Having worked at some giant firms that heavily depend on SAP, I would think their position as "system of record for procurement/production" would get stronger with AI.

e.g. AI + a good database of what your company does seems like an excellent combination.

The big risk for these platforms is that AI reduces the cost to switch to another ERP. IF AI can map all of the data between two different competitors, the whole business model is finished

So will AI be what finally kills SAP, making world a little bit better? ;-)

Telling that SAP now exfiltrates all your company data to the U.S. AI cartel:

https://www.sap.com/products/ai-platform.html

So they are using AI to run the company, and AI allocated all the money to AI?

Like their systems aren't shitty enough.

This is less of an issue than the headline suggests. I worked for a publicly traded US company remotely. The company was based between Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach Florida. It was a roll of the dice each spring if the CFO would pull the trigger on a travel block for about 6 weeks around spring break when flights and hotels were most expensive. Approvals were available for critical projects. It was only ever about not exceeding a quarterly budget number; nothing else.

TL;DR:

“Under the policy, only Al-related hiring, customer-facing travel and trips directly linked to the company's Al initiatives or mission-critical employee Al training are exempt, reflecting SAP's focus on "be disciplined in how we spend" while expanding its Al capabilities.”

no-paywall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49222851

SAP also made some big acquisitions that cost a lot of cash..

"Daddy, vodka got more expensive now, does it mean you will be drinking less?"

"No, kids, it means you will be eating less."

Anecdotally, I know several companies that have given the directive of "Use more AI instead of hiring more people". I wonder whether this is part of the story here too?

In other words, AI is now driving their budget decisions.

This "AI business" has really opened my eyes to how..insane the average person is, and just how bad discourse has gotten.

Look at the conversation: people are writing off this technology (on a tech forum no less) as useless, because it can make mistakes. We criticize the cost, and the business models, and the companies, the purveyors and users. Why? Because we don't quite understand how best to use it...3 years in.

People have lost all concept of time scales, I guess. They expect everything to be polished and mature NOW. How many people realize that could take a decade or more?

So, yeah, a stodgy old company has figured out they don't need to hire and don't need to travel, and AI is expensive. So what?

If you believe that AI does add to productivity gains, say equivalent to adding 10-20% employees, would you do anything differently than SAP?

This tells me we’re getting close to “peak bubble.” We saw these same sort of stupid headlines just before the dot-com bubble popped, too. When companies are distorting regular business to do the new thing, they’ve gone past the point of reasonableness on the new thing and we’re ready for a snap-back.

teach everyone they live in a lobster bucket, and suddenly everyones a lobster.

It will be interesting to see if SAP can turn into the basis for companies that use AI heavily or if companies that use AI heavily will prefer to replace SAP.

Who are the contenders that start fresh with focus on AI?

One that comes to mind is IONOS. They seem to be in the process of building something like a "SAP in the times of AI" from the ground up. Starting with the demands of SMEs. It looks like an interesting approach to me: Having a "knowledge base" for each customer, initially filled with the data from the website. Then let the customers add more data. Then offer agents that do work for the customers. Answer calls and emails and do marketing for example.