SAP Solution: BTP

SAP CEO Christian Klein gave an interview to the German magazine Computerwoche and promised improvements in ERP conversion and maintenance in five years with the help of AI. The journey seems to be the goal. But is it worth the wait? SAP is meandering through IT.

The Technology Days of the German-speaking SAP User Group e. V. (DSAG) at the beginning of February 2024 at the Congress Center in Hamburg were held under the motto: Black Box - From Vision to Reality.

The fact that S/4 Hana, as a completely new technology in the SAP universe, will have a fundamental impact on the current state of organizations has been known since its introduction in 2015. Since then, the topic has been an invisible elephant in the room for many companies.

E3 Magazine spoke with Greg Murphy, Staff Product Marketing Manager at Confluent, about Confluent's data streaming platform and its integration with SAP Datasphere on the BTP.

When SAP announced in the fall of 2022 that the IS-H functions for patient management and billing would have to be mapped via a hospital information system (HIS) from another software manufacturer, there was great dismay.

The new central star in the SAP universe is supposed to be the BTP (Business Technology Platform). However, analyst Joachim Hackmann of PAC has found that only 24 percent of SAP customers are consciously using the BTP.

SAP has tried and failed to build platforms for its successful ERP. NetWeaver failed as a middleware platform because of the Java stack; the Hana DB platform remained a SQL machine; and now we have the BTP disaster.

SAP has potential. In February, an E3 author philosophized on how SAP could double in size in a few short years if only it had the right strategy and people. However, SAP is not currently investing enough energy into this endeavor.

The theme of the DSAG Technology Days Conference in 2024 was "Bringing vision and reality together". This pious wish also applies to SAP BTP and SAP Cloud because, while everyone is aware the ERP universe could use some improvement, there is a lack of realistic solutions.

Introduce new SAP technologies quickly and successfully with the help of intelligent change management. AI, big data, and automation have enormously enriched the functions of SAP solutions such as BTP and will continue to do so.

Many SAP customers are currently in the early adopter phase of individual production scenarios with the Business Technology Platform. Beyond established SAP processes, it is important to get governance and therefore the issue of SAP security under control.

Christian Klein's keynote speech at the 2023 DSAG Annual Congress in Bremen, Germany, had it all. The SAP CEO announced that key innovations will only be available in the SAP cloud in future.