EhP prototype S/4

Many years ago, SAP's ex-co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe announced the renovation of the ECC 6.0 core (ERP 6.0 and Business Suite 7). A year later, SAP Chief Technology Officer Bernd Leukert spoke of a retread of the in-memory computing conglomerate Hana.

For the presentation of S/4 with Hana, there was only one ancient R/3 reference customer.

Until today: Neither SAP's core has been revised nor is there a slimmed-down Hana version, and the greatest of all evils - i.e. the ERP-GAU - is S/4! Until today there is no independent, autonomous version, but S/4 Finance and Logistics are only add-ons to the ancient Business Suite 7 on Hana (SoH, Suite on Hana).

How long will SAP continue to operate and sell an S/4 product development and roadmap as add-ons for Business Suite 7?

The picture is grotesque: S/4 add-on to S/7 on Hana. At the beginning, the community still had understanding for the fact that even SAP cannot pull a new ERP out of the hat overnight. But to call Simple Finance and S/4 Logistics a new ERP system is more than brazen.

In the document "Simplification List for SAP S/4 Hana, on-premise edition 1511" dated January 28 of this year, S/4 is clearly identified as "S/4 Hana is SAP's next-generation business suite [...] It is a new product completely built on one of the most advanced in-memory platform today - SAP Hana - and modern design principles with the SAP Fiori user experience (UX)".

The extension of the ERP core ECC 6.0 with functions and business processes has been taking place for many years and is called Enhancement Packages (EhP).

This works well and is accepted - even though some EhP features may trigger paid re-licensing.

From today's perspective, S/4 is just another EhP. Simple Finance and Simple Logistics need the Hana database as a foundation, but also SAP's Business Suite 7 - so S/4 Finance and Logistics are merely add-ons and a "special" EhP for S/7.

For SAP, the road to the future is the journey of existing customers in the familiar vehicle Suite 7, jacked up on the flatbed Hana with an engine extension "Simple Finance" and "Simple Logistics".

Why not SAP EhP X? At the moment, the community is at Enhancement Package No. 8 and, in line with Microsoft's specification, version 9 could have been skipped and the new financial and logistics functions could have been called EhP version 10 - but then the new business processes would have had to work not only with S/7 but also with any other database (Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and IBM DB2).

Of course, according to Hasso Plattner's "Hana" paradigm, this cannot and must not be the case. Nevertheless, the name "EhP X - Hana only" would have been a nice name for S/4 Finance and Logistics and the entire community could immediately recognize that the tempest in a teapot is only two add-ons for Suite 7.