The global and independent platform for the SAP community.
Cover story April 2024

SAP Basis with Cloud ALM, on-prem
and licenses.

Salzburg 2024: Hana and S/4 also need a robust SAP basis. The Customer Competence Center of SAP R/3 and Business Suite 7 is transforming itself with ALM, process mining and enterprise architects. The SAP Competence Center Summit in Salzburg is dedicated to this transformation process.

TO THE COVER STORY
Cover story April 2026

Trends and investment 2026

The year 2026 is a critical turning point for the SAP community: SAP's visions meet the reality of existing customers. As the end of maintenance for the old ERP system approaches in 2027, the pressure for S/4 migrations will increase massively and shape the market for service providers.

TO THE COVER STORY

The Gutenberg Moment

July 11, 2025
Peter M. Färbinger, E3 Magazine
The combination of AI algorithms and powerful hardware, such as Nvidia's graphics processors, has sparked a revolution. The most visible result is ChatGPT, though SAP is also working on the subject.

Compliance Up, Licensing Costs Down With SAP S/4 Hana

July 10, 2025
Björn Rolka, Convista
Switching to S/4 Hana offers opportunities for digitalization and automation. However, the new license model increases the pressure to act. In order to reduce licensing costs and avoid compliance risks, strategically aligned authorization management is essential.

SMEs Must Catch Up With SAP Ariba

July 9, 2025
Laura Hämmerl, Apsolut
Digitizalition in purchasing? Still a non-issue for many SMEs. Yet SAP Ariba provides a modular platform for procurement and supplier management that enables SMEs to gradually come to grips with the topic.
A look back at all the new developments presented at Boomi World 2025 in Dallas, Texas. Developments such as AI agents, expansion in EMEA, better API management and many more.

Safeguarding Digital Sovereignty With Open Source

July 7, 2025
Peter Körner, Red Hat
In times of global trade conflicts and protectionist measures, open source—as software and as a principle—is becoming central for companies and regions. It has a lasting impact on workflows, processes, and communication.

SAP Can Do More

July 4, 2025
Peter M. Färbinger, E3 Magazine
The broad—and unfortunately often poorly orchestrated—SAP offering is surprising. There are real software gems, but there is little to no communication. Can SAP itself no longer see the forest for the trees?

SAP Stops Support for S/4

September 14, 2023
Where there is no certification, there is no support. SAP has ended their certification service for "Hosting Operations" and "Cloud and Infrastructure Operations". SAP partners do not yet have answers for customers.
It is an adolescent reflex to want to own everything. SAP is preparing to acquire its partner LeanIX for around one billion EUR. Signavio's misfortune seems to be repeating itself.

AI Future

August 31, 2023
The future in artificial intelligence shines brightly for SAP's existing customers because of their sustained commitment. By contrast, SAP board members Christian Klein, Thomas Saueressig and Jürgen Müller remain unimpressive and colorless.

E3 Roundtable on ERP Platforms, Data Streams, and E2E Workflows

Successful ERP, supply chain management, and CRM architectures are built on IT platforms. Data streaming and collaboration are essential to the orchestration of ERP systems. IT platforms are the new operating system for cloud computing. The E3 Roundtable will highlight the importance and strategy of platforms for a holistic IT infrastructure and ERP architecture. SAP customers will implement platform technologies for digital transformation. The E3 Roundtable will discuss the ERP architecture principle of platforms using Boomi's offering as an example.

Comments

Christian Klein was the subject of a cover story in Manager Magazin, a German business magazine, which portrayed an innovative CEO who would rather look at the stock price and chase IT megatrends than look after his own customers.
More and more users are opting for complete or suite solutions for SAP Basis automation software. Vendors of such software, which provide various applications as part of a complete package, are turning the wheel of development.
April 30, 2024

We need SAP S/5 Hana

S/4, the successor to SAP Business Suite 7, is and will remain an on-prem system. SAP CEO Christian Klein is unlikely to achieve his cloud goals this way, which says nothing about the quality of S/4 Hana itself.
When switching from an ECC contract to an SAP Rise contract, the metric for SAP users changes. Existing SAP customers face the challenge of estimating the number of Full Use Equivalent, FUE, before signing the new Rise contract.

SAP News

Minsait, an Indra company, has acquired 100 percent of MQA, an SAP business management solutions company in Colombia and Central America (Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Caribbean). MQA has a large portfolio of top-tier customers with a high degree of maturity, as well as numerous recognitions as Best SAP Partner in Latam.
The demand for IT integration has never been greater, and cloud iPaaS is the largest integration platform market trying to meet this demand. There is a lot on offer and, for SAP customers, BTP is a priority, however, there are alternatives such as Boomi.
German CEOs are increasingly lowerering their own company's growth expectations. Generative AI is seen as the most important growth driver with hurdles to implementation.
Cloud technology, an intuitive user experience and generative AI are the success factors of Workday, which presented its visions in the HR and finance sector in Las Vegas in September.

Business Management

August 17, 2022

SAP Marketing Cloud

Today's customers use many different channels to gather information before making decisions. The biggest challenge in the digital age is therefore to address each customer with the right content at the right moment in the customer journey.
August 9, 2022

Customer Centric

For the transformation to a Customer Centric Company, all processes must be taken into account. One example shows how an integrative view of core and support processes can contribute to greater customer centricity and an optimized lead-to-cash process.
Digitization is an important means for areas such as accounting and controlling to cope with the growing volume of data. Sonepar thought so, too.
The subscription economy with its agile business models will shape the future of almost all industries. However, the shift to agile subscriptions also requires new strategies, business processes and back-office systems.

IT Management

August 8, 2022

Quantity and Quality

Although the change to S/4 is inevitable, many companies are still hesitant. One reason for avoiding the transformation could be the high number of master data with poor data quality in the various data silos.
25 July 2022

Digital Twin

More and more companies are turning to the support of a digital twin when planning new production facilities and supply chains or when expanding or improving old logistics concepts.
21 July 2022

Dormant Potential

The SAP community remains skeptical: Even the first survey of the SAP community in 2021 indicated that the big "move" from SAP ECC 6.0 to S/4 Hana in the cloud via the "Rise with SAP" initiative would not be so easily communicated.
A project dashboard provides a detailed view of projects. Here, financial details with a representation of all cash flows, a Gantt project plan, which among other things enables a simulation of target/actual deviations, are available.

Economy

New era ushered in with NTT Ltd.
The new London-based NTT company, with operations in more than 70 countries, combines expertise and global reach.
Future vision for e-procurement
Main Capital has acquired a strategic majority stake in Onventis, a cloud-based platform provider.
Building block for future growth
Orbis has acquired a majority stake in Dialog Gesellschaft für Projekt- und Prozessberatung from Bielefeld.
VMware acquires Avi Networks
The acquisition enables VMware to deliver the public cloud experience to the entire data center - automated, highly scalable and secure.

People Management

E3 book tip

Getting started with SAP S/4HANA

Get to know SAP S/4HANA using practical examples! In this book, Christian Drumm, Bernd Scheuermann and Stefan Weidner introduce you to the most important modules and business processes of SAP S/4HANA. You will get an overview of the applications for sales, purchasing, production, warehouse management, accounting and controlling. Many exercises, case studies and practical cases enable you to implement what you have learned directly in the system. Currently for the example company Global Bike 4.3.
The prerequisite for using the exercises, case studies and practical cases is access to an SAP system with Global Bike Client version 4.3. SAP UCC Magdeburg.

Order here

Working on the SAP basis is crucial for successful S/4 conversion. 

This gives the Competence Center strategic importance for existing SAP customers. Regardless of the S/4 Hana operating model, topics such as Automation, Monitoring, Security, Application Lifecycle Management and Data Management the basis for S/4 operations.

For the fourth time, E3 magazine is organizing a summit for the SAP community in Salzburg to provide comprehensive information on all aspects of S/4 Hana groundwork.

Venue

FourSide Hotel Salzburg,
Trademark Collection by Wyndham
Am Messezentrum 2, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
+43-662-4355460

Event date

Wednesday, June 10, and
Thursday, June 11, 2026

AI experience workshop only on June 11, 2026 (limited places)
Bonus: Access to all lectures on June 11, 2026

Regular ticket

Lectures, evening event and, depending on availability, the AI workshop on June 11, 2026
Places at the AI experience workshop are limited and registration is required.

Subscribers to the E3 Magazine Ticket

reduced with promocode CCAbo26

Students*

reduced with promocode CCStud26.
Please send proof of studies by e-mail to office@b4bmedia.net.
*The first 10 tickets are free of charge for students. Try your luck! 🍀
EUR 305 excl. VAT.
EUR 590 excl. VAT
EUR 390 excl. VAT
EUR 290 excl. VAT

Venue

Hotel Hilton Heidelberg
Kurfürstenanlage 1
D-69115 Heidelberg

Event date

Wednesday, April 22 and
Thursday, April 23, 2026

Tickets

AI onlyExperience workshop on April 23, 2026 
Bonus: Access to all lectures on April 23, 2026
Regular ticket
April 22, 2026: Lectures and evening event
April 23, 2026: Lectures and AI workshop
EUR 305 excl. VAT
EUR 590 excl. VAT
Subscribers to the E3 magazine
reduced with promocode STAbo26
EUR 390 excl. VAT
Students*
reduced with promocode STStud26.
Please send proof of studies by e-mail to office@b4bmedia.net.
EUR 290 excl. VAT
*The first 10 tickets are free of charge for students. Try your luck! 🍀
The event is organized by the E3 magazine of the publishing house B4Bmedia.net AG. The presentations will be accompanied by an exhibition of selected SAP partners. The ticket price includes attendance at all presentations of the Steampunk and BTP Summit 2026, a visit to the exhibition area, participation in the evening event and catering during the official program. The lecture program and the list of exhibitors and sponsors (SAP partners) will be published on this website in due course.