Sapphire Europe 2018

SAP CEO Bill McDermott may have a house in Heidelberg, but believe me, it's no better or worse than a presidential suite in a 5-star hotel.

"Not everyone has to be happy with a messy office like yours" says my wife, who also likes it tidy and clean in her own four walls.

"The genius rules the chaos, the fool keeps order," is my answer - without wanting to offend Bill with his sterile second home.

As often emphasized and written here: The roots of SAP and business IP are in Europe. A global trend event in Europe would be the logical answer to SAP's history and future.

Instead, McDermott and his traveling circus Sapphire merely travel to where revenue expectations are highest. Europe, on the other hand, is milked for "indirect use". It's a cost-benefit calculation: Why hold a Sapphire in Europe when the licensing revenues are bubbling up anyway?

Our SAP regulars' table now only knows one topic: indirect use! We had a great laugh about editor-in-chief Färbinger's crazy idea that bots based on Leonardo Machine Learning will also need an SAP Professional User License in the future.

And if the bots then become really intelligent and propose creative solutions, do they need a developer user license around 6000 euros? What does seem real, however, is the sword of Damocles of "indirect use" via applications such as IoT, M2M, blockchain, etc. It is interesting - again related to Europe - that the relevant groupings such as DSAG and IA4SP are doing so little against this existential threat.

This is where innovation and growth are corrupted: Those who can no longer choose the most suitable solutions today, but are guided by SAP's "licensing terror," are likely to be left as losers in the digital transformation.

There will be no satisfactory answer from SAP this year regarding a vertical license model - even though my friends from the DSAG association have promised a solution. Now the year-end business is running and nobody has time, desire and mood to burn their fingers with a new license model.

SAP has become a global company. Here, the wishes and problems of the Europeans weigh little: no new licensing model, no Sapphire, no relationship management.

You can feel the absence of Gerd Oswald, the one-year extension of Michael Kleinemeier is no revelation, and technical director Bernd Leukert is at a loss. Salvation for Europe is not in sight.

And my wife says questioningly, "But you are also a global corporation?" Yes, my own SAP empire spans all continents. But we have clear structures and responsibilities.

As an IT department, we act transparently and agilely - and we respect the wishes of our users. SAP could learn a lot here to secure its business in the long term, because AWS, Google and Microsoft have the better cloud offering; Siemens, Bosch, General Electric understand much more about IoT and M2M; machine learning and blockchain are available elsewhere faster and cheaper.

The future of SAP:

a radical course correction with a kick-off sapphire in Europe or any IT provider among many!

It all started with the cloud: There is hardly an IT company that has not jumped on the cloud hype. Now IoT is offered everywhere - from NetApp to Bosch.

SAP Leonardo is no worse than the vast number of IoT solutions - but no better either. The same applies to Machine/Deep Learning. SAP is very committed to AI, but Microsoft, Google and Amazon have also done their homework.

SAP has carelessly squandered its ERP unique selling proposition in many areas - CRM, logistics, production, etc. - and is currently trying to regain something like topic leadership and unique selling proposition with a revival of Abap on the cloud platform. The company is currently trying to regain something like topic leadership and a unique position with a revival of Abap on the cloud platform. Whether this plan will work remains to be seen. We still have enough Abap specialists who are happy about this trend.