Wel­come back to Nerd Exchange, a new ASUG col­umn from Jele­na Per­fil­je­va and Paul Mod­der­man, The Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerds. Help­ing sub­scribers stay on top of SAP, AI, Cloud, and enter­prise soft­ware news through their hit Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerdlet­ter, Jele­na and Paul are fun­ny, cyn­i­cal, and always inter­est­ing — a breath of fresh air for the enter­prise soft­ware land­scape. Below, the Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerds offer their reflec­tions on this past year and a few pre­dic­tions for 2024.

Paul Mod­der­man: As celebri­ty writ­ers, I think we’re required by law to do an annu­al wrap-up and pre­dic­tions piece. Jele­na, the baton pass­es to you first! Give us a reflec­tion on the past year. 

Jele­na Per­fil­je­va: SAP TechEd, in its pre-COVID form, is pret­ty much gone. I’m giv­ing up the dream of get­ting back that ​“Vegas expe­ri­ence” of big crowds, with its sense of com­mu­ni­ty and celebration. 

Paul: I have a gen­er­al obser­va­tion about events as well. Over the last year, I lost my abil­i­ty to keep up with news and announce­ments that popped up in tech events. I’ve been over­whelmed. It’s an avalanche! How does any­one keep up? I’m drown­ing in my Twit­ter, Feed­ly, and newslet­ter feeds.

Jele­na: Sev­er­al peo­ple I met at ASUG Tech Con­nect said their com­pa­nies are form­ing com­pe­ten­cy cen­ters around con­tin­u­ous learn­ing. There are peo­ple whose full-time jobs are to man­age that avalanche and make sure employ­ees are well-fed with infor­ma­tion about the new skills they’ll need to suc­ceed. And as com­pa­nies add more solu­tions into their land­scapes, that chal­lenge of keep­ing up will con­tin­ue to grow. 

Paul: That’s relat­ed to one of my pre­dic­tions for the new year. My mag­ic scrolls say that com­pa­nies will con­tin­ue to diver­si­fy their enter­prise appli­ca­tion port­fo­lios. By itself, that’s not a very inter­est­ing fore­cast. The inter­est­ing part, in my view, is that one of the ways they’ll do that is by slic­ing up their mono­liths. Part of that will come from peel­ing off indi­vid­ual appli­ca­tions that were once under the same umbrel­la, but anoth­er part of it is that enter­pris­es are will­ing to adopt new solu­tions out­side of their mono­liths. The fact that SAP Cloud Inte­gra­tion is the most-used com­po­nent of SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) is evi­dence. Every­one’s OK with glu­ing more things together. 

Jele­na: Last year, I pre­dict­ed we’d see more uncon­ven­tion­al, ​“cre­ate-your-own” roles emerge. I here­by claim the title of ​“Vice Pres­i­dent of Fore­sight,” because I was spot on. It’s inter­est­ing, too, because not all of these ​“Chief of Some­thing or Oth­er” roles are actu­al­ly on the same lev­el as the rest of their organization’s C‑suites. Which is just fine, because com­pa­nies need more lead­ers, not more executives.

Paul: I would argue with you, except that my real-life title at my cur­rent com­pa­ny is ​“Chief Nerd.” So I’ll just slide past that to my next reflec­tion: SAP S/4HANA. This past year proved how much of a pri­or­i­ty it is for some com­pa­nies to make their move — and how low down on the list that ERP tran­si­tion is for oth­ers. ASUG’s last Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer sur­vey, pub­lished ear­ly in 2023, found that 35% of respon­dents were either 2+ years out from exe­cut­ing or ​“on hold” with their S/4HANA migra­tion plans. SAP pro­fes­sion­als are going to have their hands full either exe­cut­ing upgrades or sup­port­ing out-of-date instal­la­tions for years to come. What strikes me about all of this is that those find­ings are not apprais­ing the qual­i­ty of S/4HANA. This is a state­ment on the qual­i­ty of SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent (ECC)! That so many cus­tomers are get­ting what they need is a true tes­ta­ment to ECC’s strengths. (SAP, please make out the endorse­ment check to ​“Chief Nerd Paul Modderman.”)

Jele­na: Paul, you’d think that an AI nerd like you would be the first to broach the top­ic, but it looks like I’ve beat­en you. Here’s my two-pronged AI pre­dic­tion for 2024: SAP will dou­ble down on AI mes­sag­ing (which might seem impos­si­ble, giv­en its cur­rent lev­el of hype), and AI will start to reach The Plateau of Dis­ap­point­ment. The hype has just gone too high, and the expec­ta­tions are unrealistic. 

Paul: I talk about this stuff so much that I’ve start­ed to hype myself into orbit. I was hav­ing a hard time pin­ning down a reflec­tion or pre­dic­tion about AI, and then I real­ized that my dif­fi­cul­ty in select­ing a take was itself the take. So: my reflec­tion is that you can’t make a list of 2023 reflec­tions with­out say­ing some­thing about gen­er­a­tive AI. My pre­dic­tion is that you won’t be able to make a 2024 list of pre­dic­tions with­out say­ing some­thing about gen­er­a­tive AI. It’s table stakes for every tech dis­cus­sion from here on out. 

Jele­na: I’ll wrap with nei­ther a pre­dic­tion nor a reflec­tion. It’s a San­ta wish list with but one item: that SAP would stop renam­ing things. 

Paul: That’s crazy. That’s like wish­ing for more wishes. 

For more Nerd Exchange, check out Jele­na and Paul’s first col­umn, pre­view­ing ASUG Tech Con­nect, and sub­scribe to both ASUG First Five and the Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerdlet­ter.