From the archive · September 2025
From Walkman to Spotify
First published on LinkedIn. sapperment is the canonical archive of this article.
The #DSAG 2025 Reality Check & Why the SAP cloud move feels less like choice, but more like a necessity
At the DSAG 2025 Congress in Bremen, innovation was everywhere. Yet behind the stages and showcases, a harder truth emerged: ten years after launch of S/4HANA, the cloud move still feels to many customers imposed — a cost burden rather than a business opportunity.
Pandora vs. Evonik: Two Realities on the Same Key-Note Stage
Pandora — the Clean-Slate Exception A Greenfield case: Clean Core from day one, minimal legacy, and rapid upgrades. Inspiring, but largely irrelevant for most customers burdened with decades of ABAP, integrations, and license complexity.
Evonik — the Managed Reality A long-term SAP customer with early S/4 adoption, now running private/on-prem colocation—automated, scalable, and cost-efficient. Public Cloud is the destination, but pursued iteratively and capability by capability.
Operating Model: Internal IT focuses on differentiating value, partners scale the standard.
Clean Core: Strict governance, approval processes, extensibility guardrails, business-visible KPIs.
BTP & AI: Selective expansion (Process Automation, Build, Integration), slowed by licensing hurdles—quality over quantity.
Expectations: Transparency on roadmaps, simplified AI licensing, methodology parity beyond RISE, more robust activation.
Risk Appetite: Vendor lock managed pragmatically, avoiding “selling the asset without a buy-back option.”
Key takeaway: Pandora shows what’s possible when starting from zero. Evonik shows what’s achievable when starting from one hundred.
𝗘𝘃𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗸 @ hashtag#𝗗𝗦𝗔𝗚 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱 – 𝗺𝗲𝗶𝗻 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗮𝗽
#DSAG 2025: What the Data Tells Us
Adoption & Sentiment. Private and Public Cloud adoption is rising; a large share stays on-prem. Investment intent in cloud is strong; sentiment toward SAP’s cloud strategy has improved significantly.
AI & Security. Most members see AI as relevant, but real value emerges only when embedded in core processes. Security-by-design is demanded, as is investment in people as a “human firewall.”
Governance. Clear warnings against uncontrolled low-code proliferation (“platform anarchy”). Recommendations: build an internal target picture, set priorities, scale BTP know-how, and consider partial Public Cloud adoption where feasible.
2030–2040 Outlook: From Data Centers to “Spotify for ERP Processes”
Compute explosion and AI maturity are shifting value away from monolithic ERP toward AI-orchestrated micro-services.
By 2040, “Micro-ERP on demand” may become reality: industry-specific, situational process slices generated and operated as easily as launching a playlist.
Implication: Customers migrating today must make architecture and licensing decisions that remain composable, portable, and reversible—or risk a “BlackBerry moment” as AI-first platforms leap ahead.
Why Control and Choice Matter
SAP cloud adoption rarely fails for technical reasons—it fails when customers feel they lack control and choice. That is why orientation matters. Companies need:
Transparency across all models (Private Cloud, Public Cloud, On-Prem).
Neutral options to compare risks, costs, and benefits—including licensing and contractual impact.
Clarity and structure to make decisions today that still hold five and ten years from now.
Only with this foundation can governance and enterprise architecture act as accelerators—not bureaucratic overhead—and enable capabilities in extensibility, integration, security, data, and AI.
C-Level Decision Guardrails
Target state first. Capability-based roadmap, Public Cloud as the destination—not dogma.
Enforce Clean Core. Approval processes, KPIs, extensibility playbooks, business visibility.
EA as metronome. Every change evaluated for licensing, integration, and operating impact.
Curated BTP activation. Prioritize Process Automation, Build, Integration with clear best practices and go/no-go criteria.
Vendor lock managed smartly. Design for reversibility and portability in architecture, data, and contracts.
Embed AI in core processes. Pilot where throughput, quality, or risk materially improves—not just “side use cases.
Conclusion & Call to Action
The DSAG 2025 reality check makes one point undeniable: the cloud shift is no longer about if but how.
But context matters: the world outside SAP is moving even faster.
Meta plans $60–65B in 2025 AI capex and targets >1.3 million GPUs by year-end.
OpenAI has signed a ~$300B multi-year Oracle cloud contract (starting 2027), part of Oracle’s recently disclosed AI contract backlog.
By the 2030s, some futurists project capabilities that would let AI autonomously assemble complex software systems in minutes.
Meanwhile, SAP is investing heavily in sovereign cloud, including an On-Site deployment model managed by SAP for regulated or special scenarios. That secures continuity and compliance—but if AI can spin up composable, sector-specific ERP “slices” on demand, those data-center strategies risk a BlackBerry moment: safe and compliant, yet leapfrogged by AI-first architectures.
Clinging to yesterday’s ERP is like insisting your vinyl still sounds best while the world moved from LP → CD → MP3 → Spotify on demand. The shift isn’t optional—it’s happening.
Leaders who act now won’t have to backtrack later. Clean Core, disciplined EA, license clarity, and an AI-ready operating model are the seatbelts for this ride—from Walkman to Spotify.
The choice is simple: embrace and shape the change—or become background noise.
Written by Andreas BORN · Back to the sapperment library