Hasso Plattner, SAP’s software pioneer still sailing on; The chairman of the German group says steering change there is harder than setting it up

THE MONDAY INTERVIEW

March 2, 2014 4:11 pm

Hasso Plattner, SAP’s software pioneer still sailing on

By Paul Taylor and Chris Bryant

Database race: Mr Plattner has chosen to pursue his passion for sailing with smaller boats

Hasso Plattner does not like looking back. But he has just turned 70 and the wavy-haired computer scientist and co-founder of Germany’s SAP business software group admits he had another ambition when he was young. “I would have liked to grow up in Liverpool and become a rocker,” he says. “I would have put my boots on, jeans and a leather jacket, and long hair and played the guitar.” But he says his German English accent worked against him: “When you have a language like this, you can’t start singing.”

As it was, the young Mr Plattner, who was born in Berlin but grew up in Bavaria, settled for a career as a software engineer, becoming one of Europe’s most successful businessmen and a multi-billionaire philanthropist. He is also an avid sailor. Last autumn he won the German Dragon Champ­ionship as part of a three-man crew that included Hamish Pepper, a New Zealand Olympic sailor. “He was really good for my nerves,” says Mr Plattner. “I have a bad habit, I look too much back instead of just looking into the sails and forward . . . With Hamish I didn’t look around.”

He has to lose 10 kilogrammes or so before this year’s world championship sailing race in a 505, a small two-person boat where weight can be decisive.

Mr Plattner shares this passion for sailing with the founding chief executive of SAP’s corporate rival Oracle. However, the two men have latterly chosen to pursue it in starkly different ways. Whereas Larry Ellison continues to bankroll America’s Cup champions, Mr Plattner has taken up racing smaller dinghies that cost a few thousand dollars. He says he has no plans to take on Mr Ellison in the America’s Cup. “It’s just not that interesting,” he says, citing the inherent speed advantage that some boats have over others.

Mr Plattner set up SAP with four co-founders in 1972. While the others have long since stopped playing an active role in the company, as chairman of SAP’s supervisory board Mr Plattner still goes to the office every day. “Why does Sir Simon Rattle still conduct?” he asks. “There’s only one answer – because he can.”

Mr Plattner does, however, admit that there are some aspects of being an executive that he does not miss. “To live on an aeroplane and an airport, I can’t do this any more,” he says. “There are physical limitations, but as long as I can contribute I don’t see a reason why I shouldn’t.”

He enjoys spending time at his computer science institute in Potsdam. “The university has basically made me 20 years younger through the students and through my PhD candidates,” he says. “I was always an engineer, but don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy it when I get a $10m contract. I’m not just a scientist.”

Over the past seven years he has been spearheading research at the institute that has led to the development of a new “in-memory” database. These dramatically accelerate the analysis of huge volumes of data, en­abling companies to discern trends and make business decisions in near real-time. SAP’s in-memory database is called Hana and the company is betting on the technology to drive its next wave of growth. “After a long period of not really knowing how we can reinvent ourselves or what is the next big thing, now I have clearer answers and SAP has a clearer strategy,” says Mr Plattner.

The CV

Born: January 21, 1944, Berlin
Education: 
1963-68 University of Karlsruhe, master’s degree in communications engineering
Career:
1968 System consultant at
IBM Deutschland
1972 Founder of SAP (Systems, Applications, and Products in
Data Processing)
1980 CEO of SAP
1988 SAP goes public, vice
chairman of the executive board
1997 – 2003 Chairman of the executive board and CEO of SAP
2003 – Chairman of the supervisory board of SAP
2005 – Professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute for IT Systems Engineering

Family: Two daughters
Interests: Sailing

He recalls the start of the Hana project seven years ago: “I got a nice bottle of red wine and it was a nice day to sit in the shade with blank paper and pens and an eraser and I said [to myself]: ‘Do I have any idea how I would build a new enterprise office system?’ I got a few ideas and passed them to my group of PhDs. I think there were five or six. Now there are 15 or more. And I said: ‘Let’s have a day of open discussion about what a future system could look like.’ We basically defined the foundation of a radical system – the radicality was no redundant data. Never store data twice . . . that was the start of Hana.”

Seven years later, SAP is rewriting its core business software applications, including its financial application used by companies around the globe, so that they can run on Hana. In the process, Mr Plattner’s team is tearing up the hundreds of millions of lines of computer code that have comprised SAP’s core applications to date. He admits that it can be tough to do what Intel’s Andy Grove once advocated and “eat your young, or somebody else will”.

“You have to be willing to set aside what you have built over many years,” says Mr Plattner. He adds that he can still find the remnants of code in SAP applications written by Claus Wellenreuther, one of his four former IBM colleagues who co-founded SAP with him, “[when] it was the world of punch cards and tapes”.

Asked whether it is harder to set up a new company or to steer an existing company in a new direction, he does not hesitate with his reply. “The bigger challenge, I’d say, is the latter one.”

If he had failed in the first three years after setting up SAP, he says his life would not have been radically different. “I would have gone back to . . . probably back to IBM or I’d do something else or start another company.” In America, he notes, “you start a second or a third company before you settle in the big one”.

To reinvent a successful company such as SAP is much more difficult. “You have to convince people that change has to come, and that is difficult,” he says, noting that it is easier to convince Americans about the future than people in Switzerland or Germany. “We are more conservative. We are a little bit afraid of the future. Americans are not afraid of the future.”

Mr Plattner’s admiration for US technology entrepreneurs is also apparent when he talks about Google and Apple.

He describes a meeting with Steve Jobs in the early days when Jobs wanted to sell SAP his then new Macintosh computers. “I said no and he yelled at me and said: ‘If you don’t buy it now, why should I ever talk to you again?’ For a while, we didn’t talk and then after he came back to Apple we talked a little bit.”

He fondly recounts his later dealings with Jobs and believes business leaders can learn from the Apple founder’s single-minded determination. “I was much too conciliatory in my SAP CEO years,” he says. “Instead of making decisions and forcing people to adhere to those decisions, I tried to convince. It is always better if you can convince, but if you know you have to go there and others are not moving, I think you are better off making a decision.”

So now that he is 70, how does Mr Plattner view his generation’s legacy? Is he an optimist or a pessimist when it comes to issues such as climate change, government debt and healthcare?

“I think I’m both,” he says – although he laments that people cannot seem to avoid dramas before they happen. “We are not really good at solving things without the practical experience. Kids only learn that the stove is hot when they put their finger on and they burn it. This, un­fortunately, is the limitation of our precious brain.”