We are SAP

Yes, we are committed to SAP. Our robust foundation is R/3 and ECC 6.0. We have had sufficiently good experience with AnyDB for existing customers at Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. Almost all of them have agreed to the strategic release change. The latest survey by ASUG and our DSAG also confirms the goodwill and willingness, but the results also show that in detail there are more questions than answers, that the direction is right, but the paths are not clear and certain.

The ASUG-DSAG survey shows that SAP's existing customers are ready to accept Hana and S/4 - only SAP still leaves many questions unanswered. My fear: It is not a lack of respect for us existing customers, but simple ignorance. We are SAP, but not ready to leave the safe ground of an R/3 and ECC 6.0 for a trip to the cloud and Hana and S/4. We are SAP, but we need more from SAP than an 18-month vision and a suitable perspective.

I would be happy if, by virtue of my position, my connections to our DSAG association and my friendships in Walldorf at SAP, I could now give an answer here. But I don't know: How does an existing SAP customer leave the cloud without on-prem licenses? Exit strategy? How does an existing SAP customer avoid duplicate DB charges during the S/4 release transition? What are the implications of FUE, full user equivalent? Lower or higher cloud subscription? Is Signavio or Celonis better? One stands, the other was in the PKL. After many years in the market, is S/4 still a sufficiently modern ERP? What will become of my CCC managers and MaxAttention? What is the future of the on-prem model? Why did SAP coldly dump cloud partner Microsoft and is now flirting with Google? What can Google do that Microsoft can't? How dangerous is SAP? This summer, consultants from KPMG visited me and wanted to sell me insurance for and against license malversations - very expensive, but supposed to work!

Once again: We are SAP! But these open questions and the results of the ASUG-DSAG survey show that SAP has too many problems to survive the coming years in one piece. Hasso Plattner, Henning Kagermann, Werner Brandt, Gerd Oswald, Michael Kleinemeier and other executives, together with us existing customers, have built a robust and sustainable foundation on which our business thrives. The apparent current successes of Christian Klein and Luka Mucic are due to this tremendous foundation. The new and young generation has not yet proven that it has created something similarly sustainable.

Christian Klein, Jürgen Müller and Thomas Saueressig have solved many problems, though not all - but that's another story. I, on the other hand, mean sustainability - in other words, products, strategies and visions from which new products, strategies and visions grow again. In the sense of the sustainable management of a forest - created for generations and trees grow back again and again. Is S/4 still up to date? What will the next ERP generation look like? What will come out of Walldorf after 2030?

I will enjoy my retirement with my wife in 2030. But I know that my SAP empire and, of course, SAP itself react like a giant tanker. Turning the steering wheel only has an effect a few kilometers later. The braking distance is several kilometers. In the next two to three years, SAP should explain to me in great detail what lies ahead for us existing customers beyond the 2030 horizon. We are and will remain SAP, but we don't see any light at the end of the tunnel - to stick with this image: Christian Klein has removed many obstacles in the tunnel so that we don't stumble and fall in the dark. My SAP regulars would very much like to see a light - in the form of a new ERP - at the end of the tunnel.

Christian Klein should learn to communicate with us existing customers - not through the filter of our DSAG, at expensive and exclusive events or through a perfect Sapphire show. Christian Klein should leave SAP's echo chamber. The SAP community has too many open questions to do without open discussion.