SAP Solution: SAP Leonardo

Vizuu, a subsidiary of the global Schaefer Werke Group, relies on SAP systems for its IoT-based platform solution.

Between now and the DSAG Annual Congress 2020 in Leipzig, SAP, Microsoft and the partners mentioned here will be telling the "SAP and Azure" story in E-3 Magazine - educational work for the SAP community to perfection. This is the most significant cloud knowledge transfer for existing SAP customers.

For SAP CFO Luka Mucic, it must have been an eerie déjà vu: Once again, more SAP employees want to leave the company with an acceptable severance package than Mucic and SAP CEO McDermott had planned. It was a similar story last time: SAP employees saw the fair offer as a chance to take stock of the situation and to appreciate SAP's challenging work environment....

When it comes to digitization, Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 projects are very popular among companies. Networking and integration pose challenges. Business integration platforms are the key to success.

One of the characteristics of an IoT platform is its openness to interfaces and file formats. Instead of delimited platforms, there is a trend toward open structures. SAP is also accommodating customers here.

Only money counts: On one side are the existing customers with their IT budgets, on the other the SAP sales department with its revenue targets. Opinions and views on the ERP market diverge between SAP and DSAG as they have not for a long time.

SAP CEO Bill McDermott would love to embrace the cloud trend of hyperscalers. Instead, he is fighting for a better return on investment with an SAP restructuring.

Amazon Web Services has been certified for various SAP applications for several years. The attractive offer provides light and shade, but a vendor lock-in also has to be verified.

Just in time for the turn of the year, the focus is on the developments of the past months, the current status and the plans, opportunities and challenges. There are three trends that user companies will be dealing with in 2019 and beyond.

All processes that are algorithmizable will be algorithmized - and all intralogistics processes are algorithmizable. This is the central thesis of the age of artificial intelligence (AI) in logistics and an important message to the SAP ERP community.

Numerous kick-offs at the beginning of the year are coming up and many IT companies will again confuse wishful thinking with factual analysis in the euphoria of the start of the new year.

SAP's share price is still modest, but financial analysts and stockholders are said to have already priced in the $8 billion shock regarding the proposed Qualtrics acquisition - whatever that means!