I reveal how many years ago during a NetWeaver research I met our popular author n/s, since then always on Page 16Shai Agassi, SAP's Chief Technology Officer at the time, presented the NetWeaver "program" in New York City. At first, it was completely unclear what SAP's purpose was. Agassi was a visionary, much like his foster father at the time, Hasso Plattner. SAP's existing customers were fighting for survival with mySAP ERP in 2004/2005 and had little time for visionary and disruptive ERP ideas.
Because NetWeaver didn't offer much as a software stack at the beginning, SAP packed all available tools, engines and add-ons into the virtual offering. Any existing SAP customer who used more than three items from the SAP toolbox became a NetWeaver customer without knowing it. So anyone who was in the process of cuttingomizing the SAP portal, using the Exchange infrastructure, and running a Java stack was, by SAP's definition, a NetWeaver customer.
That's how I got to know n/n: An inquiry in the SAP press office for references for NetWeaver provided me with a small list of existing customers. Most of the calls to these IT departments were sobering. Parts of the SAP software offering were very much in use, but hardly anyone knew NetWeaver. A CIO took the time to explain the SAP community to me from an existing customer's point of view - this became the n/n column in every E-3 issue on Page 16.
Rise with SAP is déjà vu: Naturally, Christian Klein has not invented anything new with Rise, but has combined what is already available (see Embrace) with what has been purchased (see start-up Signavio). Naturally, SAP has tested the mixture of old and new in advance with friendly existing customers. Naturally, no one at SAP officially talks about "run simple," Embrace, Transformation, or Conversion anymore; instead, from now on it's Rise with one face to the customer! Thus, Rise is merely old software in new packaging and thus the repetition of the NetWeaver trick.
Existing SAP customers with a running Conversion program who have now added Signavio Process Mining have automatically become Rise users. All users from the Rise pilot phase are added to the official program anyway. This allowed Christian Klein to credulously claim during the Q1 2021 financial statements meeting that Rise is already a gamechanger, and with more than 100 contracts signed in the first quarter, major successes have already been achieved. And this is just the beginning, believes Christian Klein.
While SAP's existing customers and partners are busy with Embrace and Conversion, Christian Klein praises himself and believes he has completed the cloud integration. In the analyst call on the Q1 figures, he said that SAP is in possession of a consolidated data model and a unified platform.
If you believe the grapevine in Walldorf, Christian Klein and CFO Luka Mucic are trying to get hold of every euro to invest in repairing the cloud and integration concept. Savings are being made at SAP in order to get resources for development and repair service behavior. This tense working atmosphere also explains the invisibility of the board members Thomas Saueressig and JĂĽrgen MĂĽller - even Professor Hasso Plattner can't be heard much.
The core of Rise is always the Business Technology Platform, Christian Klein explained. SAP's existing customers are to build on this platform. This platform idea is correct in principle and lies in the tradition of SAP's NetWeaver. And Christian Klein wants to go even further: He plans to build a B2B industry network modeled on the automotive platform Catena-X.
What Christian Klein overlooks, however, is the fact that platforms are created either for commercial reasons or out of a need to suffer. SAP wants to build industrial platforms not because they know much about industrial B2B data like IIoT, but because they want to make a lot of money.
When VW CEO Herbert Diess decrees that the next revolution is on the agenda right after electromobility, it is for strategic reasons, to minimize his own suffering: Diess wants to use his own chips to create the fully connected and self-steering vehicle. This strategy is intended to put the company on an equal footing with Tesla and Apple. Ultimately, VW also wants to earn good money, but obviously on the basis of its own core competencies and for its own benefit.
SAP's effort to build industrial networks and platforms for B2B IIoT data is similar to Siemens trying to write the best FI/CO software or programming its own ERP system. SAP had its chance to take a leading position with IIoT and M2M, but the "Leonardo" concept from ex-chief technology officer Bernd Leukert was disposed of - there will not be a second chance for Christian Klein either.
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