E3 Category: Coverstories

The age of monolithic ERP, in which SAP controlled processes and data in the customer data center as the sole ruler, is coming to an irrevocable end. It is being replaced by a platform economy based around SAP BTP and Business Data Cloud. Composable ERP is the future.

Members of the SAP community from the R/2 and R/3 era have fond memories of the CCC. The Customer Competence Center provided first-level support to existing SAP customers through their own IT departments. Because SAP obviously considers everything that comes from a successful on-premise era to be „the devil's work,“ the CCC became the CCoE, or Customer Center of Expertise. An experiment!

The SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is considered the standard for side-by-side development. However, alternatives such as the low-code platform Simplifier offer medium-sized SAP and Rise with SAP users flexible, cost-effective options.

For anyone involved in SAP projects, software testing—or „quality engineering“—is often a misunderstood area. Let's be honest: few people enjoy testing unless they have to.

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?

Many SAP users have been running their systems on IBM Power for years - robust, reliable and highly available. With the IBM Hyperscaler Rise with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server, a certified cloud option is now available for modernization with S/4 without giving up the familiar architecture.

Generative AI is the tool of the hour for moving companies forward. A largely standardized and cloud-based environment is required for it to be effective - as well as good data quality. Our path to a modern IT architecture.

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.

Volatile markets, fragile supply chains, rising costs and growing sustainability pressure are challenging production companies. Sales volumes fluctuate, customer orders change at short notice, unplanned machine breakdowns and staff shortages create additional uncertainty.

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.

In the on-prem world, SAP licensing was traditionally based on the purchase of nominative user licenses and functional modules. Customers acquired permanent usage rights (including a maintenance contract) for specific systems and functions—regardless of how intensively the software was used.

Rising IT costs make the optimization of SAP licenses a strategic necessity. If you wish to minimize cost risks and secure negotiating leverage, you should proactively engage in dialogue with SAP instead of merely reacting to demands.