SAP used its first major technology announcement of 2021 to provide a thoughtful new approach to the way it guides customers through technology modernization using its platform, services, and tools.

The company calls RISE with SAP “a milestone offering to propel customers’ holistic transformation into [becoming] intelligent enterprises,” which at first glance obviously sounds somewhat broad-brush and nonspecific.

We all know that SAP’s “total briefcase” of technologies (some built in-house, some acquired) can at first appear to be challenging to navigate and integrate given the size, breadth, scope, and use-case implementations that they represent from data analytics, to enterprise resource planning (ERP), HR and experience management (XM), expense management, and almost everything in between.

Could RISE with SAP then be a reimagining of SAP Leonardo—not a platform in and of itself, but a set of guiding architectures, accelerators, and preconfigured headstarts, all served up with a dedicated SAP customer service representative? The answer appears to be—in the short term, at least—both yes and no.