SAP's grand cloud escape plan 2B short of the runway

"In October 2020, SAP CEO Christian Klein promised a new strategy after cuts to its sales and margin outlook caused a 23 percent share price crash. Speaking to investors, he said it would involve "accelerated technical migration of our customers' most important business applications to the cloud" in a platform powered by SAP S/4HANA, the in-memory database."

"For starters, RISE with SAP promised a lift-and-shift of complex SAP environments into public, private, and hybrid clouds. In addition, it planned to move users of ERP software older than S/4HANA onto the latest in-memory platform launched in 2015. Third parties signing up to the plan included Accenture, Atos, Capgemini, Cognizant, and Deloitte Consulting, as well as cloud providers AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud."

"Figures from the end of Q4 2024 showed only 39 percent of worldwide ECC customers - from a total of 35,000 - had bought or subscribed to licenses to start their transition to SAP S/4HANA. The figure was up marginally on the 34 percent recorded for the same quarter a year earlier."

SAP launched RISE with SAP in January 2021 to accelerate migration of legacy ERP users to cloud-based S/4HANA platforms. The initiative promised lift-and-shift services through major partners including Accenture, Deloitte, and cloud providers AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. However, migration progress has stalled significantly. By Q4 2024, only 39 percent of approximately 35,000 ECC customers had purchased or subscribed to licenses for S/4HANA transition, representing minimal improvement from 34 percent a year earlier. This shortfall amounts to roughly €2 billion in missed targets. Major enterprises like Airbus and BMW remain on legacy systems facing 2027 mainstream support deadlines. SAP has subsequently restructured its offerings, replacing RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition with SAP Cloud ERP Private Edition, complicating migration tracking and comparisons.

Read at Theregister