SAP Extension-palooza

Buckle up, buckaroos, we’re going to talk about all the hot news that came out from SAP press room in January.

First, SAP Executive Board just got a side-by-side extension: “extended Executive Board”. It has a bunch of execs, including Chief AI bro Dr. Philipp Herzig who also got the coveted CTO role. The pundits and influencers were out in force speculating what this meant (“tech company without a CIO/CTO on the executive board?!”). From the peanut gallery, it looks like someone got played in the Game of Corporate Thrones: sent to sit at the kids table and has to do two jobs now. But what do I know.

SAP also took this opportunity to come out with a strategy “AI-first, suite-first”, which just does not compute in my simple developer’s mind. Get a dictionary, folks.

Second, remember how SAP previously said there would be no more extensions to 2027 end of mainstream maintenance deadline for SAP ECC? Well, in the ultimate “some animals are more equal” twist, there is now an asterisk. If you also sign up for RISE with SAP, you get a special offer that offers an extension till 2033. As this article correctly points out, this is not at all across the board extension, so 2027 still stays. Don’t get excited.

Last but not least, SAP posted the financial results for Q4 of 2024 and stock price continues to go brr, so all is peachy. JP