Author: Peter M. Färbinger, E3-Magazin

Now the release change from ECC/ERP 6.0 to S/4 Hana may last until 2033. The repeated extension of the current ERP conversion is a sign of a lack of planning: SAP no longer understands the ERP market and invents new transformation scenarios every few years.

Future-proofing is a key issue for existing SAP customers. Due to accelerated digitalization, S/4 conversion, AI, cloud and growing IT complexity, knowledge about their own SAP ERP is becoming increasingly important.

In the future, standard business software will be orchestrated on IT platforms and determined by AI and cloud computing. AI agents will probably control the company's organizational structure and processes.

FUE (Full Use Equivalent) is a licensing metric from SAP. This raises the question: how much FUE is attributable to an AI agent? The German AI company DeepL presented an agent-based AI that can also access SAP S/4 Hana via standard interfaces such as a browser, keyboard, and mouse.

E3 Magazine already addressed the topic of "cleaning out" ERP systems in 2016. To that end, the SAP system has been heavily modified in recent years. What now?

AI doomsday preachers are gaining momentum, but the IT industry is not prepared to disrupt itself. Clayton M. Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" is relevant once again.

The CIO is not an innovator, but rather a steward of successful business processes and a facilitator of necessary orchestration. At the same time, the CIO must strike a balance between ERP business management, the IT organization, technology, and licensing fees.

RISE with SAP is a concept that makes it easier for customers to migrate to a new ERP era—with S/4 Hana as the first step. T-Systems provides the necessary support for a powerful IT architecture and a solid foundation.

AI is delivering ever more spectacular results and penetrating more and more business areas, but the share prices of IT providers that should be benefiting from this AI hype are falling. What is going wrong with artificial intelligence?

SAP license management, once already a domain of complex rules and opaque metrics, has developed into an even denser jungle over the past three years, with many existing customers finding it difficult to keep track of the pathways. SAP's cloud strategy and the implementation of Full Use Equivalent as a new license model are at the heart of this development.

Artificial intelligence has a destructive power: why not use Lovable and a few AI agents to build a new composable ERP based on SAP BTP and BDC? Between traditional Abap ERP and AI, things could get tight for SAP in the cloud.

ERP software has enjoyed great success for many decades because there is no better IT management system for business organizational structures and processes.