SAP turnaround

SAP CEO Christian Klein announced one of the most important and biggest innovations to my colleague Christof Kerkmann on handelsblatt.com: SAP's Business Data Cloud (BDC) product is set to bring the long-awaited turnaround in the data chaos. After the failed attempts with Data Hub and then Datasphere, BDC is now set to orchestrate the data structures.

However, what SAP CEO Christian Klein announced very boldly at the beginning of this year turned out to be yet another cooperation with a specialist IT provider just a few weeks later, because SAP's own team was once again unable to build a functioning solution. SAP chose Databricks to close the gaps in its own offering.

For Databricks, the cooperation is probably a nice bonus. However, those responsible at Databricks do not seem to attach much importance to the project. At the obligatory SAP press conference to present Business Data Cloud, no Databricks representative showed up. However, just one week later there was a strikingly similar cooperation between Databricks and Confluent. This subsequently slowed down the SAP project. By then it was clear that Christian Klein was making much ado about nothing.

A data project that SAP drives to the wall is naturally not yet a turning point. But all the events of the first quarter of 2025 taken together clearly show a structural weakness at SAP: a Business Data Cloud that doesn't deserve the name; an SAP share price that plummets disproportionately at the slightest irritation on the market; a DSAG SAP investment report in which only 243 of thousands of customers return the questionnaire; AI development that doesn't produce a big hit apart from hundreds of gadgets; a very successful SAP Business Technology Platform because it enables the continuation of on-prem and Abap modifications.

The German-speaking SAP user group DSAG e. V. represents around 4,000 companies from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In order to ensure representative market and opinion research, DSAG and SAP jointly sent out the questionnaire for the Investment Report 2025 this year. This meant that there should have been considerably more than 4000 recipients. The response rate was sobering: only 243 companies felt motivated to answer the questions posed by DSAG and SAP. SAP's acceptance in the community has been higher in the past. Not all existing customers have SAP shares and are therefore grateful to CEO Christian Klein and CFO Dominik Asam for their work. A high share price is therefore only half the truth.

In addition to the poor performance in the SAP community survey by DSAG and SAP, the success of the BTP, SAP Business Technology Platform, could also lead to a turning point. BTP enables existing SAP customers to retain successful structures and architectures such as ERP/ECC 6.0, including Abap modifications, and still participate in AI innovation. More and more users are reporting an orchestrated interaction between BTP and ECC.

SAP BTP is a universal tool, a (heterogeneous) platform on which many things are possible, from AI to embedded Abap (steampunk). Many innovations that SAP promises through S/4 can also be used for ECC installations via and through BTP. The Business Technology Platform opens up numerous opportunities for partners and existing customers. The success of the Steampunk and BTP Summits The BTP Partner Summit held by SAP at the beginning of March in Heidelberg is proof of this, as is the BTP Partner Summit that took place a week later, also in Heidelberg, with around 1000 participants. This "platform success" is a turning point because it puts the need for S/4 into perspective. A composable ERP based on Hana, BTP, BDC and the new Business Suite can lead to a positive and sustainable turnaround for the SAP community.

After a frightening crash in the SAP share price, it has started to recover - even if it is still a long way from the 300 euros where Deutsche Bank analysts see it. With the hidden relaunch of S/4 under the old and new name "Business Suite", the cooperation with Databricks and the success of the SAP Business Technology Platform, Christian Klein could achieve a sustainable turnaround this year. The DSAG SAP Investment Report contradicts this beautiful idea, but the SAP community wishes it for itself and SAP with all its heart!