SAP Solution: Release upgrade

For a successful S/4 conversion, SAP's customers need large budgets as well as a great deal of knowledge and experience. SAP did not communicate these success criteria with the necessary clarity. Now SAP CEO Christian Klein has to pay the bill for this.

Last year, the productive system at SAP's existing customer Nordzucker was transformed to S/4. With a mix of greenfield and brownfield approaches as well as various in-house developments, this was a complex matter.

The classic SAP existing customer knows the challenges of a relaunch and the SAP community knows the discussion about the added value of a release upgrade. Many projects are merely technical in nature so that the existing version does not fall out of maintenance.

For our central site, I have a final S/4 roadmap and budget. During the presentation and naming of the total sum, my CFO remained surprisingly calm. His question unsettled me: What will we get for it?

The SAP community not only wants an answer to the question of whether Hana and S/4 are still up to date, but also a consolidation of S/4 conversion tools. There are many good approaches, but it remains laborious and in part also not very efficient.

The advantages of SAP operation in a Microsoft Azure cloud are undisputed - but the SAP community is heterogeneous. Thus, a discourse about the paths to the cloud, hybrid models or an on-premises intermediate step is necessary.

From a functional point of view, customers need not fear the change from SAP Solution Manager 7.1 to 7.2. All the functionalities of the older version will also be available in the new version and will not, as is repeatedly heard, be reserved for major customers only or be usable against additional licensing. Instead, new innovative themes and functions will be added.

The legendary Chinese leader Mao Zedong initiated the Great Leap Forward after his Hundred Flowers Movement.