Igor Levit - No Fear

It was a Saturday evening when my partner and I wanted to watch the video about Igor Levit. We were told that this documentary was available on YouTube. After quickly finding it, we realized that it was only available as a rental or purchase video. The rental fee of 5 euros seemed reasonable to us. It was not possible to log in using the on-screen keyboard because the YouTube system did not support two-factor Google login. We chose the detour via smartphone and QR code. After registering again and activating the smartphone, we ended up in the payment process - but then it was over: the YouTube system not only wanted to know our credit card number, name etc., but also our home address. To us, this data collection frenzy seemed excessive for a 5-euro purchase of a rental video. We canceled the process. What do we do now?

My partner had the idea of buying the video documentary on CD. While searching the internet, she found an entry that the documentary is available free of charge in the media library of the Austrian public broadcaster (ORF On). Our TV is compatible with Netflix, YouTube etc. and also has an ORF On app. It turned out to be a pleasant evening with a saving of 5 euros.

YouTube's hubris reminds me of SAP's cloud project and a statement made by Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges at the Group's Annual General Meeting in Bonn this year (see also Editorial, page 3 of this issue). „We were too arrogant,“ commented Höttges on the past business practices. Competition on the Internet makes many services free of charge. The scaling factor of the web makes cheap offers possible. We probably would have paid 9 euros for the Igor Levit video. With an anonymous payment. YouTube's obvious compulsion to control and monitor scares us!

And SAP? SAP is currently fundamentally changing the rules of the game for data usage in the cloud age and is attempting to retain absolute control over customers' valuable ERP data stocks with sometimes restrictive measures.

There is a strategic change of direction in which the downloading of large amounts of data is massively restricted and strictly regulated. SAP has precisely regulated the conditions under which existing customers may transfer their own data to other providers' systems in order to prevent external AI agents or third-party applications from accessing the historical treasure trove of data without express permission - and without corresponding license fees.

This restrictive approach to data export, which often leads to the dreaded license and cost trap of „digital access“ in the case of external access, forces companies to de facto
into the Walldorf-based company's new architecture concepts. Instead of allowing customers to export their data en masse, freely and unregulated via traditional APIs or SQL interfaces, SAP is positioning the Business Data Cloud (BDC) as the only legitimate hub. The apparent freedom of zero-copy secures SAP's permanent semantic sovereignty over the data and cements a profound vendor lock-in. No fear, right?