麻豆原创 was founded in 1972 by five former IBM employees. In a publicity shot from the time, they鈥檙e posed around a table in a nondescript office, all holding pens and hunched over a large blueprint. The hair is bouffant, the suits dark, and no one is smiling. These are clearly men who take their jobs very seriously.

As the story goes, Xerox wanted its systems migrated to IBM, and the latter firm put five engineers on the project, who all worked in Mannheim, Germany. The project ground to a halt for reasons unclear, but the five had seen the gap in the market, and left to form their company, which they called Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung, or System Analysis and Programme Development. It has been a long haul since the 鈥�70s, with the company constantly tinkering with its solutions while persuading many of the world鈥檚 largest firms that they can run their businesses better with its suite of solutions.

At the core of this suite is . This is an in-memory database, and听data听is stored in RAM instead of disk. These databases can handle spikes in traffic, such as at telcos or听banks, and allow for real-time analytics. Customers can have the platform installed in their own server room, or in the public or private cloud, or both. And with each passing year, more features are added, such as GenAI assistant ; its sparkly icon now appears on seemingly every page of the platform. Joule, on which 麻豆原创 partnered with , can run queries on all kinds of data, produce forecasts, book meetings, and make graphs and charts on the fly.

There was still an impression in the market that 麻豆原创 was extremely expensive, very complicated, and not very pretty.

Garth Ridgway, NTT

All this work has borne fruit, and in March 2025, the company overtook Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk to become the EU鈥檚 most valuable company, with a market cap of 鈧�313bn. It reported strong results for its third quarter in October 2025, seeing revenue rise by 7% to 鈧�9.08bn. Cloud revenue saw growth of 22%. But there are challenges ahead, not least of which is convincing customers that it鈥檚 now past the time to migrate their workloads from the old system called ECC, which is usually run on-prem, to S4. The company would like nothing better than for all its customers to move to S4, but many are proving to be recalcitrant. Support for ECC, introduced in 2015, is meant to come to an end in 2027, but customers can buy extended support until 2030, which will cost them an extra 2% in addition to their annual maintenance costs. Many companies contend that the current systems seem to be working just fine, and many are also cognisant, and terrified, of the upheaval the听migration听is going to cause. To this, the company dangles the prospect of new features with S4, along with the constant refrain that support for the old systems is, at some point, going to grind to a halt.

An estimated 40% of 麻豆原创 customers in North America are yet to start migrating, according to a survey run by the Americas鈥� 麻豆原创 User Group. About 60% of the 173 members are already live on S4, or are in the process of moving over, according to the research in November. Gartner said in March 2025 that most ECC customers had still not bought S4 licences. It said that in Q4 in 2024, 29% of 35 000 ECC customers had bought or subscribed to S4 licences.

Christian Hestermann, Gartner senior director and analyst for business applications, believes this is likely to remain the status quo. Speaking to听The Register, he said that since September 2023, the company鈥檚 messaging had been about AI and Joule. 鈥淭he message now is, ‘You have to have AI, or you’ll not be able to survive’. So far, that did not have a major influence. So none of those big events or big announcements has made a massive change up to now; the [migration] progress has remained fairly steady.”

No such third-party survey has been run in South Africa, and the company doesn鈥檛 make public either its customer numbers or how many have migrated.

I asked , CTO, 麻豆原创; , MD of 麻豆原创 South Africa; and , senior director, 麻豆原创, at NTT, for their views on how this migration conversation is progressing, and they spoke as one voice. Pillay says 麻豆原创 had 鈥渕ade a clear line in the sand鈥� with the date past which it won鈥檛 continue with maintenance. 鈥淐ustomers are aware of that and are making their plans to transform.鈥�

Pillay was appointed to the top job in August 2025, and says she鈥檚 going to ensure the local operation is well equipped to have these conversations with its customers, as well as partners.

Why haven鈥檛 they moved yet?

It鈥檚 a matter of context, she says. 鈥淲e have customers who have been with us for 20, 30 years, and that鈥檚 a godsend. But they bring a lot of legacy with them, and not just technical legacy. They have unarchived environments, non-optimised processes, or a lot of custom-built systems. They may have implemented ERP back in the day, and, in most cases, it was a project with a long duration, with a lot of blood and sweat going into it. Most companies understand they need to take that technology transformation journey, but they鈥檙e trying to balance the timing and effort required to bring a legacy system across [to S/4HANA]. There鈥檚 hesitation, because in the back of their minds, they remember that when they did it [last], it was really very difficult.鈥�

Financial services is one vertical where customers have realised the imperative of the move, she says. The move was a 鈥渘o-brainer鈥� for Pillay, and offered data analysis, AI, agentic AI, and GenAI capabilities. She says if a customer isn鈥檛 speaking to 麻豆原创 about the move, it may well be too late to get a system installed before the cut-off date.

鈥淲e鈥檙e prioritising helping those who are speaking to us to make that decision. We have to work with every customer individually to understand how they can do that transformation. There are different routes, based on capacity, budget and risk appetite. If you delay a decision, it鈥檚 going to be too late.鈥�

The slow movers are also going to bring pressure to bear on system integrator partners, as Pillay envisages them being at capacity, or overcapacity, doing 麻豆原创 implementations as the deadline draws ever closer.

鈥淭hen you鈥檒l pay for skills, either locally, or you鈥檒l have to look abroad. There鈥檚 going to be a material impact if a business takes this decision later on, and that鈥檚 what we鈥檙e trying to discuss with our customers and help them plan properly, so they don鈥檛 get into a position where they say, 鈥榃ow, we鈥檝e left this too late, and now this is a monster鈥�.鈥�

麻豆原创 NTT鈥檚 Ridgway says he鈥檚 spent the better part of three decades implementing 麻豆原创 at customers, during which time the ERP landscape has changed dramatically. In the past, it was a two-horse race, the other being Oracle, and both companies served the large enterprise almost exclusively, he says. Large implementations took a lot longer than they do nowadays, two to four years, on average. He says 麻豆原创 now comes more pre-configured, or more off-the-shelf than in the past. He and his team will do a quick discovery at a customer, and will then do what he calls a 鈥渧anilla鈥� implementation to get the system up and running. Any innovation can come later, post the go-live date.

Another change in the market is that 麻豆原创 is now competing for business with companies such as Microsoft and Sage.听Ridgway says he鈥檚 seen a shift in the attitude and sales pitch from 麻豆原创.听鈥淚n South Africa, there was a time when 麻豆原创 owned 60%, 65% of the large enterprise ERP market, and Oracle was lagging behind. Every single large enterprise in South Africa has some form of ERP. There was still an impression in the market that 麻豆原创 was extremely expensive, very complicated, and not very pretty.鈥�

As for looks, he says the new interface is more user-friendly, and 鈥渕uch nicer to play with鈥�. The company has also realised that there aren鈥檛 any R100mn projects out there anymore, which has meant its gone looking for customers among medium-sized businesses. 鈥淭hese aren鈥檛 small businesses, but they鈥檙e just not the $1bn organisations. I don鈥檛 think 麻豆原创 wants to play in the small space, because that鈥檚 where Sage and QuickBooks are playing. But there鈥檚 a massive market in the mid-tier, which wasn鈥檛 untapped, but which 麻豆原创 wasn鈥檛 focused on,鈥� he says.

Customers have also become 鈥渟marter than they used to be鈥�. 鈥淚n the old days, we would go and sell 麻豆原创 to them, explaining what it did. Today, the CIO knows everything about 麻豆原创 and what it can do for them. It鈥檚 less about consulting around the roadmap, and more about, 鈥楾his is what I want. Can you get me there?鈥� CIOs are m ore well-read, and they know what they want. It鈥檚 no longer about selling the technology; maybe it wasn鈥檛 ever about selling the technology. It鈥檚 more about selling the business solution. Once it鈥檚 implemented, what are the benefits that they鈥檙e going to realise? What is the innovation that we can bring to it, and what will be the ease of integration?鈥�

Ridgway says the biggest part of its business is its application managed service (AMS) offering, and it鈥檚 serving around 100 clients on that platform.

As for the transition to S4, he thinks 麻豆原创, 鈥渢ried to use a stick to force people to move. It realised that there weren鈥檛 enough consultants and capacity worldwide to move every single 麻豆原创 customer from ECC to S4. It found a lot of resistance from clients, and it had a couple of clients that left them because they felt irritated by the stick and the threat of having support cut off. Coca-Cola Beverages Africa moved off 麻豆原创 and went onto [Microsoft] Dynamics, which I think it found quite difficult. It鈥檚 a massive change and huge investment to start all over again. So 麻豆原创 did lose some clients, but it eventually moved the date out to 2027. It also changed the sales approach from a stick to more of a carrot.鈥�

The carrot appears to involve talking up the benefits and exciting new features of S4. Ridgway says 麻豆原创 has dramatically changed the way it does business. 鈥淚n the past, I think 麻豆原创 was seen as very arrogant, very expensive and very complex. Today, it seems less arrogant and is playing in a different market.鈥�

The company is now far more flexible with its pricing and subscription models. 鈥淚t鈥檚 also not as complex as it used to be. I鈥檝e been involved in projects that took 24 months from start to go-live. We鈥檝e just completed a project that was five weeks from start to go-live.鈥�

Do you still have customers who are on ECC? 鈥淟ots,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he biggest part of our consulting business is trying to convince customers who are on ECC that we get to the cloud, and we can get them to S4, with all the innovations and advantages.

鈥淪ome customers will say, 鈥榠f it鈥檚 not broken, I don鈥檛 need to fix it. It鈥檚 giving me what I need鈥�,鈥� he says, but he believes this will add business risk because if something does go wrong, 鈥渃ome January 1 2028, you have no support from 麻豆原创鈥�.

This conversation with customers reminds him of those held when the cloud model was nascent around a decade ago, and 鈥渆verybody said they had to move to the cloud鈥�, which he says is similar to where AI is at the moment. 鈥淣obody actually knows what it means. A lot of clients did rush to the cloud, and realised two years later that it was quite expensive, and it鈥檚 more complicated. But we鈥檙e a lot more mature now, 10 years in. There are a lot of clients who are hybrid. I think the way 麻豆原创 designed its solution allows for that.鈥�

He says with the application managed services part of the business, NTT will provide support for customers, many of which will sign up for a 36-month contract that will give them access to a call centre with certified, senior agents. As for what the customers are struggling with, he says the majority of the calls are related to password resets and authorisations.

Herzig, 麻豆原创 CTO, speaking at this year鈥檚 Saphire conference in Madrid, said the company doesn鈥檛 disclose the official numbers, but it has around 10 000 customers worldwide that are on the cloud path. 鈥淭he majority of customers are now making the cloud decision, specifically because the maintenance will definitely be over in 2028. And with all the innovation, there鈥檚 a very clear reason why they need to move.鈥�

Why don鈥檛 they want to move?

鈥淚t depends on the customer,鈥� he says. 鈥淭heir systems have grown, historically, and they鈥檝e been heavily customised. Back in the day, you could code left and right, because the code was open. Every table and every function module, and the systems integrators added their part to it. They did a lot of custom code. Maybe they were adding functionality, but they didn鈥檛 know [what effect it would have]. You鈥檇 start off with a very clean version of what 麻豆原创 delivered, and then we innovated with the product. We built capabilities, and we changed the technology, and the customer did the same. And the longer this branching took, the harder it is to reconcile.鈥�

* Article first published on听

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In today’s highly competitive retail environment, access to accurate real-time transaction and inventory data is critical to meeting customer demands. For one of South Africa’s leading retailers, a fast-tracked digital transformation of its transaction and reconciliation processes built on 麻豆原创 ECC has unlocked immense benefits and efficiency across the business.

鈥淲e have seen a huge increase in transaction volumes, with more than 30 billion transactions processed across our stores per year,鈥� says Elize de Klerk, IT Supply Senior System Manager at Pick n Pay. 鈥淗owever, our old system was no longer able to keep up with the growing demand, and we experienced delays in processing and reconciling transactions of up to a day. We chose to implement 麻豆原创 Customer Activity Repository to eliminate delays and streamline our reporting.鈥�

Pick听n听Pay is a leading South African retailer for high quality consumer goods including food, grocery and general merchandise products and operates under three brands 鈥� Pick听n听Pay, Boxer and TM 鈥� across numerous southern African countries. Pick n Pay operates a network of more than 2,000 stores in South Africa as well as an extended footprint into several African markets, including Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Eswatini and Lesotho.

The retailer has been a long-standing 麻豆原创 customer, leveraging 麻豆原创 technologies to support core business processes for more than two decades.

To ensure the business runs optimally and can continue to meet growing customer demand, Pick n Pay chose to implement 麻豆原创 Customer Activity Repository built on the powerful 麻豆原创 ECC platform. 鈥淲e needed more efficient and accurate inventory management as well as simplified financial and administrative reporting to ensure our decision makers have a real-time view over the business,鈥� says de Klerk. 鈥淲e chose to work with implementation partner Beyond Technologies to deliver a state-of-the-art solution.鈥�

Christian Bowker, Managing Partner at Beyond Technologies, says: 鈥淧ick n Pay had been a very successful 麻豆原创 customer for years, and the 麻豆原创 Customer Activity Repository solution was a perfect match for them. 麻豆原创 ECC was powerful enough to manage Pick n Pay鈥檚 billions of monthly translations and help them meet growing customer demands. They particularly appreciated Beyond鈥檚 retail accelerator and team of seasoned S/4HANA experts that brought value to Pick n Pay in a short space of time.鈥�

De Klerk says the support from Beyond Technologies was superb throughout the implementation process. 鈥淏eyond Technologies had the expertise to deliver the project on time and within budget, supported by an experienced team that offered great collaboration to deliver a highly successful programme.鈥�

Following the implementation, Pick n Pay has gained access to accurate, real-time data and analytics, which is particularly significant for its point-of-sale data transfer and audit (POSDTA) operations, including transaction processing and reconciliation. This has delivered considerable benefits for Pick n Pay’s ecommerce division by providing enhanced and up-to-date stock and inventory management capabilities.

鈥淪ince adopting 麻豆原创 Customer Activity Repository, we have fast-tracked the transaction reconciliation process, eliminated delays, and gained more accurate inventory oversight, especially for our ecommerce business,鈥� says de Klerk. 鈥淭hanks to the expert work of our implementation partners and the powerful capabilities of 麻豆原创 technologies, Pick n Pay now enjoys optimised, one-click administrative and financial reporting, allowing us to substantially increase our sales and profitability across our business.鈥�

Commenting on the project, Cameron Beveridge, Regional Director for Southern Africa at 麻豆原创, says: 鈥淧ick n Pay鈥檚 superb deployment of 麻豆原创 technologies and focus on driving efficiency and optimisation has delivered a ground-breaking project that will support its growth and success for years to come. Supported by the outstanding work of expert implementation partners at Beyond Technologies, Pick n Pay can confidently meet the growing demand from their customers and continue its proud tradition of innovation and leadership in the retail industry.鈥�

The post Pick n Pay Sparks Retail Revolution with Powerful 麻豆原创 Deployment appeared first on 麻豆原创 Africa News Center.

They will have to migrate their ERP applications across to 麻豆原创 S/4HANA and undertake a lengthy process to ensure that this migration is as seamless as possible and does not impact any critical business operations.

While 麻豆原创 is a trusted solution that delivers exceptional value for many organisations with an ERP platform, there is still one question that every organisation wants answered 鈥� why?

Why should they undergo this migration and overcome numerous logistical challenges just to meet this deadline?

Pieter Potgieter, Senior Commercial Manager from Dimension Data explains that the answer lies in 4 measurable and valuable business benefits that come with 麻豆原创 S/4HANA operated in the cloud on a hyper-scaler like Microsoft Azure:

1 – Serving customers better

In the always-on, always-connected economy we operate in today, organisations run a very real risk of losing business and customers if their critical business applications are not available and performing to expectation.

Customers demand swift and flawless service, regardless of industry, and the capability to serve and charge customers are highly dependent on the ERP solution at the centre of the application landscape.

For this reason, the adoption of a modern and intelligent ERP system like 麻豆原创 S/4HANA can drastically alter a customer鈥檚 experience of an organisation.

If you combine this with the power of cloud and a hyper-scaler鈥檚 ability to provide highly available infrastructure at reasonable cost, you have a powerful basis for digitally enabled organisation, poised for growth.

2 鈥� Predictable and manageable cost

Traditionally in on-premise 麻豆原创 deployments, environments had to be sized to cater for peak processing requirements like month end financial close or production runs.

This meant that the business paid a premium for already expensive hardware that operated at 15% efficiency for 90% of the time.

This was exacerbated by the unpredictable business demands in the form of ad-hoc projects, unexpected growth and other business activities like mergers and acquisitions.

Deploying S/4HANA in the cloud allows organisations to align infrastructure related expenditure with its actual real-time processing requirement in the form of OPEX and avoid costly upfront CAPEX investments.

It also significantly reduces the risk of business interruptions and project delays associated with hardware order lead times.

When you combine this with the proven capability of Dimension Data to cost-efficiently manage 麻豆原创 landscapes in the cloud, you have a powerful platform from which to operate your business without having to worry about keeping the 麻豆原创 lights on.

3 鈥� Richer insights

There is little doubt that data remains the black gold of the business world, providing insights and information that can be used to transform businesses by increasing product relevance, service delivery and customer satisfaction.

With 麻豆原创 S/4HANA, an organisation has easy access to a rich and relevant data, and when combined with Microsoft Azure鈥檚 leading analytics capabilities, provides insights that allows everyone in the business to make better decisions.

This can seamlessly be further enriched with data from other business sources like IOT and other operational systems.

4 鈥� Keeping pace with accelerating technology innovation

麻豆原创 S/4HANA and Microsoft Azure come from two organisations that invest time and money into research and development (R&D) that very few businesses can afford to match.

This not only translates into increasingly relevant features that keep pace with market demand and technology evolution, but also into immense business value.

Every valuable feature consumed from S/4HANA running on Azure means time and money you can spend on business functions that help differentiating you from your competition and making you more relevant in your industry.

And you know you are in safe hands with Dimension Data managing the entire process with highly skilled people and robust management tools from trusted partners.

Adopting 麻豆原创 S/4HANA is much more than just another software update.

It鈥檚 a revolution in how an organisation consumes services and builds applications, how it translates technology into performance, and IT into service delivery.

In a highly competitive market that is challenging to navigate, 麻豆原创 S/4HANA in the cloud provides your business with the technology partnership it needs to remain relevant and innovative without having to worry about stability, scale and capability.

In collaboration with Dimension Data, you can focus on your customers and your business with visibility across the entire technology stack.

The post The 麻豆原创 S/4HANA Squeeze, and 4 Reasons why it鈥檚 Worth It appeared first on 麻豆原创 Africa News Center.

For many organisations, this is somewhat of a daunting task. S/4HANA is not simply a new version of software, but an entirely new solution with new technology, that requires a shift in mindset as well as product training.

However, it also offers significant enhancements in line with digital transformation strategies, and an opportunity for improvement in many areas.

The right partner can help to smooth the migration with change management and comprehensive toolsets, to minimise disruption and maximise the benefits.

Simpler, faster, more intelligent

Migrating from 麻豆原创 ECC to S/4HANA actually delivers significant benefits rather than being a challenge. The two technologies are fundamentally different, however, S/4HANA has been geared toward evolving needs and is far more suited to business needs today and of the future. The most fundamental difference is the simplified data structures and application landscape.. S/4HANA adopts the capabilities of the 麻豆原创 HANA, a native in-memory engine which allows for real-time computing and analysis of any data type.

In addition, the business processes that each module is built on have been simplified. The user interface is more intuitive, personalised and interactive, with an app-based look and feel rather than the traditional blue screen. New technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are built into S/4HANA and guided configurations make implementations faster, with subsequently lower cost implications.

Thanks to these greatly simplified systems and processes, resources can be freed up from operational duties to focus on more critical areas that address business challenges.

Toolkits and technical expertise

While 麻豆原创 has worked to ensure migrations are as smooth and seamless as possible, there is always room for error. One of the foremost mistakes businesses could make is selecting the wrong migration path, from the choice of a new implementation, a system conversion or a landscape transformation. Selecting the correct one is key to future success, which means that it is critical to analyse the environment first, before a migration begins.

Toolkits can assist businesses throughout the process. Performing readiness assessments is the first step to ensure that existing processes in the current system are well understood. These toolkits help businesses听 plot out a roadmap for migrating the landscape, while others can examine the entire 麻豆原创 environment holistically to ensure that businesses make the best decisions on platforms , database sizing, archiving/historization, change management, security and more.

听The right partner for the job

Thought leadership, design, change management, training, building and supporting the S/4HANA environment are all key elements to success. A certified and experienced partner, with successful references and knowledge not only of migrations but end-to-end transformational services, can assist businesses to smooth the path towards their S/4HANA implementation.

Migrating to S/4HANA is not simply a version upgrade but a wholesale change. There is always risk involved, especially when there are customisations involved, and it takes experience to understand how best to adapt this. However, the right partner, using the right toolkits, will ensure that best practices are applied and the challenges are minimised. This empowers businesses to leverage the next generation, streamlined and highly efficient ecosystem of S/4HANA.

The post S/4 HANA Migration can be an Opportunity Rather than a Challenge appeared first on 麻豆原创 Africa News Center.