The E3 Cover Story, a Critical Discourse on SAP

Jun 26: Money Makes the World Go Round, the monetization of SAP license management.

The global and independent platform for the SAP community. The digital transformation of core business processes is tirelessly celebrated by the Walldorf-based software group SAP as a limitless, agile and cloud-based ERP paradise, but a critical analysis of the contractual realities reveals this promise to be a highly complex strategic constraint that forces existing SAP customers into an unprecedented vendor lock-in. At the heart of this tectonic shift is the paradigm shift from the classic, property-based on-prem model to a cloud subscription model, flanked by an opaque price and conditions list (PKL), new API restrictions and the rigorous monetization of data streams. For existing SAP customers, the switch to S/4 Hana no longer means a technical release upgrade, but a fundamental realignment of their commercial IT architecture, where the risk of cost explosions, over-licensing and the total loss of digital sovereignty is a constant companion. Anyone who fails to deconstruct the mechanisms of SAP Cloud Subscription, the Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), the Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC) and the new licensing metrics down to the smallest detail will inevitably fall victim to a masterfully orchestrated monetization machine. SAP's historic transition to the cloud world, primarily driven by the all-encompassing Rise and Grow contract packages, marks a complex shift from capital expenditure (capex) to ongoing operating expenditure (opex) for ERP users. While on-prem licenses were acquired as perpetual property and guaranteed the ongoing, legal right to use the system even if the maintenance contracts were terminated, the cloud subscription degrades the customer to a defenceless tenant. SAP is converting existing on-prem licenses into cloud subscriptions via contract conversion, which leads to the irretrievable destruction of the old, valuable purchase licenses. The central instrument of this transformation is the Full Use Equivalent (FUE) metric, a highly complex set of rules that presses the previous detailed usage-based user allocation from the ECC world into standardized cloud usage types. Cover story June 2026 [https://e3mag.com/en/category/cover-stories/coverstory-26-06/]

May 26: Agentic AI Platform for SAP

The global and independent platform for the SAP community. The reality in the data centers and IT departments of existing SAP customers often resembles an archaeological excavation site in which a massive network of technical legacies has accumulated over decades. In the golden era of the R/3 and ECC 6.0 systems, the Abap programming language gave companies unlimited architectural freedom, allowing them to dig deep into the standard code of the SAP ERP software and adapt the system precisely to their individual business processes using Z programs, modifications and highly specific in-house developments. What was celebrated by CCC managers, CIOs and board members as a competitive advantage to stand out in the global market has turned into a leaden and toxic legacy in the face of the unstoppable digital transformation and the approaching end of maintenance for old SAP systems. These historically grown SAP monoliths are interspersed with millions of lines of customer-specific code, up to eighty percent of which is no longer used in day-to-day operations, but still causes immense maintenance costs, jeopardizes system stability and poses serious security risks. The mandatory switch to the new, in-memory-based ERP generation SAP S/4 Hana and the associated strategic direction towards the cloud now require a radical paradigm shift that presents IT managers with financial, technical and organizational challenges. In this tense market environment, the software group SAP has proclaimed a new development doctrine that dominates the entire market under the term „Clean Core“ and is forcing customers to fundamentally rethink their IT architectures that have evolved over decades. „SAP landscapes are never finished,“ explains Professor Alexander Zeier, co-inventor of the SAP Hana database and co-founder of Nova Intelligence. Regulatory requirements, new business models, functional enhancements, release changes - the question of how to keep custom code clean, maintainable and close to the standard does not arise once, it arises continuously, every quarter, for years. „Nova is designed precisely for this life cycle: as a permanent platform for analysis, documentation, fit-to-standard assessment, clean core governance, new development and continuous optimization,“ emphasizes Zeier and says: „If you only use Nova for migration, you only use a fraction of it - the platform accompanies custom code from analysis to modernization to new development. This is also reflected in our PAC ROI calculations. In the pure migration scenario and with the continuous further development of the S/4 environment, we can already demonstrate ROI values. If you combine both scenarios, you get ROI values of around 1400 percent in an exemplary deployment scenario with around 100,000 custom code objects. This is not a project ROI. This is a structural, long-term economic advantage.“ Cover story May 2026 [https://e3mag.com/en/category/cover-stories/coverstory-26-05/]

Apr 26: Trends and Investments in the SAP community 2026

The global and independent platform for the SAP community The DSAG Investment Report 2026 reveals a picture characterized by scepticism: although general IT budgets continue to rise, investments in SAP software are being made in a much more targeted, selective and critical manner than in the past. The loyal user base is increasingly resisting the dictated cloud constraints. As a result, S/4 in on-prem operation remains a preferred choice for many companies, while the aggressively marketed pure cloud models are struggling to gain momentum. For a worrying 70 percent of the companies surveyed, the restrictive and complex SAP license and contract structure is one of the biggest hurdles. For the critical SAP user, the conclusion is that although SAP remains strategically relevant as a transactional centerpiece, trust in the Walldorf pricing policy (SAP PKL) and cloud strategy has been permanently eroded. „The development of budgets reflects the ongoing economic pressure that many companies are under. Energy prices, geopolitical uncertainties and a tense market environment mean that investments are being scrutinized more critically and in some cases postponed - including in the SAP environment,“ says DSAG CEO Jens Hungershausen. From DSAG's point of view, companies are investing in a more targeted manner without fundamentally questioning SAP. The path to the SAP cloud is sold to existing customers as the ultimate liberation and a haven of limitless agility, but an investigative look at the exit options reveals an unprecedented strategic abyss. The bitter truth, which is systematically concealed in the glossy brochures, is that SAP does not actually have a viable and standardized cloud exit strategy. Anyone who, as an existing SAP customer, embarks on the much-vaunted Rise with SAP model is entering a dangerous one-way street that is quite rightly referred to in specialist circles as a mathematical „trapdoor function“ - a path that is temptingly easy to enter, but from which there is virtually no technical or contractual escape. „The results clearly show that companies no longer view SAP investments in isolation. Digital transformation and process modernization remain the key drivers, but are clearly flanked by the need to operate more efficiently and reliably meet regulatory and security requirements,“ says Jens Hungershausen. „Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, rising costs and complex license and maintenance models, SAP investments must be innovative, economically viable and resilient at the same time.“ Cover story April 2026 [https://e3mag.com/en/trends-and-investment-of-the-sap-community-2026/]

Mar 26: Rescue through intelligent data management

The global and independent platform for the SAP community. Thomas Failer, founder and Group CEO of Swiss-based Data Migration International, sees the current situation as a historic opportunity for the SAP community. Failer firmly believes that companies that set the right course now will emerge stronger from the transformation. His vision is that of a data-driven company that can react agilely to market changes because it is not shackled by its own past. For him, his offering JiVS IMP (Information Management Platform) is the key to breaking these shackles. Thomas Failer often talks about the need for existing SAP customers to stop seeing data as something to be hoarded. Instead, we should see data as a river that flows through the company and is used where it is needed. The rigid silos of legacy systems need to be broken down. The Group CEO of Swiss Data Migration International is convinced that the separation of infrastructure, application and data is the only way to remain flexible in the long term. „Data independence is the ability of companies to manage their data independently of the applications in which it was originally generated until it is deleted in a legally compliant manner,“ explains Thomas Failer in an exclusive E3 interview. „This makes it necessary to separate the operational systems from the historical information. It is this information that usually clogs up the operational systems as hard-to-digest data ballast or lies fallow in archives and is therefore useless for the business. This separation enables seamless lifecycle management and audit-proof access.“ The SAP community is facing a turning point comparable in scope to the Y2K problem or the introduction of the euro, but with far more complex architectural and strategic implications. For many existing customers, the switch to S/4 is no longer a pure technical necessity, but a forced march into a new era whose rules are often being rewritten while the game is still being played. At the center of this storm is data management - a discipline that has been managed for decades as a necessary evil in the basement of IT departments and is now suddenly deciding the weal and woe of entire corporate strategies. S/4 Hana is not just a new release; it is a paradigm shift based on the Hana in-memory database and requires a fundamental clean-up of historical legacy issues. Anyone who stumbles here risks not only exploding project costs, but also the failure of the entire digital transformation. „Data independence is indeed the central aspect of data sovereignty, but not the only one. It is the prerequisite for taking the other aspects into consideration in the first place,“ emphasizes Thomas Failer. Cover story March 2026 [https://e3mag.com/en/category/cover-stories/coverstory-26-03/]

Feb 26: ERP Platform Mining

The global and independent platform for the SAP community The strategic realignment of ERP marks a paradigm shift that has profound business, technical and organizational implications for the entire SAP community and is accompanied by analysts, DSAG user representatives and partners with both criticism and hope. It is a roadmap from the stable but rigid on-prem world to a dynamic but licensing and technically challenging cloud universe in which SAP is no longer the sole fixed star, but a sun in a system of hyperscalers, data specialists such as Databricks and Snowflake and powerful consulting firms. At the heart of this ERP transformation is the realization that the digital nucleus of the existing SAP customer must be kept clean - the so-called clean core strategy. In order to increase the speed of innovation and ensure the maintainability of an S/4 system or the new Business Suite, modifications and enhancements are rigorously banned from the core and moved to the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). The BTP acts as the technical centerpiece, as a „PaaS“ (Platform-as-a-Service) offering that bundles development, integration, automation, data management and artificial intelligence. SAP BTP is the place where the future of composable ERP can take place, while the „traditional“ ERP core in the form of S/4 becomes the stable system of record. But this brave new world of Composable ERP brings with it massive technical and organizational challenges. SAP BTP is not a monolithic block - some say not even a platform - but a heterogeneous construction kit consisting of various runtime environments such as Cloud Foundry, Kyma (Kubernetes) and the Abap environment, which is particularly emotional for regular SAP customers and has become known under the code name „Steampunk“. E3 Cover story February 2026 [https://e3mag.com/en/category/cover-stories/coverstory-26-02/]