CEO Bill McDermott transformed SAP into a successful Cloud First monoculture. At first glance, this might seem like fake news to some. But looking closer and comparing the company’s current state to how it was in the era of Kagermann, the comment about SAP’s monoculture rings true.
If the economy is growing, so is SAP. If there are no pests or infestations, almost every monoculture is highly profitable. Or so Bill McDermott thought when he established his own monoculture, Cloud First.
Cloud First is easier to manage than a wide array of on prem, hybrid and cloud solutions. If everything goes according to plan, the monoculture cloud can be highly profitable. The success of major cloud providers like AWS, Google and Microsoft proves it.
However, the question that remains is: is the cloud monoculture something the SAP community wanted – or is it just a product of Bill McDermott frantically trying to reach his impossibly high revenue goals?
Hybrid cloud instead of Cloud First monoculture
SAP customers actually prefer hybrid cloud, and many put their trust in on prem solutions. Even member of the SAP executive board and COO Christian Klein highlighted in a recent E-3 exclusive interview that the company will continue to invest in on prem solutions.
What this shows is that Klein sees the big picture. He acknowledges the heterogeneous history of customers’ IT landscapes while simultaneously looking to the future. Bill McDermott could learn a thing or two from his COO.
In the SAP community, monoculture cloud just doesn’t make sense, neither economically nor technologically. Many new Industry 4.0 applications need low latency which cloud solutions struggle to provide.
CEO Bill McDermott’s Cloud First, which often seems like Cloud Only, is not the way to go for the SAP community. Not a monoculture is the answer, but hybrid cloud with on prem for specific applications or efficient Hana servers like IBM Power.
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