Who these companies are and what the software does is not really the point of the story, its the fact that both of these HUGE companies have "lost" a very large software program that could have proved one or other or both of them are liable to pay one or the other or somebody else huge sums of money (or not).
Saying that however, the word "SAP" in the story has triggered a lot of comments from people who use or make a living from installing and customising it. (Red rag, bull etc). Most of the feedback is negative because SAP is widely condemned as a POS (hope you can work that one out for yourself). And to be fair if the story had been about any other big ERP player like Oracle Financials you would have gotten the same reaction.
The fact is that ERP addresses very difficult problems, every company works differently, every implementation requires planning, analysis, customisations, etc - there is no one model that fits all. Despite what you read here not all ERP implementations are failures, most of them are not, or SAP and Oracle would have been unprofitable and out of business years ago.
