Expansion Section: Published Studies on S/4HANA Implementations

The 350 number is from ASUG and their 2016 survey which was critiqued by Brightwork in an article entitled Analysis of ASUG’s SAP HANA Adoption Survey. This survey was published a year ago, from the publication of this research paper you are reading, so ASUG’s 2017 survey will be higher. But in our review of ASUG’s media output on a variety of topics, it is clear that ASUG has transitioned from being a user group to be just another outlet through which SAP distributes press releases. In fact, while ASUG authors are attached to articles, it is not clear that ASUG authors are even writing the articles attributed to them. If ASUG is actively promoting S/4HANA and SAP generally, then ASUG cannot produce any research in the field. Biased sources lead to biased research results. ASUG spends time in their study describing their methodology. However, as with Gartner or Forrester, if the research entity takes money from those it is researching, the methodology does not matter. This is an extremely well-understood topic in academic research. But is a problem in the enterprise software space because private industry is not setup very well to fund research that is truly independent.

For this reason, whatever ASUG’s estimate, the real number is considerably lower. Brightwork developed an estimate of S/4HANA implementations which is lower than the commonly presented estimates. Unsurprisingly, the Brightwork estimates differ greatly from an organization like ASUG that is highly intertwined with SAP.

Now that we have set the table with pertinent information that is necessary to know in order to interpret the study, we will move into the study itself.