Radical change

For twenty years, SAP has revolutionized IT with business, organizational and technical innovations - at the beginning of SAP, IT was still called DP/Org. E-3 No/Names should be mentioned. For decades, Sebastian Trauerwein wrote about IT and against IBM and SAP as IT/Org Manager and later as Information Resources Manager in the German Computerwoche. Which proves that SAP has always been a challenge for users, analysts and journalists.

The foundations of the ERP group were laid by numerous IT innovations, which were a unique selling point at the time. The focus on software at a time when IBM was still making billions in sales with hardware was also the reason why the five former IBM managers quit their employer and founded SAP. The single point of truth as a central database server in a three-tier client/server model was revolutionary, and the many business algorithms were unique.

SAP is currently trying to generate its sales with any number of run-of-the-mill products from the IT belly store. SAP is on the road to interchangeability. By 2030 at the latest, SAP will no longer have a single product with a unique selling point! Existing SAP customers will then be able to switch ERP offerings in the same way that PCs, tablets and smartphones can be changed at will today.

The Hana lock-in will also lose its validity by 2030. S/4 will still only be able to run on "Hana", but open source, new silicon (see also Apple's M1 processor) and simulation programs will produce numerous Hana clones that will be significantly cheaper than the original - and probably also faster and more resource-efficient.

Good news for the SAP community: an open and affordable hardware and software infrastructure, Hana-compatible databases, numerous ERP modules from SAP, partners and third-party manufacturers.

But SAP will have to adjust its prices to the general market level. SAP will no longer be the dominant player in ERP data centers. SAP's market value will fall to such an extent that a takeover by Google, Microsoft or AWS is likely - and the antitrust authorities will not object because SAP's significance will then only be a fraction of its current supremacy.

And the SAP community? As algorithms and data structures become more transparent and less expensive, the community for business processes and organization (see above: DP/Org) will grow exponentially. The challenges will not diminish in the future, which means that the standard business knowledge of SAP algorithms, including the Z namespace, will not only be essential for survival, but will also continue to develop dynamically.
SAP CEO Christian Klein's narrative is naturally different! But his message no longer gets caught up in the plans of investors and concepts of existing customers. At the presentation of the figures for the second quarter, SAP CEO Christian Klein spoke of a "fantastic quarter" - and decent figures in sight for the end of this year. He and SAP CFO Luka Mucic showed a certain optimism with the current cloud services and a slight increase in the forecast. However, the subdued share price does not reflect this optimism. The community's approval is there, but many existing SAP customers expect more from SAP.

Christian Klein and the entire SAP Executive Board have no demonstrable strategy that goes beyond 2023. There is no narrative that explains the ERP world beyond 2025 and outlines what will happen with S/4 after 2030. Anyone migrating to S/4 in the next five years also wants to know what SAP's ERP system will look like in ten years' time. Existing customers need planning certainty and receive the answer: Intelligent Enterprise. We are "beautiful" and "intelligent" anyway! With the arbitrary promise of an intelligent enterprise ERP, Christian Klein increases the need for discussion instead of providing concrete answers. It takes a lot of courage for an S/4 release change. At the upcoming DSAG Online Congress, Christian Klein will explain what could be intelligent about the Intelligent Enterprise and where SAP's unique selling points can be found in the future.

The question remains as to the necessity of radical change and the advantages and disadvantages. For SAP, the coming years will present a challenge in the transformation of many unique selling points of the past into standardized and therefore interchangeable products. SAP can take inspiration from Microsoft, the former Windows and Office company is now a cloud company including open source.

SAP should not copy other successful IT companies, but find its own way, which may also include radical change.