Today, SAP announced the resignation of two of its board members, Julia White and Scott Russell, with both of their departure dates slated for August 31. The moves come amidst other recent turmoil on the board, including the departure of Sabine Bendiek at the end of 2023 and the even more surprising departure of Punit Renjen, who had originally been named as heir to (founder) Hasso Plattner in his position as chairman of the board, earlier in 2024.

Back when Julia and Sabine first joined the board, there was a lot of attention paid to the increased presence of women on the board, though notably still only two at that time. With the departure of Julia White, SAP will now only have one woman on its executive board — Sabine’s successor, Gina Vargiu-Breuer — which is reminiscent of years past. SAP will also eliminate marketing as a position on the board with Julia’s departure, also reminiscent of years past, when SAP notably never had a marketing executive on the board.

So what’s old is new: There are a lot of signs in these moves over the past year that signal SAP reverting to its engineering- and tech-heavy roots under Hasso Plattner, as it has been for so long. For some customers, this will come as a disappointment, as they were eager for a new kind of SAP. For other customers, this news is welcome, since there are still many SAP diehards out there who loved the engineering-heavy and marketing-light culture of the SAP of the past.

Looming large, SAP still faces challenges related to SAP S/4HANA transformation. While the publicly stated numbers look good, with the global economic uncertainty, we regularly see customers struggling with the investment, making a business case for RISE, and their commitment to SAP overall. Compelling storytelling and focus on customer success is generally a good thing for an enterprise software giant, and it remains to be seen how well it will fare in these areas in the wake of these executive departures.

It also remains to be seen how committed SAP will stay to GROW, the newer midmarket-friendly public cloud initiative that had largely been championed by Julia. This is again consistent with the on-again, off-again commitments, both to public cloud and to the SMB segment, that we’ve seen over the past many years. SAP has had products for the midmarket but has not had a serious, fresh effort there since the failed Business ByDesign, which petered out several years ago.

If you have any questions on SAP and the SAP S/4HANA transition, please get in touch with me or my colleague Akshara Naik Lopez.