Air, Hotel and Car Rental deals at HopJet.com
Air, Hotel and Car Rental deals at HopJet.com
By Richard Morochove
First published May 13, 1999
SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS, FRANCE - The crisp, clear Mediterranean light once drew artists such as Henri Matisse to the Cote d'Azur in southern France. Today it's still the light that pulls them in. The light in 560 kilometres of France Telecom's high-speed fibre-optic telecommunications cable linked to the Internet. It lures high-tech companies to this region that's an up-and-coming challenger to Silicon Valley.
The dream of a "Latin Quarter" for non-polluting businesses in the French countryside, sketched out in 1960, became a reality in 1974 when the first tenant moved in. Today Sophia Antipolis science park, about 20 kilometres west of Nice, is home to some 1,200 organizations with 20,800 employees, the largest concentration of technology companies in Europe.
Some 43 per cent of the employees work in the computer field, while the rest are involved in medical research, earth sciences and service industries. Known locally as Telecom Valley, this European rival offers a more livable environment compared to California's increasingly overcrowded Silicon Valley.
Sophia Antipolis is one business park that doesn't make a mockery of the name. There are forests of trees among the hills, not stands of high-rise office towers. Two-thirds of the park is reserved for green space. Some employees live in subsidized accommodations in the park, which has golf courses and other recreational facilities.
The largest Canadian presence in the park belongs to Nortel Networks, which is currently expanding its Bay Networks facility. Other tenants include AT&T, Cisco Systems, Compaq Computer, IBM, NCR, Rockwell International and Texas Instruments.
SAP AG, the largest developer of enterprise software used in big businesses and government departments, set up its French labs here early this year. Just like Silicon Valley, drinks and snacks are provided free to employees who may need to put in some long days to complete a piece of software. While Jolt Cola and potato chips are the programmers' fast food of choice in California, here it's Orangina and an assortment of fine French cheeses.
Most PC users haven't heard a lot about SAP, but I predict you will in the future. SAP currently enjoys a very warm relationship with Microsoft, but that will change.
Last week at SAPphire 99, SAP's European user conference held in Nice, the company unveiled a plan to make electronic business more ubiquitous on the Internet.
The plan is the product of SAP's hard-driving co-chairman and co-founder Hasso Plattner. Picture a German version of Bill Gates, with a few more years and pounds and a lot less arrogance, and you'll get a sense of Plattner.
Microsoft vice-president Bob Herbold, looking a little ragged (it was 2:00 a.m. at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington headquarters) appeared in a live videocast during Plattner's keynote to lend support to SAP's plans. Just weeks earlier Plattner spoke at Microsoft's competing BizTalk e-business announcement in San Francisco.
While all appears lovey-dovey between the two software developers, their rival e-commerce plans remind me of the separate operating system development plans of Microsoft and IBM in the late 1980s. We know how that partnership worked out. The two became arch-enemies after Microsoft went its way with Windows NT while IBM developed OS/2.
No one has gone broke betting on Microsoft's success. However, I think there's a fatal flaw in Microsoft's software development strategy that SAP plans to exploit.
Microsoft develops software underpinned by the assumption that everyone wants the most feature-rich application.
What happens when you already have all the power you need in MS Word for word processing or in MS Excel for financial calculations in a spreadsheet? Why should you buy Office 2000 if Office 97 gives you everything you require?
Microsoft may re-jig the file format so that users of older versions need to upgrade to be compatible with users of newer versions of its software. The company may package its Office software differently, a premium version for power users, for example. Yet the underlying application presents the same interface to everyone, from a novice home user to a corporate power user.
SAP, on the other hand, recognizes that people have different needs. The company recently defined about 80 roles in its business software, corresponding to different users who might range from an accountant to a salesperson to a receptionist. Each role displays a different set of software capabilities, from a simple menu to one that shows all the features.
SAP's user-tuned roles display a more intimate knowledge of how people really interact with software. Now that the company is butting heads against Microsoft for the first time, its superior software design will give it a crucial edge in promoting its e-commerce plans. How long will it take until Microsoft sees the light? CW
Richard Morochove, FCA, is a Toronto-based computer consultant.
Copyright ©1999 by Morochove & Associates Inc. All rights reserved. This work may not be copied or distributed by any means without our prior written permission.
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