SAP – should you Invest, Hold, Watch or Divest – When will you shoot the sacred R/3 cow ?

So if you are reading this you are probably one of SAP’s 189,000+ customers. Now 10 years ago that probably meant that you ran SAP R/3 but today this is not the necessarily the case. You might be a user of the SME focused apps (like I am) or you might have been acquired with Business Objects, Sybase or SuccessFactors.

Having just attended SAPPHIRE in Orlando,  however you became an SAP customer it has never been more important to take a look at your SAP portfolio and decide how you Invest, Hold, Watch or Divest. This is more complex than ever and there is definitely no golden path for you to take. The right thing to do will depend upon many factors and I really think that each customers path will be different.

One thing that I would recommend is that you look at this in 5 dimensions that match the 5 business areas that SAP now run :-

• Mobility
• Analytics
• Applications
• Database and Technology
• Cloud

Developments in each of these areas will move at different paces and your adoption will be driven by your unique business challenges and your appetite for driving competitive advantage with technology.

One interesting thing I think I heard from SAP that I have not heard before in public is a recognition that the sacred cow (R/3) might not be part of your long term future post 2020.

I have created a blog series that discusses each of these areas. In this series I dig deeper into the key disruptive trends in each of these areas that will probably impact your “old” strategy. These would include :-

• Mobility : Sybase Unwired Platform, Syclo, Gateway, Portal – which will you use ?
• Analytics : How will HANA and Sybase IQ / mobility impact your existing plans ?
• Applications : Are you ready to jump to the cloud, if so which parts and when ?
• Database and Technology : How can NetWeaver 7.3x help to simplify your SAP landscape, HANAfication and mobility trends – are these all rolled into your plans ?
• Cloud : Cloud for Packaged apps and Cloud for Development – how will you adapt to the cloud ?

So plenty to think about, plenty of opportunities and plenty of risks.

When will you shoot the sacred cow ?