AI, Money, and Community
AI ecosystem for Europe
SAP board members Thomas Saueressig and Jürgen Müller are typical representatives of the European path to artificial intelligence: don't believe in your own abilities, don't develop your own ideas, don't act autonomously, but partner with everyone and everything to spread the risk!
SAP's relationship with Aleph Alpha shows the SAP board’s lack of courage. As CEO of SAP, Christian Klein has made AI a strategic priority. However, he has failed to develop a meaningful and unique roadmap with his board colleagues Thomas Saueressig and Jürgen Müller. Adequate funding and real collaboration with Jonas Andrulis would have been risky, but could have avoided the current dilemma.
SAP has entered into partnerships with almost all relevant AI vendors. The result is a mixed bag of AI ideas and programs, but no AI solution. The advantage of the SAP AI path is that the risk of failure is spread across many players, and Thomas Saueressig and Jürgen Müller cannot be held responsible. The result is an AI ecosystem for risk avoidance but with no chance of sustainable success.
Can SAP also do AI?
SAP's hesitant approach to Aleph Alpha is like wanting to dip a toe into water without getting wet. Why has SAP placed its own AI strategy on the shoulders of numerous partners and not entered into a deeper partnership with any of them? SAP does not answer this question, but it is safe to assume that SAP board members Thomas Saueressig and Jürgen Müller know nothing about AI. So the AI exit strategy is: SAP enters into a partnership with every relevant AI market participant in order to be involved everywhere.
This arbitrary and undifferentiated SAP AI strategy is harmless to the Executive Board. A comprehensive commitment to selected partners like Aleph Alpha would have required AI expertise and courage. But because SAP knows very little about AI, the global ERP market leader is trying to get a foot in the door everywhere.
Aleph Alpha, Signavio and LeanIX
SAP customers know they need new tools as they move to the cloud. SAP SolMan for on-premises ERP such as R/3 and Business Suite 7 has had its day. SAP is currently developing application lifecycle management (ALM) for cloud computing. An AI extension in the form of an ERP LLM (Large Language Model) for cloud ALM from Aleph Alpha, for example, would have been possible.
At the end of last year, Aleph Alpha CEO Jonas Andrulis raved about the combination of SAP ERP business processes with a large language model from his company. The cloud ALM combination of Aleph Alpha, Signavio, and LeanIX could have resulted in a unique ERP transformation and digitalization. However, SAP would have had to understand a lot more about AI and have the courage to take risks from the old SAP days.
The failure of Aleph Alpha is due to internal and external parameters. SAP is not responsible for Aleph Alpha, but SAP has damaged another European AI hope due to a lack of AI knowledge and discouragement. Nice words and pictures like the ones created at the end of last year are not enough.
