Did SAP get a kick in the teeth or what?

No surprise that SAP had a tough quarter--people knew things were tough last year when it turned to BBD (Business ByDesign) as a way to address two problems: its code base isn't written for the Web, which meant that on-demand versions of its core enterprise software would never match Web-native enterprise resource planning and customer resource management products like those from NetSuite, Salesforce.com and others; and it needed to find new opportunities, given that growth is getting harder to come by for mature software vendors selling to Fortune 1000 companies.

So SAP, the company that holds patents on scope creep and late deliveries, promised that it would soon deliver a new product based on an entirely reinvented code base, on-demand offerings and a focus on midmarket issues.

Turns out that Business ByDesign is late by design. And therein lies the rub.

SAP's acquisition of Business Objects has thus far proven to be an expensive distraction, and the TomorrowNow debacle is continuing to drag on with no end in sight.

So how did the company get off-track when so much was riding on this project?

It's a good bet it would have kept its focus where it should have been if only its boy wonder, Shai Agassi, hadn't become disenchanted with his prospects at the company,and gone on to building greener cars.

But CEO Henning Kagermann apparently wasn't willing to release the reins soon enough, and maybe wasn't able to choose between Agassi and Leo Apotheker, who was just named co-CEO.

How bad is this loss? Well, in the last 18 months before his departure, Agassi's leadership had produced NetWeaver, which gave SAP legs as a real enterprise ecosystem; a strong partnership with Microsoft that helped the software giant leverage Microsoft's stronghold on the desktop into more licenses with existing customers; and a new GRC (governance, risk and compliance) product to take advantage of the increasingly regulated corporate landscape.

Those projects are currently treading water, and BBD is late.

Shakespeare's King Lear divided his kingdom too early, and his heirs ripped themselves apart. King Kagermann has hung on too long, and may see his kingdom simply shrivel into irrelevancy.