RISE, and wake up in a good mood!

SAP RISE was announced over 3 weeks ago and its certainly caused a lot of buzz/talk in the market, there are a lot of differing views, from evangelism, from SAP AG, to cynicism from some market commentators (the ones who make a living out of awkward and outside the tent) , and silence from a few, certainly I have had more call on this topic than any other in the past 12 months but I am not sure everyone is making their point of view heard or its still too early for comment.

Sure you don’t expect Oracle/IFS/Salesforce etc to say its fantastic , and they will do some trash talk, but for the SAP Ecosystem our future depends on it working.

What surprises me is that the whole SAP ecosystem is not getting 100% behind it, and finds it easier to score points and point out challenges than point out the benefits for that ecosystem. If RISE works SAP will be a sexy and relevant topic for years, changing its market position and making it the core of digital journeys

In the end its easier to behave like Statler and Waldorf from the muppet show and just throw rocks than it is to make a path to a new way of working.

Shouldn’t every one who’s future career depends on SAP want it to succeed ?

So if I put on some rose tinted spectacles and wake up after 8 hours uninterrupted sleep how could RISE potentially shift things up a gear for us all.

RISE unequivocally restates the message of a standard S/4HANA core with a flexible cloud-based platform surrounding it, that removes technical debt making SAP S/4HANA the heart of digital transformation and innovation for any company.

Consequently, my dreams I expect turning into reality are –

• RISE will drive faster and easier provisioning by SAP, (my dream is that we can stand up SAP in minutes and buy it on a credit card)
• RISE will simplify the contracting process, de mystify the licensing and other issues like indirect access etc. at a much faster pace
• RISE will lead to new innovative licensing that will adapt, scale & change to offer new ways of provisioning SAP i.e. per process, or as an MVP, or, selling licenses per asset managed etc. thereby taking shared risk on delivery of benefits
• SAP and the ecosystem embracing an open approach low-barriers of entry that allows best of breed cloud products and service preventing lock-in for clients thereby improving quality and encouraging an innovation arms race
• SAP overall, driven by intense competition from other SaaS innovators becomes sharper and gains greater industry relevance though the industry cloud and contracting terms overall
• SAP winning more work across the enterprise, as all the above are achieved
• The SAP share price booming to reflect its cloud and SaaS success with greater market share
• Lots of work for the entire SAP ecosystem with exciting great careers & prospects for all

I’m the wise old go-to guy for my team like Michael Caine is to Christopher Nolan, and yet I may be wrong and there certainly will be challenges, but if can make this work it will be great for SAP and SAP careers so why not try to embrace it. There is a lot riding on the success of SAP RISE in my opinion. What are your thoughts?