Monoculture, monopolies and cartels

Now it has happened again! A former SAP partner feels cheated and tricked and believes in the rule of law! Teradata files a lawsuit against SAP and the knowledgeable observer is inclined to call out to the company: Welcome to the club!

It is a good and old custom at SAP to enter into close cooperation with partners, to understand their intellectual property (IP) and, after terminating the partnership, to construct a clone with its own programming team: At SAP, the IT term "digital twin" takes on a whole new meaning!

Teradata accuses SAP of anti-competitive dealings with the company and, equally, its customers over a period of a decade. SAP lured Teradata with an alleged joint venture to gain access to Teradata's intellectual property (IP).

SAP's goal is said to have been to obtain Teradata's trade secrets in order to develop a competing product - albeit an inferior one from Teradata's point of view. That product is said to be the SAP Hana database. Shortly before the release of Hana, SAP terminated the partnership.

Since then, according to Teradata, SAP has been trying to push its customers into exclusive use of Hana and displace Teradata. Teradata notes, "SAP's behavior is neither competitive nor innovative.

We believe legal action against SAP is necessary to protect our rights and the interests of our shareholders and all other stakeholders, including our customers." Teradata is seeking an injunction against SAP.

Hana as a "digital twin" to Teradata's in-memory computing technology? It will be difficult to prove this IP twin, but what is obvious is that this story has been told over and over again in recent years - naturally with different names: Instead of Teradata, one now writes WebMethods, and instead of Hana, one uses NetWeaver.

WebMethods was once the most important and initially the only integration platform in the SAP universe - until the presentation of NetWeaver by ex-SAP Chief Technology Officer Shai Agassi in New York, USA. After that, the SAP friendship with WebMethods was soon over, but it found a new home at Software AG in Darmstadt, in the neighborhood of Walldorf.

SAP always wins! The group is now perfectly networked and very well positioned, so that even an antitrust lawsuit in Berlin had no chance of success three years ago.

A dedicated software reseller had tried to create fair market conditions and competition with the help of the Federal Cartel Office. No charges were ever brought. Only in Switzerland, once again, everything seems to be a little different:

The Swiss Confederation Price Supervisor was able to force SAP to adjust the maintenance fees according to the ideas of existing customers - a lonely victory in the global SAP community!

Postscript: There is already a second antitrust lawsuit against SAP. Details on this at the "SAP Licensing Expertise 2018" event on September 18 this year in Heidelberg.