SAP is positioning the Industry Cloud prominently in the middle between applications/processes and the technological platform - on the same level as the Intelligent Suite, which is essentially based on S/4HANA or S/4HANA Cloud. It is intended to expand and supplement the Intelligent Suite with solutions and applications.

Are SAP user companies even aware of this positioning and do they intend to use the Industry Cloud? DSAG recently surveyed its members on this, with sobering results: 33% had not heard of the offering at all and only 6% use the Industry Cloud. The number of those planning to use it is similarly low: 7%. Overall, it emerged that around 70% of respondents did not recognize any relevant solutions for their industry or company in the Industry Cloud portfolio.

Expanding industry processes and making them more intelligent

No Industry Cloud without applications

The number of SAP apps currently available is still quite modest. There are just over 100 partner apps (that's 4.2 per industry) and more than 30 SAP apps. In plain language: the Industry Cloud concept is still in its infancy. A positive trend can certainly be seen in the first few sectors, but it will take some time before the concept can be fully evaluated.

Business transformation platform as a replacement for NetWeaver?

'Build your own' - in other words, customers creating applications on their own initiative - is supposed to do the trick and ensure critical mass. The technical basis for this is the Business Technology Platform (BTP). One could be forgiven for thinking that SAP wants to build a kind of new NetWeaver with the BTP. Will S/4HANA perhaps even do without the tried-and-tested platform for building business applications in future?

Essentially, SAP BTP consists of four cornerstones: 'Database & Management', 'Analytics', 'Intelligent Technologies' and 'Application Development & Integration'. From the user's point of view, the latter is particularly important. Two products are available here that can be used to expand and optimize existing processes as mentioned above: the SAP Integration Suite and the SAP Extension Suite. DSAG sees initial good approaches in the S/4HANA context, but there is still a long way to go across the entire portfolio. Above all, the extensibility of cloud applications will become an important issue for customers in the future. This is a key lever for differentiating business processes between companies.

Bright spot API Business Hub

The topics of user experience, security & identity management and the domain model are also particularly important in this context. The first positive developments can be seen here, such as the API Business Hub - a tool not only for development departments, but also for IT architects, who can find solid reference architectures with the associated best practice processes.

Michael Moser is Head of Production & Supply Chain Management at the German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG).

© DSAG

The extension concept is also interesting for customers who have relied more heavily on third-party products in the past and lacked a consistent extension and integration concept. They can now drive forward the integration of their third-party products for the first time and thus further develop established processes. After all, a transformation to the cloud not only involves effort, but also offers many opportunities.

Finally, the role of hyperscalers is becoming important in the SAP strategy. There must be compelling differences here due to the different partnerships with SAP. In the case of Microsoft and Google, DSAG is increasingly observing that their technologies are being integrated into SAP business applications. Further clarification of SAP's hyperscaler strategy would be desirable.