ERP and AI—Stability and 99 Percent Availability

SAP describes itself as a "cloud company," but this is not accurate, as SAP's key strength is ERP, not IT operating models such as client/server, virtualization, or cloud computing. There is much that we can learn, acquire, and purchase; nevertheless, the following saying still applies: stick to what you know!

Even the hyperscalers are caught off guard from time to time, and their cloud data centers and global fiber optic cables experience occasional outages. In a modern, networked IT society, 99.999 percent availability is standard. Experts also say that five nines (the 99.999 percent) is the minimum for ERP and supply chain management.

SAP sometimes falls short of meeting these requirements. The SAP for Me administration portal and dashboard frequently become unresponsive. This is extremely annoying and unproductive for my colleagues in the CCoE. My SAP colleagues report similar issues. SAP is not a company that focuses on or has expertise in cloud computing. I don't blame the SAP managers for this, but the failures in the cloud should be addressed, and lessons should be learned from them.

Everything used to be better. When SAP became the global ERP market leader, it made sense to purchase IT services and products that weren't part of its core strengths. The necessary databases came from Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM. The middleware came from HP, CA, and IBM. The same was true for operating systems. My first R/3 system was based on IBM AIX with RS/6000 hardware and an Oracle database. We were all quite satisfied!

Stability, the first chapter: in 2010, SAP attempted to create an in-memory computing database under the direction of Professor Hasso Plattner. At the HPI in Potsdam, Plattner and Professor Alexander Zeier developed a new generation of databases with the help of SAP Chief Technology Officer and Executive Board Member Vishal Sikka. These databases stored all the data in the server's main memory.

This Potsdam innovation is currently known as SAP Hana and, after fifteen years, runs with sufficient stability. However, my regulars can all tell at least five anecdotes from a time when Hana could only fulfill the weekly workload with numerous software updates. Stable operation was barely possible in the early days, yet SAP loudly promoted the product SoH (Suite on Hana)!

Stability, the second chapter: SAP wanted to move to the cloud, but the ERP company had little experience with this step. Former SAP CEO Bill McDermott attempted acquisitions that were initially successful. However, problems arose when it came to further developing the HR software SuccessFactors, for example. It quickly became apparent that cloud computing is a field of knowledge in its own right, and SuccessFactors was correspondingly unstable.

Stability, the third chapter: this currently concerns the SAP portal, SAP for Me, an important IT tool for our CCoE team. There are frequent interruptions and malfunctions, meaning that only parts of the dashboard are usable. Fortunately, this time it's not affecting productive ERP systems. Nevertheless, it is annoying, as the regulars at my SAP club unanimously emphasize. However, future systems, such as SAP BTP and BDC, as well as AI agents, will require one hundred percent availability.

I don't want to imagine an AI agent wandering aimlessly through our S/4 system. The damage caused by an uncontrolled, autonomous AI agent could be astronomical. Who would be liable in such a case? SAP's efforts around AI are relevant and on the right track, but there is far too little focus on operational security, IT stability, and 100 percent availability. SAP is a leader in end-to-end business processes, but it is not an engineering company.