The E3 Cover Story, a Critical Discourse on SAP

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 decision on the future ERP architecture presents existing SAP customers with a complex dilemma that goes far beyond the simple choice between their own data center (on-prem) and the external cloud (private or public cloud). While the classic on-prem...