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IP versus OS

An important discussion is beginning in the SAP community: intellectual property versus open source. For years, SAP's ERP was considered a black box. In return, numerous SAP partners were able to sell add-ons very successfully.
August 20, 2019
Content:
This text has been automatically translated from German to English.

Licenses were issued for these ERP add-ons and maintenance was charged. It was and is a profitable business for SAP partners and a good service and offer for existing customers.

With the arrival of Linux in the SAP community, the IT service paradigm changed: software is free of charge, service and customizing is charged for. This has not made Suse Linux rich, but it has established itself very well and successfully in the SAP community.

With this business model, Red Hat has even achieved a value of around 30 billion US dollars, based on the price IBM was prepared to pay.

The SAP partner community is still organized according to the established software licensing model and rightly has concerns about its intellectual property.

I asked SAP CEO Christian Klein about this challenge and he was a little surprised, but also said that he wanted to make contact with the partners in this regard.

The fact is, however, that the SW scene is changing. Business Application Programming Interfaces (SAP BAPIs) should be transformed as apps on the SAP Cloud Platform and GitHub.

These apps could not only be open source, but also developed with tools such as Mendix, SAP Cloud Platform for Rapid Application Development. Naturally, SAP also provides Abap for the SCP, but the future probably looks different: Open Source and Rapid Application Development.

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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
KurfĂĽrstenanlage 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.