Power relations

With its holistic, business management approach, SAP is in the tradition of the European polymaths. One can dismiss this insight as unnecessary because it is backward-looking.

But the future still bears the traits of a universal approach. Many challenges are solved in the SAP ecosystem through design thinking.

This specific way of finding solutions is not dissimilar to the open-source DevOps process - which perhaps Design Thinking grand sponsor and uber-father Professor Hasso Plattner would like to see differently.

The trend is well known that SAP is heading in the direction of open source in many ways. At the Walldorf headquarters, the universal ERP spirit is still present. Here, the idea of holistic, consolidated standard software has lost none of its appeal.

Because Hasso Plattner shifted and corrupted the balance of power in the Group, the determining power in Walldorf has been lost - to the detriment of the global SAP community.

The ERP world empire is inhomogeneous and diversified. One example: SAP Business One (B1) is developed predominantly in China, as is the matching programming of the Hana database.

B1 on Hana with Fiori can become a very attractive proposition, except that this Hana version has little in common with S/4 Hana or SoH (Suite on Hana).

While cloud computing including Business ByDesign is a sufficient success in the USA, acceptance in Europe is more than modest. SAP's unofficial headquarters in Palo Alto, USA, is all about Hasso Plattner and Hana.

Every two weeks, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board is provided with detailed Hana statistics and all press and analyst reports via his database.

In Walldorf, people are just horrified in the face of this Hana madness - and they are trying to appease their old friends from IBM, Oracle and Microsoft.

With the ex-SAP board members Vishal Sikka and Lars Dalgaard and the still acting SAP CEO Bill McDermott, Plattner moved the ERP epicenter to the USA. Because this construct was not sustainable, power came back to Europe.

Walldorf is not only home to the successful CFO Luka Mucic, but also to the well-connected Sikka successor Bernd Leukert and the experienced and far-sighted Michael Kleinemeier as the successor to the gray eminence and Hopps like Plattner's stadtholder Gerd Oswald.

Based on this constellation, there were numerous rumors at the turn of the year about an imminent replacement of Bill McDermott, who is now lonely in the USA. These speculations are wrong!

Plattner does not have a sensible successor for McDermott, and McDermott has not yet driven the company completely to the wall. However, there is a spark of truth in even the most malicious rumors:

Naturally, there is a successor, but he still needs time to secure the transfer of power. From 2018, Michael Kleinemeier should be placed under closer observation.