Selection and selection

SAP Select opened at the posh Ritz-Carlton, where my wife and I stayed this time. Normally, we prefer the Hotel Orania because it has a cooperation with our absolute favorite hideaway, Schloss Elmau in Bavaria. Then, in the grand ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton, the big SAP show for a hand-picked audience:

Ms. Nicola Leske from SAP Corporate Communications took the stage and she tried to explain that there would be no keynote - which sounded logical after the departure of Bill "Superlative" McDermott. Only what came next was a false start!

The "new" SAP concept was that the keynote would be replaced by a Q&A session. After Ms. Leske explained that there were microphones in the hall, Co-CEO Jennifer Morgan entered the stage somewhat unsteadily, followed just behind her by Co-CEO Christian Klein, like a young apprentice.

The three of us then sat down on deep, white armchairs, which didn't help the look or the dynamics - it was probably meant to be an expression of nonchalance.

My wife was also surprised by this openness when I told her about it later for dinner at Tim Rau's house.

"SAP is obviously serious about generational change"

she commented.

"But why wasn't your DSAG on stage?"

The event was similar to what editor-in-chief Färbinger keeps lamenting: The direction is right, the implementation is doubtful. The strangely haphazard long-term strategy at SAP continues!

The 2025 deadline will not hold for ERP/ECC 6.0. We are going into extension! Of course, this "good" news was not announced in Berlin at the noble Ritz-Carlton.

They want to save the drumbeat for later: perhaps at Sapphire in Orlando at the beginning of May or then at the DSAG annual congress in Leipzig.

A US colleague of mine knows analyst and intimate SAP connoisseur Josh Greenbaum well and has learned that there is a dedicated discussion at SAP about the end of Suite on Hana including NetWeaver.

This discussion is not new, because there is an SAP service note that expresses exactly that: end of support for the Java stack with 2024 and for the Abap stack with 2025.

At the same time, IBM confirmed to me that all service and usage contracts regarding DB2 have been terminated - the same applies to Oracle and SQL Server.

Many weeks ago, I was informed by the SAP Executive Board that the end of SoH is far from final and that SAP is still in discussion with our user association DSAG about this, which was also recently confirmed by DSAG Executive Board member Andreas Oczko.

I understood my DSAG colleague Oczko to say that the Business Suite, SoH, will get a postponement. SAP does not want to talk about the AnyDB end, which would be understandable:

The database contracts have been terminated, and the three providers, IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft, would pay a high price, if not gold, for a resumption. As far as I understood Andreas Oczko correctly, however, our DSAG also wants to negotiate with SAP about AnyDB.

Of course, there was no talk of that at SAP Select in Berlin. There we celebrated ourselves and, the day before, 20 years of HPI in Potsdam together with Professor Hasso Plattner.

Our DSAG does not want to announce the elimination of the "Deadline 2025" until the annual congress in Leipzig, as an added value and "gift" to the community.

This plan by our Board of Management may be a good idea in terms of branding, and Co-CEO Christian Klein could announce the "good" news from the stage together with Andreas Oczko - but it's not fair!

The capitulation of the "Deadline 2025" is far too far-reaching and thus important a decision, so that this "good" news may be withheld even one day longer than necessary.

My suggestion: early next year at the field kick-off meeting (Fkom), Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein should present the new circumstances to their own sales force, and a few weeks later at an international press conference, inform the global SAP community about the end of 2025 in a timely manner.

For this, SAP should have invited our DSAG with Marco Lenck and Andreas Oczko, who actually should have already been on stage at SAP Select in Berlin, if Morgan and Klein had wanted a real discussion - but so it was a false start.