Roadmap 2025

At our CCC fall retreat, we again analyzed the topic of Hana in detail. One result was the general release for BW. The divisional CIOs can plan a technical database change in coordination with the responsible departments.

The specific release is given to the global BW teams by a steering committee. All BW installations that have already gained experience with the BWA in previous years are given priority in the allocation of the release.

I do not specify the hardware to be used in the Group or at the subsidiaries: Intel Xeon or IBM Power should and may be decided by the CCC managers themselves. In this way, we hope to be on the safe side with regard to Hana.

S/4 and SoH on Intel Xeon or IBM Power is definitely not an issue and partly not yet released by SAP. We have achieved very interesting to sensational benchmark results with our working students this summer - but all S/4 and SoH attempts showed the same result: lean and fast, but unstable!

I cannot and will not judge the customizing effort, because all test installations were set up in a non-production environment.

Does our assessment correspond to reality? I naturally asked around at our SAP regulars' table and in Walldorf.

Yes, it's true! With appropriate effort and knowledge, an efficient data hierarchy (Hot, Warm, Cold and Cool) and a lot of luck, you can make SoH work.

Of course, Simple Finance (S/4) is a different matter altogether: building an accounting system from scratch - with no legacy issues - on a greenfield site, with a somewhat oversized machine, is no great feat.

However, wherever a transformation process from established ECC business cases with modifications and Z functions to a Suite 7 on Hana is involved, there is quickly fire under the roof.

And I was told in Walldorf that in the meantime Hilti - one of the very first Hana users - has also refrained from further experiments.

I've told the anecdote here before: At the Hana Council 2012, a colleague told me that they are of course interested in Hana and are also willingly available for a test case - but only on the condition that all work has to be done by SAP in Walldorf.

I would have loved to try this Hana outsourcing back then. Now it seems that the fun is over.

My friends at SAP have a double problem with Hana: stability and use cases.

On the one hand, there is still insufficient proof of the long-term stability of SoH and S/4 Hana; on the other hand, there is a lack of relevant tasks that could justify the efforts to establish a stable and efficient system - solution seeks problem. This is not a trivial issue in Walldorf!

There are now many interesting Hana applications. Entire books have already been filled with exciting use cases and business cases. What's missing are business calculations that financially justify the effort. Hana works.

Hana is getting better and better. However, the organizational, administrative and financial effort is not getting smaller. In the end, our Hana is beautiful, but not financially viable.

"A great mistress just comes at a price".

my wife says in passing. How she is always right.

The affordability of the digital transformation process became an issue after the summer. While at the beginning of this year everyone was still raving about IoT and Industry 4.0 and had the most ambitious plans, the mood tilted toward the halfway point of the year.

Now calculations are being made and many projects are being postponed. Hardly anyone doubts the necessity and vision of Industry 4.0. Some already have a roadmap ready in the drawer - but it doesn't pay off.

Recently, I found the investment request of a CIO of a subsidiary on my desk: 250,000 euros for SAP NetWeaver OpenHub. Isn't that somehow also possible with open source (OData Framework), old webMethods licenses or a still existing SAP Business Connector 4.8?

SAP is innovative, but also confusing: It seems they want everything and they want it now! Innovations such as Hana and S/4 cannot mature, but are expected to make a significant contribution to profit immediately. Here, our SAP is currently working with a crowbar.

Orca - the new BI - is to replace all other platforms such as BusinessObjects, Lumira, Crystal Report, BEx, etc. right from the start. However, when asked about organizational, administrative and technical roadmaps, Walldorf only receives silence. The phenomenon "solution seeks roadmap and problem" is increasingly becoming a virus in Walldorf that infects every ERP function.

noname@pe3.greatsolution.dev