Last February, SAP launched S/4HANA to plenty of optimism – CEO Bill McDermott called it “the biggest product launch in the last 23 years and perhaps the company's history”. I was certainly excited and started to write Volume 2 of SAP Nation, hoping to catalog a triumphant turnaround for the vendor. As months have passed though, SAP has dribbled out information about when pieces of S/4 functionality will be available. Customers are taking a gradual look at the pieces as they become available, and in doing so, risk losing the integration that made SAP attractive in the first place. Many customers have decided a substantial portion of S/4 will not be ready for years and are paying it little attention.
What should customers do in the interim several years as they struggle with an over priced economy around what now are legacy ECC and industry solution products for SAP and its partners? What should they do when SAP is more focused on selling HANA than evolving the applications they have heavily invested in? My book looked at multiple customer “coping” strategies, and Rimini Street has asked me to present on such strategies, not just on third party maintenance, as part of their “Unleash your SAP X factor “ executive briefing series. It is scheduled for Houston, Silicon Valley, Montreal, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Boston in April and May. The venues all look very attractive.
Look forward to seeing many of you in those venues. Rimini is promising a customized Savings Analysis, an Innovation Roadmap, and an autographed copy of SAP Nation 2.0 for those who register and attend the briefings.
