Author: Peter M. Färbinger, E3-Magazin

The CIO is not an innovator, but a keeper of successful business processes and a transformer for necessary orchestration. At the same time, the CIO should find a balance between ERP business management, IT organization, technology and license 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.

Because a current release upgrade with or without RISE with SAP is currently overstretching the IT budgets of many SAP customers, ERP alternatives are increasingly being discussed behind closed doors. One possible exit strategy is composable ERP on a stable IT platform.

Gerd Oswald is one of the most powerful and successful former SAP board members. He was the driving force behind the successful deployment of SAP R/3 and Business Suite 7, thanks to tools such as SolMan and initiatives such as the Customer Competence Center (CCC).

SAP is extremely interested in customer evolution and has set up a dedicated department to this end. It has excellent IT tools for finalizing the S/4 conversion. However, RISE with SAP is an imprecise and variable goal without core strengths.

Legacy systems are not uncommon in the fast-paced world of IT. Many computer users are currently experiencing the pain of being forced to switch from the familiar Microsoft Windows 10 to the barely improved—albeit more secure—version 11. For SAP customers, it means saying goodbye to ERP/ECC 6.0 and AnyDB.

Innovation at SAP has shifted from IT to cooperation. An increasing number of partnerships are intended to mask the company's own lack of imagination.

The combination of AI algorithms and powerful hardware, such as Nvidia's graphics processors, has sparked a revolution. The most visible result is ChatGPT, though SAP is also working on the subject.