Will Oracle save us?

Premiere: I gave Editor-in-Chief Färbinger a research assignment earlier this year for the first time since I started writing this column.

What about Tailored Data Center Integration? After TDI Phase 4 comes 5, of course - but what does that mean for us existing customers?

Of course, I could have picked up the phone myself and called Bernd Leukert, who might have referred me to Björn Goerke and I would only have heard the unofficial opinion - with the promise of the strictest discretion and secrecy.

But this is how editor-in-chief Färbinger is supposed to agonize and research with the guarantee that we will hear more voices than just those of SAP and that they will also be served up publicly.

I have not yet read his "report," but he has promised to publish it in this issue on page 86.

Will Oracle save us?

Hana in the Oracle cloud similar to the implementations of AWS, Azure and Google will most likely not be available, but apparently Oracle CEO Larry Ellison wants to delight us with a NetWeaver platform in his cloud.

We haven't had a presentation in our house yet, because the official release for Europe is missing - and because of "NetWeaver Cloud Computing by Oracle" I don't get on the plane to the USA.

This "delightful" NetWeaver/Oracle news is to research my staff who have submitted a travel request to Sapphire in Orlando for June of this year.

In terms of cloud computing, a number of companies are expected to have something to announce at Sapphire: Google wants to finally prove that it can host more than one SAP reference customer on its own cloud platform, and Microsoft Azure wants to have SAP's multi-cloud concept implemented by June - here, of course, AWS already has a head start again.

According to Björn Goerke, his multi-cloud concept is already running on the SAP Cloud Platform and AWS, while Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform are still in beta.

Where is SAP?

While I ask my assistant to look for an IoT report from the Munich-based analysts at PAC, I see an e-mail from Dell on her screen that begins, in all seriousness, with "I love you".

This "ingenious" marketing gag must have been had by a very young employee without historical IT knowledge: "I love you" was one of the first popular and widespread PC viruses! For older semesters, this déjà vu is associated with a very unpleasant feeling and many problems.

In the meantime, the PAC report has been found and I am amazed: 38 Europe-wide providers for IoT platforms were evaluated and there is nothing to be seen of SAP far and wide.

The PAC analysts confirm my perception that SAP is represented in the IoT market at best via partners, but has no expertise of its own to show.

They worked very carefully and defined several categories for classification. As a result, there were only six IoT providers that are leaders in more than one segment: Accenture, Atos, Capgemini, IBM, Siemens and T-Systems. The only consolation for SAP is that all of these companies are partners and existing customers.

IoT definitely does not seem to be a field of success for SAP. It is therefore a logical step that President Business Unit IoT and Digital Supply Chain Tanja Rückert says goodbye to SAP and joins Bosch in the summer.

IoT and probably Tanja Rückert are in much better hands there. What will become of IoT at SAP is still written in the stars. Perhaps Bill McDermott will sell the entire Leonardo belly store with IoT, blockchain and machine learning to Accenture, IBM or Bosch?

In any case, I am now waiting for the invitation to this year's Leonardo Congress, which last year was very competently co-organized by Tanja Rückert and received valuable impulses from guest of honor Professor Henning Kagermann.

Nevertheless, I see S/4 AnyDB and SAP Leonardo as stillborn. Bosch and others do it better (see PAC).