E3 Category: No/Name-Column

The latest message from SAP headquarters from CEO Christian Klein: data is important and valuable. The year is 2025 and SAP has invented the Golden Record for itself. Another loss of reality in the SAP universe.

At the beginning of the year, I had the opportunity to visit our subsidiaries in the USA and attend the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The topic of AI has become a focal point for our company, and Nvidia is emerging as a potential partner.

There is another way! We have worked intensively with SAP BTP and evaluated that BTP is far more autonomous than SAP officially presents it as with the S/4 roadmap. From a pragmatic perspective, BTP is also a robust platform for ECC 6.0.

I have adapted this article’s title from the German business magazine Manager Magazin because SAP is experiencing similar success and achievements to Germany. However, there is also room for valuable and sustainable improvement.

We have a long-standing relationship with a number of leading software providers, including SAP, Microsoft, Siemens, IBM, Oracle, and many others. Each of these companies has a proven track record in IT and has been instrumental in helping us manage our organization effectively.

It's frightening how little SAP boss Klein knows about us customers. Since the sales reps now limit themselves to only delivering the latest price list instead of offering more extended consultations with customers, the SAP spirit of old has disappeared.

A successful SAP Business Technology Platform partner summit took place in Heidelberg, Germany. The efforts to establish an open system alongside the frozen core are commendable. My proposal is that the BTP become public domain.

Regular readers of my column know that I am the co-head of an SAP regulars' club that now has 27 CIOs as members. The mood in the group is always good, although we are waiting for Christian Klein to reset.

Many are familiar with the book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. The first time I tried to read the English original in 1989, I failed. However, after a lecture by AI pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber, I purchased the German edition and devoured it from cover to cover.

I had lunch with our senior lawyer in the cafeteria the other day and we ended up staying until 5 in the afternoon. It wasn’t the food that made me feel ill, but rather his concerns about the use of generative AI in light of the GDPR.

SAP is a shell of its former self. It has everything other IT vendors lack: content and knowledge. However, hyperscalers have the technology.

Life is ever changing, and for whatever reason, the day may come when it is time to leave the cloud. SAP does not have a policy for this. Customers, however, should. They should have a cloud exit strategy plan in place.