E3 Category: Editor-in-Chief Blog

Standardization increases contribution margin. Individualization costs resources. CEO Christian Klein and CFO Dominik Asam are turning SAP into a cash cow, as evidenced by all the money SAP stands to make with mass layoffs and public cloud.

AI development is expensive, which gives most US start-ups with their powerful venture capitalists an advantage. A lack of capital could be replaced by partnership-based innovation and communities—both of which Aleph Alpha lacks.

SAP is trying to make S/4 Hana a sufficiently good ERP product with attractive product combinations and license prices. In the meantime, S/4 has really grown up, but has not yet arrived in the cloud.

Everyone was perfectly surprised when SAP CEO Christian Klein announced the RISE program three years ago in a virtual living room with an artificial fireplace. No one understood what it means. RISE meanders between marketing and general business.

SAP CEO Christian Klein uses his knowledge and flair to pick the right topics for a strong stock market story. SAP's share price is at an all-time high, but there is little left for SAP customers.

The SAP community is heading for a disaster in the making because hardly any experts know the true status of their S/4 implementation. SAP's numbers only reflect sales. How many S/4 systems are actually productive?

Most IT users are looking for business, organizational and technical solutions, with their aim being to optimize end-to-end processes. Digital transformation is based on strategy and concepts, not tools.

One of SAP's ideas is to pay for BTP subscriptions using credit points. The project could succeed if the credit points did not lose their validity at the end of the year. This SAP procedure is reminiscent of old cell phone contracts.

A complex ERP application requires a robust and agile architecture. SAP Basis has always been a challenge, and the Customer Competence Center (CCC) and Competence Center of Excellence (CCoE) are a testament to this traditional and successful transformation.

SAP was once the spearhead of IT with its Leonardo program. AI, IoT, blockchain, and analytics were all offered under the collective term Leonardo. Of course, there were no quick wins back then. SAP discontinued the program.

The current Hana 2.0 Revision 77 contains serious bugs without fixes. SAP is ignoring many issues with Hana and is trapped in its own system. Instead of business solution competence, the company exhausts itself with technical repairs.

Hana is a decent SQL database that can deliver select answers in real time thanks to in-memory technology. However, Hana is already 15 years old, and other database vendors have caught up technically. What can SAP do now to stay ahead of the curve?