The Gillmor Gang

Special Guest: Shai Agassi

December 10, 2004
60 minutes, 27.7mb, recorded 2004-12-10


The Gillmor Gang



Shai Agassi

Steve Gillmor, contributing editor, ZDNet
Michael Vizard, editor-in-chief, CRN
Dana Gardner, senior analyst, Yankee Group
Dan Farber, editor, ZDNet/CNet


Shai Agassi, executive board member of SAP, takes The Gang's hot seat in an all-SAP show this week.

The Gang points to SAP's reputation of being less than fully open, and Shai makes his case for the company's SAP NetWeaver: Enterprise Services Architecture of componentized applications. SAP's current goals are to deliver a unified system with an integrated application server in a single box with what Forrester Research has referred to as applicstructure: the increased usage of prebuilt business processes is resulting in a blurring of the boundary between application software and infrastructure middleware and creating a new class of software.

The discussion covers the commoditization of applications versus interfaces via web services, the true value of outsourcing -- is it price savings or greater flexibility? -- grid computing, SAP for mid-sized businesses, and Shai's take on Oracle's attempted takeover of PeopleSoft. And don't miss The Gang's wrap-up after Shai leaves.

[You can also hear other editions of The Gillmor Gang.]


This free podcast is from our The Gillmor Gang series.