A look into the crystal ball is always something speculative. Professionals do not look into the crystal ball, but build a prototype. In the automotive industry, building and presenting prototypes is a proven way to predict the future. What does SAP do? No one is asking SAP to deliver an ERP specification for an S/4 successor. But showing possibilities, the basis for innovation and the will to think beyond Hana and S/4 would be future insurance for SAP's existing customers.
Just as Apple has by no means answered all the questions with its current data glasses, but has initiated a very important discourse, SAP should also have the courage to enter into an ERP discussion about the future. If you ask SAP CEO Christian Klein about a possible vision for the future, the community hears the monotonous answer: S/4 is in maintenance until 2040 - no other IT provider makes such a far-reaching maintenance promise!
Apple will probably only sell a few 100,000 units of its new data glasses, but it is obviously the most important IT prototype for another evolutionary step. With the well-known holistic Apple approach, not only a pair of data glasses was created, but also a data glasses universe with a matching operating system. The operating system will grow and the data glasses will change shape and optimize.
Christian Klein unfortunately refuses to think about the future in a similarly courageous and innovative way, which poses a major threat to existing customers. Who will program an S/4 successor? The developers at SAP or a start-up using ChatGPT? Neither the community nor SAP have a crystal ball that can provide sound answers here - probably not even ChatGPT could provide a serious answer. All the more important would be a discourse about the ERP future in order to locate arguments and possibilities.
The SAP community needs an up-to-date ERP discourse. This debate must be holistic and open-ended. All business, organizational, technical and licensing aspects must be evaluated, verified and discussed. SAP should create a platform for this ERP discourse for existing customers, CIOs and CFOs, analysts, scientists and consultants from the community.
Christian Klein, as an annual visitor to the World Economic Forum in Davos, has always stressed the need to talk to each other. He has repeatedly emphasized the importance of an open exchange of arguments, opinions, and facts. However, this discourse must not only concern existing SAP customers who are on the verge of an S/4 conversion. A hand-picked auditorium is counterproductive in this situation. SAP should have the courage to open up, to allow contradictions and to discuss openly on the basis of ERP prototypes. Surprisingly, there was already such an IT discourse at SAP when the Hana database was still young and SAP was collecting many ideas for development - but at that time Christian Klein was still an assistant to former SAP Executive Board member Gerd Oswald.
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