Hubris is dead, long live hubris!

McDermott also promised a spectacular appearance of the new CRM vision "C/4" of the ERP world market leader at the SAP annual press conference. Obviously, intensive and concentrated work is being done on the "SAP weapon" against Salesforce, and in all likelihood Bill McDermott will make his grand entrance with C/4 plus Hana at Sapphire 2019 in Orlando, USA.

With S/4, SAP has been trying for a few years to consolidate the ERP offering holistically - from the infrastructure to the apps. This is a sensible but also very costly path that is only progressing slowly: Until recently, the data interface between SAP Ariba and an SAP ERP core was a CSV file!

C/4 is now a special challenge - also because SAP is still buying software to be integrated: Whether Qualtrics was the last purchase for a coming C/4 is uncertain!

Aligning all external products like Hybris, Ariba, Callidus, Qualtrics, etc. with the many functions of an ERP core (CRM, SCM, Logistics, etc.,) to get the promised E2E function "Experience Management Software" is perhaps a logical decision.

In practice, however, it will take many years before we see useful results: When was S/4 presented and where does the SAP community stand today? Statements by SAP partners, such as Itelligence, which claim to have already successfully sold and customized C/4, are now causing great confusion in the IT scene!

How so? A product that is not yet finished has been put into operation at an existing SAP customer? Does the user once again have to serve as an extended workbench for SAP development?

The answer is simple and almost reassuring: on June 5, 2018, at the annual SAP User Conference Sapphire, the rebranding of SAP Hybris to "SAP Customer Experience C/4HANA" was communicated.

Who buys C/4 today gets a perfect software in Swiss quality - for many years very successfully in use worldwide! So if you can do without a comprehensive E2E integration into the SAP core system, you may access Hybris without worries and concerns - pardon: C/4.