SAP Solution: Cloud

AI and Agentic AI do not add value to ERP. AI will eventually replace, marginalize and eliminate traditional ERP. S/4 will be around for many years to come, but the future lies elsewhere.

The year 2026 marks a historic and critical turning point for the SAP community, where the glossy visions of the Walldorf-based software group SAP meet the pragmatic reality of existing customers with full force. The deadline for the end of maintenance of the old ERP system in 2027 is approaching, increasing the pressure on S/4 migrations and having a noticeable and lasting impact on the service provider market.

The podcast for the E3 cover story is a supplement and continuation of the online texts from the E3 print magazine. A dialog between two AI avatars with knowledge from the German-speaking E3 editorial team provides an insight into the processes surrounding SAP and the SAP community. Translations into English, Spanish and French are provided by DeepL and Google.

Electronic invoicing has gone from a nice-to-have to a must-have for companies. New laws around the world - including those aimed at combating tax fraud - are driving change and accelerating the transition from paper to digital invoices and archiving.

Many CIOs are pinning their hopes on the EU Data Act, which is explicitly aimed at breaking down lock-in effects and facilitating the change of cloud service providers, cloud exit and switching. What is SAP doing?

Digital sovereignty is one of the key challenges facing German companies. Five theses on how companies can become both more innovative and more digitally sovereign.

Companies are under increasing pressure in reporting due to stricter regulation, shorter decision-making cycles and volatile markets. While operational processes are digitized, corporate consolidation often remains stuck in fragmented, grown system landscapes.

SAP has fallen out of time: It's not that S/4 is a bad ERP, but rather that SAP CEO Christian Klein overslept the social and technical change.

The global ERP company hardly plays a role on the international IT stage anymore. SAP was absent from Viva Tech 2025 in Paris and CES 2026 in Las Vegas. What about Davos?

Cloud computing was a much-discussed topic for a long time, then a standard, and thanks to hyperscalers, the cloud became a huge market with huge sales. Cloud computing is currently under discussion again and oscillates back and forth between sovereign, hybrid, private and public cloud. Which ERP architecture should the existing SAP customer choose?

Wholesalers face the challenge of seamlessly integrating their stores into SAP Cloud ERP. In the E3 interview, Christopher Warnow from FIS explains how processes can be automated and future-proofed.

SAP license management, once already a domain of complex rules and opaque metrics, has developed into an even denser jungle over the past three years, with many existing customers finding it difficult to keep track of the pathways. SAP's cloud strategy and the implementation of Full Use Equivalent as a new license model are at the heart of this development.