Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Dear colleagues, friends, partners

As we approach the end of another remarkable year, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the journey we've undertaken together. The past twelve months have been filled with changes, challenges, triumphs, and growth.

The ones of you who know me already a longer time, do also know that I usually share a combination of business-related topics with a good mix of my personal highlights. I strongly believe that this is also necessary as it influences and drives our success at work to a larger degree, too.

?First, I like to share some of the professional highlights & successes we’ve achieved together as one team. Of course, we’ve done much more, but

• We could almost double the number of IBASE customers, who started the transformation towards BTP Public Cloud solutions.
• We could win new reference customers, sharing their successful move from On-Premises solutions to the corresponding cloud solutions.
• Globally we established new relationships to partners, who are holistically supporting the transformation, by simplifying the cloud journey for our customers.
• Over the year we had several meetings with our customers, and with our partners. They were sharing their honest feedback and expectations, they were telling us what works well, and where they see some room for improvement. We listened and we took that feedback serious.
• We could meet each other personally, not too often, but by that we had nice parties to celebrate the success.
• We could offer nice and interesting projects to early talents and fellows joining the team.

As a team we also had to overcome some larger challenges. Over the cause of the year there were certainly some lowlights, but as we all?worked together as one team, we could master them. By combining our different skills and experiences we solved most of the challenges. A success criterion has been that every one of the team always helped the other team members, independent from the own situation. Next to the business challenges which we had to master, there were also two situations which I personally believe were the main lowlights in 2023. Over years we invested into two working students & early talents, we dedicated a lot of time to them and than at the end of the time we couldn’t offer them a fixed position in the team. This is very unfortunate, and could have paid out better.

I explicitly want to express my gratitude to the entire?team for their hard work and dedication?to all our topics.?We are all working in a fast-changing environment and therefore sometimes we need to act and react quickly on asks, adjusting our priorities and our focus at an extreme pace. But I never recognized a situation where the team said “No, we don’t do this anymore” or “I don’t want to go that extra-mile anymore, as I have done it too often already”.

?Kudos to my teammates and a big Thank you to all for your unwavering support and commitment. I am incredibly proud of what we've achieved together, and I look forward to the opportunities and challenges that the next year will bring.

From a personal perspective there were also some great highlights happening in 2023.

Together with some of my best friends we were again able to support and donate local social projects, such as Tafel Ludwigsburg, Olg?le Kinderhospital?or the Bahnhofsmission?Heilbronn. You might remember that in 2022 I’ve donated the Moshi Street Kid Soccer Academy. In the meantime, and because of the donation they own the land and the buildings of the Academy Campus. As an effect out of that they now need to find a new place for their pitch & stand where the practice and do their soccer matches. For that a new GoFundMe Campaign is available.

We also still support some initiatives in Ukraine. Even that we cannot service the people and society onsite – we still support & donate organizations with focus on athletes who due to the war cannot practice their sports anymore. I’m also proud that we could organize a huge funding campaign with the ambition to buy a “Therapy-Bike” for the son of a friend of mine. Heinrich has been diagnosed with early childhood autism, which is the heaviest form of autism. In the meantime, the bike has been delivered and empowers the family to go biking together as a family.

My older daughter made her bachelor mid of 2023 and is now on the way to get her Master done in 2024, becoming a primary school teacher. The younger one decided after the second semester that she wants to study something completely different. I’m proud that she recognized that she needs to make that change happen, to later leverage her talents best for her job.

?A big thank you very much goes to my wife Grit.

Not only that, I have all flexibility for my job, which is already time-consuming and where a lot of our spare time is also dedicated too.

Furthermore, I also have the freedom to drive all my hobbies, being engaged here in the region and mainly related to soccer topics. As being one of the presidents of the fan association of TSG Hoffenheim, I’m spending a lot of time to organize many things where TSG Hoffenheim supporters are benefitting from. This is typically happening during the evening hours, but mainly on weekends. Being able to drive all these topics fulfills me very much, and this is only possible as my wife gives me all the time to do this.

Now, there is only one more thing to say, which is most important these days:

Wishing each and every?one of you a joyful holiday season and a New Year filled with love, laughter, and prosperity.?

All the best

Markus