Steve Jobs of Apple Computer fame once said, “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. “ That of course was the premise of Apple products from the very beginning. When Steve Jobs introduced the Macintosh on January 24, 1984, he demonstrated in real time how the little computer represented a signal change in how we humans would interact with computers. No longer would we have to do things the way computer applications were designed to do them — now the computer application would wait for us to decide what to do next and respond accordingly (do you Baby Boomers remember the first time you tried a mouse?). It was truly revolutionary — as the Macintosh itself declared during Jobs’ announcement presentation, it was “insanely great! “

In 1984, SAP was already 12 years old, but still 7 years away from introducing its R/3 generation of software, which in 1991 would boast the best of the era’s of enterprise technologies; a client-server architecture, uniform use of relational databases, a consistent (if mind-bogglingly complicated) graphical interface, and support of several different computer hardware platforms. In 1991, all of that was a very big deal, because it signaled freedom from the IBM mainframe (echoing what the Macintosh computer robotically intoned during its 1984 introduction by Jobs, “never trust a computer you can’t lift! “).

Obviously, SAP has made a lot of hay with the R/3 generation of its solution set, but the one thing that no one would ever accuse the SAP portfolio of being is simple. That is why when SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner extolled the virtues of simple at the 2014 SAPPHIRE conference, RSR (along with many others) felt compelled to comment. In our case, we just quoted the man himself:

“Prof. Plattner declared that, ‘SAP is a model case study for the Innovator’s Dilemma.’ He pointed out that certain technology trends are inevitable. For example: ‘the transition from on-premise to the cloud will happen, no matter what’; ‘mobile is here to stay – people are always connected’; ‘technology will continue to make huge performance leaps’; ‘data access is moving towards zero latency.’ Although these are important trends – and SAP has responded to them – they in themselves are not disruptive changes for any one company, From Plattner’s point of view, those are sustaining innovations, not disruptive ones. So, what is disruptive? ‘Simplification! “, declared Plattner, ‘simplification beats complexity! “

Simple… Really?

Fast forward to 2015, and SAP CEO Bill McDermott upped the ante, re. SAP’s simple theme. In his SAPPHIRE keynote in Orlando, Florida last week, Mr. McDermott laid out the core tenets of a successful modern technology solution as:

• One that is trusted (you have to be able to trust that the provider will stick with you and live up to its promises);
• One that flips the relationship from “business to consumer “, to “consumer to business “;
• One that enables your business to digitize everything;
• One that can do sophisticated things but make them look easy;
• One that enables your business to re-imagine itself.

Of course, his message was that SAP is all of these things, especially with the February announcement of new S/4 HANA release of the SAP portfolio (as Mr. McDermott explained, “‘S’ comes after ‘R’, and ‘4′ comes after ‘3′ and ‘HANA’ is… HANA! “). SAP makes it simple, according to the CEO.

Simple… to use? Perhaps, but very, very complex inside the black box. SAP has accomplished a lot in the last decade in updating the whole caboodle to enable Plattner’s vision. In addition to bringing the portfolio into compliance with systems architectural principles referred to as service oriented architecture (SOA: techies know what this is), SAP has significantly advanced its stated mobile first user interface with a product called Fiori. But the big enabler is HANA — an in-memory database that is capable of storing vast quantities of unaggregated granular data and retrieving it very quickly to enable business users to ask new questions of the data without having to wait hours (or sometimes even days) to get an answer. The obvious value of that it that it enables users to ask more questions, explore new what if ideas, and shorten the lag time between something happening in the operational environment and reacting to it based on the very best information available.

“So what? “ one might say; “In-memory isn’t unique to HANA “, and that in fact is basically true. But this is where SAP’s CAR represents the big breakthrough. CAR stands for customer activity repository, and while the name itself may under-represent what it does, the concept of an indirection layer (my words) between the database (HANA) and business applications that want to use the data is powerful. One gets the sense that even SAP itself it just discovering how powerful it is. And while it promises to vastly simplify how applications might consume data, it’s very complex technology (I still go back to a meeting I had at SAP’s headquarters in Waldorf, Germany a couple of years ago, where I was surrounded by a roomful of Ph.D.’s, who very patiently explained to me that CAR would do — it was a very humbling moment).

All that heavy-duty software engineering is intended to enable something very different from the way businesses have used computer-based solutions in the past: instead of wrapping business processes around the capabilities and limitations of the enabling technologies, now businesses can wrap the technologies around the business’s processes (one caveat: that begs the question, “what do you want your business processes to be? “). SAP promises for the business enterprise exactly what Steve Jobs promised for the individual back in 1984. While that promise isn’t unique to SAP (all the major solutions providers today offer some version of the same message), SAP obviously thinks that the amount of time and expertise they have expended to develop the software now puts the company in a good place.

Fundamental Message Unchanged

One of the dilemmas for SAP at SAPPHIRE 2015 is that fundamentally, the message is exactly what the company conveyed in 2014. That’s not exactly buzz-worthy, but it should be comforting to clients — the software giant continues to march along its roadmap, just as it said it would. SAP’s President- Industry Cloud, Simon Paris described the 3 businesses that SAP is in as:

• Platform — containing the components that enable applications
• Applications — automation of business processes
• Network — a world of people who use applications to perform processes.

SAP’s belief is that because of S/4 HANA, companies can execute business models not possible before, redesign business processes, and re-imagine business decisions. Although this is an over-simplification, the best way I can describe it is that SAP thinks of enabling business processes the same way that electrical grids enabled light bulbs. Plug it in and turn it on… That certainly isn’t the old SAP, and there are plenty of skeptics in the world, but the company leadership and many of the assembled at SAPPHIRE are totally bought into the vision.

There’s An App For That

Like Steve Jobs and Apple, SAP and its competitors are tapping into a growing sentiment among individuals and businesses alike. That is, technology should work for us, not the other way around. There’s also a tacit understanding that shaking every penny of expense out of operational processes isn’t enough to differentiate anymore- businesses need to be able to explore new ways of doing things that consumers will value. That takes a different kind of enabling technology than businesses have used in the past.

Just as consumers have been able to explore new ways of enabling their personal lives with cheap and disposable downloadable apps (for example, to get an Uber ride to the Orlando Airport instead of having to take an expensive taxi), SAP wants businesses to be able to do the same for the enterprise. That implies a very complex underlying supporting global architecture — and SAP wants to be the company that delivers it to the world.

Time (and the market) will tell if the company can succeed in realizing its vision of making the world run better. Reality has a nasty way of grinding down the sharp edges of grand visions. But there are some visionaries that never stop believing that they are right, and like Steve Jobs, Hasso Plattner is one them.