Congratulations Bernd Leukert!

Bernd Leukert was groomed as a successor by former SAP board member Gerd Oswald. One day, Leukert should have become the new Chief Service and Support Officer at SAP. Things turned out differently because former Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka left the company very suddenly.

Leukert was in the right place at the right time and became the new SAP Chief Technology Officer overnight. He is responsible for almost everything that has to do with innovation and IT at SAP, from Hana to S/4 and Leonardo.

Perhaps like Leonardo da Vinci, he was one of the last polymaths at SAP. His departure from SAP remains a mystery to this day. SAP CEO Bill McDermott did not mourn him a tear and initially did not want to communicate his departure.

Leukert's rise to the position of Chief IT Officer at Deutsche Bank thus clearly shows the disastrous failure of Bill McDermott's personnel policy. There is no concept in the actions of the SAP boss, only the premise "Cloud First".

But that is far too little to run an IT group like SAP with thousands of products. The current SAP share price paints a positive picture, but behind the scenes the remaining employees are busy cleaning up.

Will the internal consolidation succeed before the public learns the truth about SAP? For the time being, Bernd Leukert's career shows that SAP has parted company with the wrong employees, as over 4,000 people left the IT group in the first half of the year - including President Björn Goerke and CEO Rob Enslin.

"Best of the Rest" - great efforts are now necessary at SAP to achieve the 2025 target with Hana and S/4, and McDermott will have to optimize his personnel policy!