In IT, Conway’s Law states that the complexity of an application mirrors the complexity of the organization that built it. With customers demanding apps with greater simplicity (at least on the user-facing end), does this mean smaller, humbler companies will outperform the Goliaths? Not if the large companies listen, said Rodolpho Cardenuto, president of Global Partner Operations at SAP SE.

“Everything that I do in my organization — all programs, products, solutions — is with the partner mentality,” Cardenuto said. He told John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during SAP Sapphire 2016 that SAP works with partners and customers that can’t afford complexity, so they are very serious about responding to their demands for simplicity. He stresses the need to learn from, listen to and react to customers with the goal of “winning together.”

Options without sprawl

Cardenuto spoke about the need to give customers options, but make sure to integrate them all into the environment they’re used to.

“We were a company that was built on ERP,” he stated. Now, he said, SAP utilizes HCM, Ariba, SRM and CRC. The goal is to “to specialize, but at the same time to integrate them with the SAP core.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of SAP Sapphire 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE