SAP CEO hits out at critics and competitors

German enterprise software firm, SAP has lashed out at critics who accuse the company of missing the Internet revolution.

At SAP's Sapphire conference in Berlin, Hasso Plattner, CEO, said: "I still read that we missed the Internet. I can only tell you that this is not true."

He talked up the company's ebusiness platform, mySAP.com, which he claimed is better than the offerings from competitors IBM and Oracle. He said: "We position SAP as the most complete offering for enterprise business applications in the Internet world."

Plattner backed his claim by offering to slash the price for anyone who could find a similar system from his competitors.

He also promised greater flexibility and improved integration with systems outside SAP.

Although Plattner outlined the system in greater depth than he has done in the past, analysts are still baffled by its complexity.

Laurent Lachal, senior analyst at Ovum, said: "SAP spent three years wishing the Internet away before performing a U-turn in early 1999. They still have to figure out the best way to use the Net. While the rest of the industry integrates its applications to the Internet, SAP does the reverse and tries to integrate the Internet into its applications."

Jeffrey Mann, vice president for electronic business strategies at Meta Group, said: "It really has developed. It started as a vision, then moved on to be a marketplace and then a platform. Now it looks like it's really R/4."

Plattner refused to comment on reports that SAP intends to sign a reseller deal with rival B2B firm, Commerce One.

The company did insist that it has worked to integrate its systems with several market leaders, meaning users no longer need to buy all systems only from SAP.