Author: Peter M. Färbinger, E3-Magazin

SAP had originally planned to end mainstream maintenance for SAP Business Suite 7 (ERP/ECC 6.0) at the end of 2025. This deadline caused significant concern within the SAP community because it was considered unrealistic and potentially disastrous, especially given the severe shortage of qualified experts and consultants for the S/4 migration.

Cloud computing was a much-discussed topic for a long time, then a standard, and thanks to hyperscalers, the cloud became a huge market with huge sales. Cloud computing is currently under discussion again and oscillates back and forth between sovereign, hybrid, private and public cloud. Which ERP architecture should the existing SAP customer choose?

The maintenance of an SAP ERP system by a third-party provider, mixed maintenance by SAP and a third-party company, and partial decommissioning of SAP licenses have been controversial topics in the SAP community for years. A lot of money is at stake!

SAP is stepping up its efforts to further develop S/4 Hana into a holistic suite of composible ERP solutions. The existing S/4 patchwork will be managed by AI assistants and agents. Best-of-breed ERP will be replaced by composable ERP with Databricks.

What should be done with SAP licenses that are no longer needed and only generate maintenance fees? When company shares are sold or staff is laid off, there are often too many licenses. However, unused licenses result in high support costs and maintenance fees.

The SAP community is increasingly diverging from SAP's plans. There is a wide gap between the global ERP market leader's dreams and reality.

SAP left the path of righteousness many years ago. It began with the hybridization of its database. Added value? Unknown. Many other construction sites were added, partly out of ignorance and partly due to competitive pressure. Unfortunately, between topics such as the cloud and AI, SAP has yet to find its way again.

The topic of AI naturally also dominates the SAP community, that is well known: However, an offer analysis of the 180 SAP partners at the DSAG Annual Congress 2025 Bremen shows that AI hardly realizes any relevant added value in productive ERP systems such as Business Suite 7 or S/4 Hana.

An ERP system from SAP provides an excellent opportunity for consultants, IT experts, and competitors to earn money. It's only logical that SAP would have its own set of rules for this. What does Celonis want from SAP?

The legendary saying, "Red Bull gives you wings," is probably familiar to most people. However, things are not going well for the beverage company in soccer and Formula 1 right now. The sports press writes: "Red Bull is taking a beating."

For ten years, SAP has struggled to motivate its customers to switch to S/4 and the cloud, whether private or public. SAP Executive Board Member Thomas Saueressig presented a successful customer evolution that obviously only works on a Greenfield site.

With customs barriers, trade barriers, and wars, the world is being atomized and defragmented by autocrats. Fortunately, we have a global SAP community with a website in German, English, Spanish, and now, French.