Why is SAP not popular but built the best IT solution?

As a SAP UI5 developer, many times I have wonder why SAP's reputation is not really good in developer community. I've considered it a weakness of SAP, the best ERP provider in big business.
After some years struggle with (SAP) ABAP code, I've realized that SAP's un-popularity has its own reason:

1/ SAP does not need to be recognized by everyone.

ERP Solution Chart

SAP is not a software provider for end user. It's not Microsoft or Google. Their market focus on big enterprise like Microsoft or Google themselves. Hence, normal end user rarely hear the name of SAP in their daily life. 

That's the same reason why I haven't heard of SAP till I reach final year in university.

2/ SAP marketing strategy

Since the customer of SAP is not everyone, they only focus their marketing plan on enterprise manager. I believe they invest much budget on marketing on marketing, but instead of advertising SAP brand on TV show or big event, they invest on their quality ranking chart in ERP provider market.

Those chart, is only read by company enterprise and their IT department. And rarely they would talk about these chart in daily chat. Hence SAP is still a unfamiliar brand to many people.

3/ SAP's ABAP code is good enough to reduce develop/debug effort

This is the main point I want to highlight in this post.

After the time coding ABAP, I must admit that SAP has design a good system with strict standard that make sure all SAP application running with minimum error.

However, the strict standard of SAP for development is really annoying at first for most developer, especially in the time of open-source software nowaday. The development environment (IDE) of SAP is still heavy and user-unfriendly UI for most people. This is a big challenge for most developer at the first time learning SAP. Fortunately, with the new Fiori Design and SAPUI5 framework for the next UI of SAP, developer like me now have a reason to boost motivation.

Maybe we have discuss so much about SAP's drawback for developer, it's time to appreciate all the standard that SAP has established. I've to admit that they have done the right things. we're working in ERP solution, which take the precision and stability as the most important indicator for a good solution. SAP has done that very well, especially for large-scale enterprise.

They have make SAP a well-known name in ERP market thanks to the strictly standard in development. Developer need to follow strictly the workflow, naming convention, transport process, program flow,... to make sure their customized program meet SAP standard. It's complicated and annoying for developer at first, but it would save the IT department lots of effort in maintaining and customizing effort in the future. Because every development is under standard, you can easily understand the code from another developer, which make the debug/customize process much faster. In addition, when you move to work for another company that is running SAP, you don't have study everything again because the SAP instance of the new company should meet the standard of the old company. Wow, that is what most developers wish the could do with a programing language.

That's how SAP can manage the united coherent across SAP application around the global. Which in turn not require many developers (to fix bug like other languages). And that is one more reason why SAP is not popular in developer community.

Because they don't need many developer! Mainly implement and run!

In conclusion, SAP has keep the development/customization to minimum, which make their brand not popular to developers but in turn, increase their quality.

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