Larry Ellison is right

Can compatibility mode help with the transformation? The simple answer: no problems! What? Excuse me? The explanation: Of course, SAP has discarded some Abap tables because Hana includes these aggregate states in the side calculation.

This has made the system leaner in certain places. But hardly anything has changed in the ERP code itself, my interlocutor said. He was also very surprised at first, but was able to orient himself immediately in the "new" S/4, because there were hardly any differences to ERP/ECC 6.0. So Oracle founder Larry Ellison is right after all.

In an analyst conference, he said, "It's that same 30-year-old code." That's probably an exaggeration, but it gets to the heart of the problem: why SAP can't find a way to the cloud. Larry Ellison: "They never re-wrote their ERP system for the cloud and it's too late for them to start now."

Business Suite 7 and S/4 are most likely the best ERP programs in the world, but not cloud software. From a purely technical point of view, any software can be transformed into the cloud. You can also run an old Commodore 64 video game on an Intel Xeon workstation and a 4K screen - but that doesn't make sense.

Thus, the question must be asked: What sense does Rise with SAP make if Larry Ellison is right? With S/4 as a cloud application, SAP is doing the community a disservice.