The right to be forgotten

On Wednesday, June 3, I got a newsletter from SAP - I remember that. A web link pointed to an interview that should explain: SAP S/4 Hana is the next big step.

Well, I let the Sapphire get the better of me, but learning about SapQuarter is still worth the effort. Wieland Schreiner, Senior Vice President, Chief Product Owner Suite on Hana, was available for interview on sap.com.

Suite on Hana (SoH) was launched by ex-SAP Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka and Professor Hasso Plattner in Palo Alto, USA, on January 10, 2013. As far as I can remember, it was a spectacular event.

Although the fact itself was, to my recollection, rather banal: For Business Suite 7 (S/7), another SQL database was released and certified by SAP. The expectations and hopes, on the other hand, were high. After all, this SQL database for S/7 was the in-memory computing database Hana.

So on January 10, 2013, a new era began: Suite on Hana. More than two years later, Wieland Schreiner gave an interview.

To the question

"Why did SAP decide to launch SAP S/4 Hana right now?"

Schreiner replied:

"We know that we can achieve growth with strong innovations. We see this in the enormous success of SAP Business Suite powered by SAP Hana, with more than 2,200 customers, 650 implementation projects and already more than 320 productive customers."

The SAP Executive Vice President must have been a bit confused or forgetful during the interview: What does S/7 have in common with S/4? Apart from the Linux platform and Hana, not much.

S/4, introduced on February 3 of this year, is a completely independent and new SAP product. S/7 with its core ECC 6.0 is a very successful SAP product with thousands of satisfied users. Let's give Mr. Schreiner credit for forgetting which movie he's in.

The question referred to S/4, but he, responsible for S/7, revealed a very astonishing fact with the answer: S/7, i.e. Business Suite 7 powered by Hana, i.e. the well-known SAP Suite with ECC 6.0 on the SQL in-memory computing database Hana, i.e. nothing much different from R/3 on Oracle, i.e. this SAP product, which has been on the market for over two years, has no more than 2,200 customers, of which only 320 have managed to go live.

So, this is a mega-flop. A disaster. The ERP-GAU in Walldorf.

The good man must simply have forgotten where he is and what he is saying. 2,200 existing SAP customers have ordered SoH in Walldorf - and have they paid for it? Who knows? Perhaps the users have forgotten to pay.

Of the "lucky" owners of a SoH, however, only one-third were able to commit to an implementation project. So unless you've forgotten, there are still 1,550 unused SoH licenses somewhere in the drawers of SAP's existing customers.

But the projects themselves are also unlikely to have been very successful if the result is only 320 productive customers. SoH is a disaster. To make sure that everyone quickly forgets this, SAP took this part of the interview off the web after a few hours - without comment, as if nothing had ever been said. Well, everyone has a right to be forgotten.

Even Google no longer knew about the telltale numbers. Everything is wasted and forgotten. SoH, i.e. S/7, is a success and thus Sapviertel should also become an even greater one. I have forgotten whether Wieland Schreiner is looking for a new job.