The E3 Cover Story, a Critical Discourse on SAP

SAP promotes the Autonomous Enterprise as the next step in the evolution of digitalization. But with every decision delegated to AI agents, dependence on the underlying models grows. How autonomous do companies really become as a result, and who controls this autonomy?

The current SAP cloud and licensing model in no way serves to technically and organizationally liberate existing customers, but rather binds them more closely to Walldorf. Those who rely on Rise with SAP without a sound IT strategy, external legal advice and license control risk high costs and permanent dependence on the software group.

Anyone who believes they can successfully implement an S/4 migration with the lift-and-shift concepts brownfield or greenfield is mistaken. Pure code conversion - even in SAP Clean Core - leads to strategic failure. Nova Intelligence relies on understanding instead of conversion: Cleanfield and Composable ERP for sustainable transformation.

The year 2026 marks a historic and critical turning point for the SAP community, where the glossy visions of the Walldorf-based software group SAP meet the pragmatic reality of existing customers with full force. The deadline for the end of maintenance of the old ERP system in 2027 is approaching, increasing the pressure on S/4 migrations and having a noticeable and lasting impact on the service p...

Data twilight in the ERP universe: The current geopolitical situation, the rocky road to S/4 transformation and the possible rescue through intelligent data management are making digital sovereignty increasingly explosive and relevant. Data sovereignty is key: only those who determine where data is stored and processed at all times can avoid vendor and legal lock-in.

The age of monolithic ERP, in which SAP controlled processes and data in the customer data center as the sole ruler, is coming to an irrevocable end. It is being replaced by a platform economy based around SAP BTP and Business Data Cloud. Composable ERP is the future.

Members of the SAP community from the R/2 and R/3 era have fond memories of the CCC. The Customer Competence Center provided first-level support to existing SAP customers through their own IT departments. Because SAP obviously considers everything that comes from a successful on-premise era to be „the devil's work,“ the CCC became the CCoE, or Customer Center of Expertise. An experiment!

Cloud computing was a much-discussed topic for a long time, then a standard, and thanks to hyperscalers, the cloud became a huge market with huge sales. Cloud computing is currently under discussion again and oscillates back and forth between sovereign, hybrid, private and public cloud. Which ERP architecture should the existing SAP customer choose? In the age of digital transformation, the decisi...

The activities of the 180 SAP partners in Bremen at the congress of the DSAG user association with over 5,000 participants were strikingly different from Viva Technology, an IT and AI event in Paris in the early summer of 2025. While the SAP community in German-speaking countries is still struggling with digital transformation and S/4 conversion, with the focus on topics such as monitoring, automa...

SAP license management, once already a domain of complex rules and opaque metrics, has developed into an even denser jungle over the past three years, with many existing customers finding it difficult to keep track of the pathways. SAP's cloud strategy and the implementation of Full Use Equivalent as a new license model are at the heart of this development.