Composable ERP

For many years, we in the SAP community discussed SAP's monopoly-like position. Even the competition authority in Bonn took up the story. If IT development were linear, there would certainly have been condemnation of SAP. But because IT has a high disruption factor, the monolithic R/3 evolved into a heterogeneous and open S/4. The next stage will be a Composable ERP, which will ultimately wrest sovereignty over the ERP architecture from SAP.

The system design of a future ERP may be based on SAP components, but its essence will be composite IT solutions. Composability will define upcoming ERP architectures. Platforms will become even more important because they represent homogeneity. As an existing SAP customer, we have been looking closely at the Business Technology Platform over the past few months. Whether this platform or the platform of a hyperscaler will be decisive for ERP architectures in the future cannot be said at the moment.

However, constructs such as SAP Business Suite 7 and S/4 have had their day; their monopoly-like claim to leadership is no longer appropriate. As an existing SAP customer, we are therefore eagerly observing a development that is being driven by SAP and at the same time threatens SAP's existence. SAP's move toward open source, platforms, democratic programming models, AI, and machine learning will rapidly move us existing customers forward in the digital transformation, while at the same time rapidly reducing our dependence on SAP.

Two souls now seem to reside in the chest of SAP CEO Christian Klein: With the Business Technology Platform, Steampunk as Embedded Abap, the AI collaborations with IBM, Microsoft and many others, SAP is achieving an unprecedented level of agility, transparency and openness; with the latest changes in the SAP price list, the ERP world market leader is trying to recapture the spirits and once again take existing customers by the scruff of the neck. (The 9000-euro S/4 flat rate has been eliminated, without which there will be no product conversion when switching to S/4 in the future).

Composable ERP also carries a bit of cybernetics. SAP's loss of control results from the autonomous interaction of the individual IT components on an adequate platform. It's all about interrelationships of components. A highly combinable system offers us existing customers the ERP components that can be put together in various combinations to meet our user requirements. IT tools like BTP, SAP Build and Steampunk will also revolutionize the SAP partner landscape because any kind of dependency and monopoly will disappear.

The combination of recent SAP announcements such as Datasphere, Build, BTP, Steampunk, and AI collaborations adds up to a high degree of freedom for existing customers. We will no longer be dependent on the developments and roadmaps of IT vendors and SAP partners, but can forge our own paths based on open source, generative AI, platforms and low-code/no-code. This time, however, our roadmaps will be agile, open and transparent, and will not end in the chaos of a Z namespace with singular Abap modifications. Steampunk as Embedded Abap on the BTP is a new concept of freedom.

Accordingly, Composable ERP does not mean that every existing SAP customer will do what they want, but that there will be a common understanding of context in the SAP community. This composability will be a principle of ERP system design and owned by the community. SAP and many other IT vendors will become tool suppliers. However, they will lose any monopoly-like supremacy. This now seems to pave the way to a post-S/4 era. The discourse about ERP after S/4 will not be conducted at SAP, but by us existing customers in the community.