"or" or "and"

There is a lot of advice and slogans on the subject of "together we are stronger". For a long time, this cooperative thinking was prevented by technical hurdles in IT. The successful SAP R/3 was a black box and the interfaces were SAP's own construction. Of course, it was possible to import and export data - using Excel if necessary.

Open source has initiated a mental shift, not only in terms of software development and cost. Open source has also changed the perspective, which goes far beyond this movement and its software. In the private and professional sector, hardly any devices are accepted anymore that don't have public interfaces, a browser interface and update functions via USB, for example. My wife's first Audi A3 still had an audio and navigation system whose firmware could not be updated. My astonishment and indignation were almost boundless. After all, the car cost almost 60,000 euros at the time.

Nowadays, there are hardly any devices that do not have an IP number. This means that almost everything in the network can be accessed and administered via a web browser - from the coffee machine to the video projector and printer to the server. I will leave out the resulting security problems here, but I will point out one circumstance. If even the coffee machine is maintained via the company network, then the Ethernet cable of even this machine would be sufficient for an intruder to gain physical access to the network with a notebook in the first step. If the coffee machine is no longer online for a few minutes, no one would notice. However, my security specialists have assured me that they keep a very close eye on which devices with which internal addresses are connected to which IP Ethernet ports.

For a long time SAP and especially the sales department acted according to the principles: Either you are a friend of SAP, accept the PKL and system measurement, or you get kicked out (get to know SAP's lawyers). Because IT was taking up more and more space as part of the digital transformation, this SAP's domination mindset could not be sustained. SAP failed to expand its sphere of influence with appropriate initiatives. The challenge affects the entire SAP community and SAP in particular: a paradigm shift from "or" to "and," from monolithic to collaborative.

Interestingly, SAP is doing exactly the opposite in the database area. With Hana, SAP is building an absolutist and monolithic system. AnyDB with IBM and Oracle and Microsoft is a thing of the past in the SAP community. This database claim is irrevocable for the time being, but in ten years the IT world could already look completely different again, and we existing customers have to adjust to that.

In the application area, SAP does not succeed in this absolutist claim. Here, the ERP world market leader must increasingly share the IT budget of SAP's existing customers with Microsoft, Workday, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and many other providers. At the application level, a clear "and" has become established, and the open interfaces enable almost seamless cooperation.

For SAP itself, of course, this new openness is a danger because the organization is not prepared for competition. The release upgrades of the past were a matter of course in the protected area of SAP's sovereign territory. There was no need to negotiate prices because there were no alternatives. The Oder era, with its openness in all directions, requires a rethink, a reorganization, and also a rethinking of budgets - SAP must save: The savings policy is currently making itself felt in procurement. A friend from Walldorf, for example, told me that no notebooks are approved for more than 2000 euros. The Hana database mentioned on a low-cost notebook is an amusing idea. In the end, it's about something more serious: SAP CFO Luka Mucic has to ensure the return on investment targets! The return on investment is a decisive key figure for Professor Hasso Plattner and the SAP investors.