The global and independent platform for the SAP community.

House Message: Möbius Band

An open letter: Dear Dr. Leukert, the SAP community and the E-3 editorial team have known you for many years as an innovative, technology-savvy executive. You have done and continue to do great things for SAP's existing customers. But your presentations no longer resonate. In short: We don't understand you!
Peter M. Färbinger, E3 Magazine
July 13, 2017
Internal Communication
avatar
This text has been automatically translated from German to English.

We are concerned about your appearances at public events such as Sapphire, TechEd and DSAG Annual Congress. Our expectations are at a maximum in each case and, unfortunately, the subsequent disappointment is even greater.

A few years ago, you presented automatic payment transactions from the car at the gas pump via an SAP app on the smartphone. You, too, should be aware that gas stations make a large part of their profits not from fuel, but from food, newspapers, car accessories, and so on. Anyone who stays in their car is lost as a consumer for the gas station store.

They mentioned IoT during an SAP TechEd keynote and showed a coffee vending machine with a few sensors that could be queried via an SAP cloud.

You should know better: IoT is Big Data. Terabytes are created here. A CNC machine that mills a 50,000-euro workpiece would have been much closer to reality.

Millions of data records are created every hour in the factories of SAP's existing customers. Here, the coffee can also get cold when the workpieces leave the factory gate on time.

Next topic:

Building Automation. When you were preparing for the Sapphire keynote, didn't anyone tell you that Siemens has been offering complete building automation for decades?

Maintaining an elevator using IoT and retrieving the building plans electronically including the maintenance manual is not very innovative - is it?

And who designed your presentation for this year's Sapphire in Orlando? We would never voluntarily place ourselves under an infinity sign - a lying eight.

Did you mean to imply that Hana, S/4 and Leonardo are infinitely tedious? It takes an infinite amount of time to customize them? Mr. Leukert, the SAP community doesn't understand you!

Or should it be a paradox? On the way to Hana, the SAP customer must first cover half the distance, but before that half of the distance of the first half and before that half of this distance again - this halving of the distance to be covered can be continued ad infinitum.

Which could mean, one needs to customize Hana infinitely much time, in order to be able to master these infinite way pieces. But you know what is created here: a geometric series that converges fortunately.

Thus, the paradox of Zenon is sufficiently solved for the time being. The limit value is 1 and thus Hana finally starts to run.

But what a beautiful story you could have told the Sapphire audience if there had been no infinity sign above you, but a Möbius strip:

Dear listeners, you get to Hana and S/4 without a media break, you get from the old to the new ERP world without having to cross a border - almost by yourself: Run your finger along the surface of a Möbius strip and you change sides without effort!

avatar
Peter M. Färbinger, E3 Magazine

Peter M. Färbinger, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief E3 Magazine DE, US and ES (e3mag.com), B4Bmedia.net AG, Freilassing (DE), E-Mail: pmf@b4bmedia.net and Tel. +49(0)8654/77130-21


Write a comment

Working on the SAP basis is crucial for successful S/4 conversion. 

This gives the Competence Center strategic importance for existing SAP customers. Regardless of the S/4 Hana operating model, topics such as Automation, Monitoring, Security, Application Lifecycle Management and Data Management the basis for S/4 operations.

For the second time, E3 magazine is organizing a summit for the SAP community in Salzburg to provide comprehensive information on all aspects of S/4 Hana groundwork.

Venue

More information will follow shortly.

Event date

Wednesday, May 21, and
Thursday, May 22, 2025

Early Bird Ticket

Available until Friday, January 24, 2025
EUR 390 excl. VAT

Regular ticket

EUR 590 excl. VAT

Venue

Hotel Hilton Heidelberg
Kurfürstenanlage 1
D-69115 Heidelberg

Event date

Wednesday, March 5, and
Thursday, March 6, 2025

Tickets

Regular ticket
EUR 590 excl. VAT
Early Bird Ticket

Available until December 20, 2024

EUR 390 excl. VAT
The event is organized by the E3 magazine of the publishing house B4Bmedia.net AG. The presentations will be accompanied by an exhibition of selected SAP partners. The ticket price includes attendance at all presentations of the Steampunk and BTP Summit 2025, a visit to the exhibition area, participation in the evening event and catering during the official program. The lecture program and the list of exhibitors and sponsors (SAP partners) will be published on this website in due course.