Software Is Eating the World
I was almost finished with my monthly E3 column when a colleague came into my office to report on our association's technology days in Hamburg and placed the latest issue of Manager Magazin April 2026 on my desk, see cover on this page. Yes, unfortunately and logically, SAP CEO Christian Klein is about to fall. Shouting the buzzword „cloud computing“ at financial analysts and waiting for the SAP share price to rise is a thing of the past! AI is more complex and AI is not a sure-fire success.
AI is more complex than cloud computing, because the cloud is an alternative operating model to on-prem. AI, generative AI and agentic AI, on the other hand, are complex constructs with numerous parameters. One success factor for AI is the database and data management. SAP has an excellent starting point here.
What does SAP do with its competitive edge and starting advantage? SAP is destroying its lead through greedy license management! SAP BDC, Business Data Cloud, could become the consolidation platform for ERP and non-ERP data, but the license terms for SAP BDC are contradictory, wrong and unrealistic. Instead of declaring a construct like Datasphere and BDC to be open source based on Linux, SAP boss Christian Klein wants to get rich immediately and constructs breakneck BDC license conditions. Our DSAG calls BDC Business Data Complexity!
History repeats itself: Former SAP Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka once tried to convince Professor Hasso Plattner that an Open
source database Hana could be much more successful than the commercial product SAP Hana.
When I look at our Hana license payments to SAP, I have to agree with Hasso Plattner. In the long term, however, I think that Vishal Sikka would have taken the smarter route with an open source Hana database on an open source Linux operating system.
Hana is also just traditional SQL software with classic algorithms - a real feast for any AI: Software Is Eating the World.
AI software will not only destroy numerous jobs - the rising number of unemployed academics is frightening. AI software will also marginalize many start-ups and bring traditional software providers such as SAP to the brink of despair.
SAP CEO Christian Klein is making a huge mistake: the task is not to upgrade existing software with AI software, see SAP Joule, but rather the challenge is to replace existing ERP software with generative AI, agentic AI and good vibe(s) coding. We are replacing old applications with AI-generated coding, thus directly following on from our past successes with no-code/low-code.
My regular table brothers and sisters showed me yet another aspect of „Agentic AI and AI software is eating the SAP ERP world“.
AI corrupts every classic license model. Whether user-based, indirect use, FUE gospel or BTP credit points - Agentic AI always manages to find a way out of the SAP license trap. A few AI agents (under the control of numerous and former SAP users) can very easily and quickly replace hundreds of SAP workstations and thus their license. In this case, SAP would come away empty-handed. Never before has it been said so dramatically for SAP: if you don't move with the times, you move with the times!
Christian Klein's attempt to establish AI as added value after the cloud is counterproductive. AI provides no added value for ERP. Generative AI and agentic AI are replacing ERP.
In the technical article of the Manager Magazine, April 2026 issue, page 22, states: „AI attackers such as An-thropic or OpenAI threaten even software giants. At SAP, the CEO (Christian Klein, editor's note) is sounding the alarm. The current decline in value could be just a harbinger of what is really to come [...] AI alarm in Walldorf: SAP CEO Christian Klein rounds up his top developers.“ From now on, it's not AI and ERP, but AI or ERP.
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