to Beaches and played the Wind Beneath my Wings.
First, I don’t see what any of this has to do with Fiori’s real prospects. Secondly, once again, these paragraphs (which I do not include so as not to provide too much of Gartner’s content) seem like they were coordinated with SAP’s PR department. Did Gartner get paid extra for Hasso Plattner’s image? What about Hasso’s work with the homeless? This does not at all seem like independent analysis.
Gartner then falls a logical utility hole when providing an utterly spurious example from history — which will confuse anyone unfamiliar with what happened.
“A good analogy is to see this in the context of SAP’s move from client/server to service-oriented architectures. Modern service-oriented architectures were not simply a matter of upgrading infrastructure and then installing the new version. SOA has had direct impacts on the way application design and management occurred. For example, application development teams needed to understand the principles of good service design and associated information architecture implications while manifesting a culture of reuse…. Just like the transition to SOAs, SAP Fiori UX will necessitate that application teams understand the principles of good UX design and put these into regular practice.”
This entire paragraph is incorrect. SOA was one of the high lead balloons in the past ten years in technology. SOA never came to fruition, and SAP never did much to enable SOA.
In fact, one could say that a vendor like SAP would have all the financial incentives to push against SOA — not to promote it, as it moves towards more open systems. But more open systems leads to less lock-in, and less lock-in leads to less profit. This is reminiscent of Vinnie Mirchandani’s book SAP Nation, where SAP talks cloud to Wall Street, but then sells on-premises, because of that locks in customers are better.
Therefore if we review Gartner’s logic here, Gartner is saying that something that never took off — SOA, is a reason why Fiori should be considered inevitable? Does Gartner even know that SOA never was successful? It is an interesting approach. I never thought of working fake history into any of my articles.
This entire paragraph brings up a lot of questions to me. This might be one of the only paragraphs that would argue against SAP writing this, as SAP must know that this is incorrect and that people familiar with technology would see this as a major red flag.
Conclusion
This article is ahistorical. It does not bring up SAP’s previous attempts at user interfaces that were supposed to transform the front end.
References
Gartner and the Magic Quadrant: A Guide for Buyers, Vendors, and Investors at Amazon
Or Direct
How to Figure Out How to Effectively User Gartner
Whether you are a software buyer, a large or small vendor, or are wondering how Gartner can help you make better investment decisions, this book will give you new insights to Gartner’s research. By studying the methodology behind such popular analytical tools like the Magic Quadrant, you will understand how a vendor earned its rating and whether or not the ratings are justified!
Understanding Gartner, It’s History, and It’s Incentives
Starting with the history of Gartner and how it compares to other IT analyst firms, this book gives a realistic assessment of the value of Gartner research to a company and provides ideas about other resources that could complement Gartner’s analysis. You will also have the tools to level the playing field between large, medium and small vendors when using Gartner’s analysis in selecting software.
Chapters
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Chapter 2: An Overview of Gartner
- Chapter 3: How Gartner Makes Money
- Chapter 4: Comparing Gartner to Consumer Reports, the RAND Corporation, and Academic Research
- Chapter 5: The Magic Quadrant
- Chapter 6: Other Analytical Products Offered by Gartner
- Chapter 7: Gartner’s Future and Cloud Computing
- Chapter 8: Adjusting the Magic Quadrant
- Chapter 9: Is Gartner Worth the Investment?
- Chapter 10: Conclusion
- Appendix a: How to Use Independent Consultants for Software Selection
- Appendix b: What Does the History of Media Tell Us About This Topic
- Appendix c: Disclosure Statements and Code of Ethics
