SAP CEO push for cloud-only 'innovation' shatters users' trust in German-speaking heartlands

User groups representing some of Europe's largest industrial businesses have reacted strongly to SAP's decision to double down on its cloud-only innovation strategy, arguing it breaks trust with anyone that invested in the latest on-prem software and asks them to pay double for innovation. On July 20, SAP boss Christian Klein …

[Howard Sway]

Customers who have already invested in S/4HANA may now get the impression they have wasted millions

Some of them may already have got that impression even before this latest round of money-milking.

[nematoad]

Yes and no.

"Businesses are facing volatile macroeconomic environments and markets that favour flexibility."

Well he's right in saying that with this diktat the financial environment is going to be volatile. Companies will not know what they are going to have to pay. But he's wrong if he thinks telling his customers "The only way is the cloud." is offering flexibilty. That is a straightjacket for firms who use SAP products.

I also seem to remember SAP saying that firms will have to adapt their business to fit in with SAP's requirements not the other way round.

Who is paying who here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yes and no.

Repeating the lie "To stay ahead, customers need to be in the cloud. That's the only way to deliver innovation with speed and agility." doesn't help his case either. "The cloud" is not some magical land where the rules of physics no longer apply, what can be done in the cloud can be done on prem... and usually at a fraction of the cost.

[JimboSmith]

Re: Yes and no.

If you’ve got data relating to customers on SAP and there’s a damn good chance that you will, then on-prem you have more control of that data. It would worry me that with that data in the “SAP cloud” if the cloud is hacked who takes the GDPR 4% of turnover hit. Personally I’d have it written into the contract in big bold letters that if there is a data breach to their cloud and my data, then it’s the SAP who take that hit. 4% of the SAP €31bn 2022 turnover, unless my maths is borked, is €124m per breach which isn’t chump change. If enough companies did that, SAP might have a bit of think, or not as the case may be given their current intransigence.

[X5-332960073452]

Re: Yes and no.

"4% of the SAP €31bn 2022 turnover, unless my maths is borked, is €124m per breach"

I make it - €31bn x 0.04 = €1,240m per breach

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: Yes and no.

Being "in the cloud" puts the supplier in charge of updates. You get no veto on new versions, even if a feature vanishes. Long-time sufferers from Jira will recognise that.

[YetAnotherXyzzy]

Reading this article I get a strong sense of déjà vu. You'd think SAP would have been clever enough to learn from how Atlassian alienated its on-prem customers.

[djnapkin]

Yes! This is effectively exactly the same as Atlassian's removal of on-prem and forcing into vendor-controlled cloud.

SAP's first attempt to implement a web-based ERP was using Silverlight. No idea how much they sunk into that before scrapping it.

For customers, it is hard to imagine a SAP-owned-and-controlled cloud solution being more affordable long term.

[Will Godfrey]

Totally predicatable

As soon as you make yourself dependent on just one organisation (especially a remote one) you are voluntarily making yourself their slave.

[Anonymous Coward]

Christian Klein has a short memory.

Oct. 2022- “ For instance, some public sector customers might want their software on-premises in their own data centers. We are a big believer that while more and more customers move to the cloud, there will also be hybrid landscapes,” - Klein

[Anonymous Coward]

More profitttt!

All of this boils down to "Once we own you, we can squeeze more money from you".

Once you've moved everything in to the cloud, you pay whatever cloud owner asks or cease operations. SAP knows that and lies *anything* to hide the idea "More profit to us".

[Lurko]

Re: More profitttt!

But if a company has chosen a monolithic, complex SAP implementation, with its inevitable high costs for all change actions, then they WANT to be reamed out.