SAP alternative 

The R/2 alternative and SAP's end 

Few SAP community members still remember SAP's near demise more than 30 years ago: The successful mainframe product SAP R/2 was at the peak of its success. At that time, most large industrial companies in the pharmaceutical and chemical sectors owned IBM mainframes or compatible machines from Siemens and Comparex. SAP R/2 was the software shooting star at the time. It was an IT revolution initiated by the five SAP founders. It was a paradigm shift in the way IT was used and in the way business and organizational challenges were approached. Companies reorganized their organizational structures and processes with R/2. 

Buoyed by R/2's success and technical advancements such as Ethernet LAN from Xerox and minicomputers from Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and IBM with S/36 and S/38 (later AS/400), the R/2 successor R/3 was created at SAP in Walldorf. New SAP customers for R/3 were quickly found, but R/2 users remained skeptical for the time being and hesitated with the release change - which almost led to the collapse and end of SAP. 

SAP, but homemade

SAP wanted to accelerate the change to R/3 and threatened R/2 customers with discontinuation of maintenance. But SAP, under the leadership of Hasso Plattner, had done the math without the host! The large R/2 users from the pharmaceutical and chemical scene did not want to be blackmailed and threatened SAP with a counter-concept: The groups concerned were powerful enough to create a realistic alternative. They agreed to set up their own development and IT service company as a joint venture and then hand over R/2 maintenance, licenses and further development to this company. The contracts with SAP would be terminated. Abap tables can ultimately also be maintained by the company itself. 

Hasso Plattner capitulates 

A possibly successful further development of R/2 as an industrial solution for the pharmaceutical and chemical sector would have been a disaster for SAP. Not only the lost maintenance fees, but also the damage to SAP's image would have been severe. Hasso Plattner modified the R/2-R/3 roadmap, giving the large corporations several years to plan a release change to R/3. The idea of a separate service company was dropped. Peace reigned again in the SAP community. 

Can SAP History Repeat Itself? 

SAP CEO Christian Klein has broken all past promises to his existing customers and partners: There will be no hybrid cloud systems. Anyone who is in the cloud with a hoster or hyperscaler but does not have a Rise or Grow contract is largely excluded from future developments. 

What Klein may have overlooked in his radical plan: There are large and loyal SAP legacy customers who need to run on-prem systems because the SAP software offering is only available on-prem. So what now, Christian Klein with BRIM? SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM) is only available as an on-prem version. BRIM is in use at Swiss Post, which is, among other things, a clearinghouse for more than 150 global postal companies. Without BRIM, Swiss Post and many postal services would be at a standstill!  

And BRIM is a cash cow for SAP because it is billed on the basis of sales. Is Christian Klein sawing the branch on which he is still sitting? According to the current reading, the on-prem application BRIM would be excluded from all substantial SAP further developments such as AI/ML, Green Ledger and the like in the future. 

Even with a lot of good will and any number of rise and grow contracts, it seems almost impossible to transfer an S/4 BRIM system to SAP's private or public cloud. If Christian Klein does not offer a compromise very quickly, as Hasso Plattner did more than 30 years ago, then the question of an SAP alternative could become topical again from the perspective and with the participation of existing customers.