In real life, after a total loss, a "2.0" is put behind the project name and it is continued with new verve and concept. Now, of course, Industry 1.0 to 3.0 are not total losses, but from version 1 to the current version 4, dramatic things have changed - and improved. An industrial revolution!
After the cloud catastrophe last summer, experts already spotted Embrace 2.0 on the horizon - the hyperscalers Microsoft, AWS, Google and Alibaba including SAP were silent. Then, when it was announced that Microsoft Germany CEO Sabine Bendiek would be joining the SAP Executive Board at the turn of the year, many members of the SAP community agreed: Under Sabine Bendiek's leadership, there will be a retread of Embrace, a version 2.0.
Far from it: Sabine Bendiek joined the SAP Executive Board with much advance praise, and renowned journalist Eva Müller described Sabine Bendiek as an SAP firefighter in Manager Magazin - but there were obviously other trouble spots and construction sites.
Embrace gently slumbered away. Even Microsoft largely withdrew from this area and left Azure to the free play of the cloud market. Today, hardly anyone talks about Embrace anymore and Embrace 2.0 seems to be stillborn anyway.
Embrace is a thing of the past, and SAP's existing customers would be well advised to choose new partners for their cloud strategy. (Editorial note: We didn't want to believe it at first, but no one in the SAP community could be found to continue writing our Embrace column).
Then, at the end of January, SAP CEO Christian Klein surprisingly came digitally to our offices and home offices: The virtual event was a mix of Fkom and SurpRise. Under normal circumstances, SAP is under the spell of the Field Kick-off Meeting (Fkom) at the beginning of each year. But because SAP obviously has more than one site, Christian Klein tried to provide all the answers with a virtual event.
And because the problems at SAP are multiplying exponentially, not only was a top manager from Microsoft called in to help, see Sabine Bendiek above, but also a second top manager from Microsoft's Seattle headquarters. Julia White is now responsible for marketing and communications on the SAP Executive Board.
But what was Christian Klein trying to tell us with "Rise with SAP"? Opinions differ, but the fact is that the Embrace cloud story is dead, and SAP's new cloud story is called Rise with SAP. Other journalists and analysts have already emphasized it several times: With SurpRise, SAP once again wants to lure its existing customers to a cloud platform. But in a complex ERP environment including Industrie 4.0, IIoT, blockchain and e-commerce, there can only be a hybrid answer.
No cloud can satisfy all needs. No one should neglect their own IT competence in an on-premises infrastructure. The future is too uncertain to do without even one of the many cloud and on-prem building blocks. Rise with SAP is good and right, but neither new nor spectacular. The name Embrace 2.0 would have made more sense and been clearer.
So where does Christian Klein stand with his SAP? And what is Professor Hasso Plattner actually doing? After many years of shame and disgrace, SAP's Net Promoter Score is once again positive. This pleasing circumstance is certainly thanks to the affable and likeable SAP CEO Christian Klein.
If SAP's share price were not just moving sideways, but growing at a similar rate to its cloud competitor, everyone would be happy. But because nothing is in the green at SAP at the moment, with the exception of the Net Promoter Score, the SAP community is asking itself: Where is Professor Plattner and what is he doing?
I don't know, but in the quoted Manager Magazin it could be read: "The hard-working and likeable Mr. Klein has done his homework on integration [...] But rock solid is not enough, nowhere and certainly not in the software world, which thrives on the imagination of tomorrow." This imagination has always brought Hasso Plattner in the end - we miss him!
Not silent is Larry Ellison. The Oracle founder made fun of Christian Klein and SAP CFO Luka Mucic's claim that there are no ERP users that SAP has lost to Oracle. On the occasion of an analyst conference, Ellison presented a list of 100 names of companies that, according to his understanding, switched or want to switch from SAP to Oracle. So, usual marketing, to which Julia White surely finds good answers.
Larry Ellison also put his finger on a completely different SAP wound in this analyst conference, and this time he was absolutely right: SAP will never find its way into the cloud because it lacks the software to do so. SAP's ERP was never retooled for cloud computing. Is it true? An SAP partner provided me with the resolution: "In the so-called new S/4, I was able to orient myself immediately with my old on-prem ECC knowledge, because in principle nothing has changed."
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