Zeiss stopped a €200m SAP build after six years.
The Oberkochen optics group, a key supplier to the chip industry, has overhauled its move to SAP's cloud after costs passed €200 million, Bloomberg reported.
The greenfield build, a new core system designed from a blank sheet, was more complicated than expected. Zeiss will now go brownfield: lift the existing systems into the cloud and keep, in its spokeswoman's words, many of its existing data systems, "to achieve faster progress". External consultancies are steering the work. SAP declined to comment on a customer project.
The timing matters more than the number. SAP ends mainstream maintenance for the old on-premise suite at the end of 2027. Zeiss has just spent six years on the approach SAP's own keynotes recommend, and is switching to the one they call a compromise, with the clock at 477 days.
If a €200m budget could not finish a greenfield in six years, how many of the 54% of SAP customers still on ECC will?
Sources
Our file on Zeiss
All 2 Zeiss storiesFor your next steering committee
- 1Ask for the approved budget and the current forecast on the same scope, side by side.
- 2Ask which costs sit outside the programme budget today: internal staff, data migration, parallel running.
- 3Ask who may approve the next increase, and at what amount the programme goes back to the board.
Issue 01 of the ERP LEADERS brief puts a timeline, the three-number review and six questions on one page. Read issue 01
Welcome back. · Issue 01
249 comments on LinkedInRead the discussion