Israel is a small country (reminding us all, it’s about the size of New Jersey with ~7 million people). When an Israeli becomes successful, be it in soccer, tennis, violin, chemistry or software, all of Israel knows about it and feels a sense of ownership and pride.
There is no doubt that Shai Agassi’s vision and drive has helped this giant software company spring forward, and if I quote one of Shai’s speeches (forgive me if I got some of it wrong), “It’s like watching an Elephant charge at 200MPH, and being able to ride it”.
However, given the state of our environment, I am thrilled to have Shai refocus his energy (!) in this direction.
Good Luck!
What is it with everyone thinking Shai was God's gift to SAP. In the end he never amounted to much. He *never* delivered... Period. It was like ADD of development... jumping here and there. Just nuts and with no strong direction.
Don't get me wrong... I think SAP has a lot of other problems. Their products are strong but stale. Their UI is typically abysmal. Shai was working to fix some of that but not in an organized fashion. So was he good or bad? I guess it depends upon your point of view.
As for Shai and the environment... It is always humorous when wealthy people suddenly become interested in the environment. Shai used to drive a gas hogging Audi A6. Where was his Prius? Does he live in an efficient house? Does he use CF bulbs insted of those "nice" incadenscent can lights? Hmmmm...
Oh, just to dispel one more thing... TopTier was not a resounding success. As I understand it, the project was never really used. The joke at SAP was that the Portal was entirely recoded.
Posted by: Albacore | June 06, 2007 at 03:24 AM