SAP's lift-and-shift-to-the-cloud plan will need more than CGI to convince users it has a clear vision for ERP

Christian Klein cut a lonely figure in front of mysteriously floating cameras in his computer-generated studio. Yet, presenting a vision of enterprise resource planning arguably as idealised as the CGI mountains looming over his shoulder, SAP's CEO pressed on. "Having one semantic data layer on your [ERP] platform is a key …

[Korev]

Klein took issue with the idea the market is being slow in adopting S/4HANA, which has been available for nearly six years.

Doesn't this come up in every story involving SAP?

[nematoad]

Umm.

Now what we are going to offer is end-to-end."

Single point of failure? Eggs in one basket? Lock-in?

This might take a bit of swallowing by some potential customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Umm.

Seems to work for AWS

[sev.monster]

Re: Umm.

Tell that to Parler.

[Anonymous Coward]

SAP, do you listen?

Been in the SAP job market for 20+ years, the devil is in the details. SAP touts semantic layer but it is really an unorganized, hierarchical-only piece of crap that to a person outside of 10km off Walldorf is a daily struggle. First APIs came in 2000 and nearly 20 years later are — wait for it — 2,200? About 100 a year? What a gazillion number of people are doing? And don't get me started on enhancement technologies, 5-6 of them (RWIN to user exits to BTEs to BADis to Enhancement spots to Industry Solution FQevents), all present concurrently as a legacy of the past in the supposedly modern, cloud-ready S/4HANA made to do a consultant's day a living hell. They could have done a million things in the meantime, but were lazy enough to rely on profits from the goose with golden eggs R/3, which is still at the heart of everything that is S/4HANA. Laziness pays off now.

[sev.monster]

Re: SAP, do you listen?

I just want to add that SAP BusinessObjects is friggin terrible and I have always hated it.

[Sparkus]

The problem with the lift and shift concept is......

that catch-phrases like that get seized upon by the C-suite and used to shut down any real questions or requirements definition during the move or re-deployment. Any thing that inconveniently comes up beyond the L&S concept is by-default defined as not in scope.

Again, It's Accenture/ATOS that are the primary violators here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pity that in the real world........

......corporate departments (I'm thinking about Merchandising and Marketing) go out and about and see a REALLY SPIFFY demo of some unknown application.

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[Step 2] Relevant EVP turns up in IT and says: "You need to integrate <spiffy application name here> ASAP!! By the way, I've already signed the contract.

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[Step 3] CIO goes ballistic and says "What a pity this isn't compatible with our SAP plans."

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[Step 4] CEO (or the board) get on the CIO's case.....more obstruction from the IT folk......lets's get a new (compliant) CIO.

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[Step 5] Rinse and repeat at [Step 1].