Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies could potentially disrupt companies like SAP and Oracle in the next five to tend years. But SAP has a plan.
Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies at their core are distributed or peer to peer databases. This seems like a potential existential threat to companies like SAP and Oracle. Perhaps not today, but it will be a serious issue in five to ten years.
Raimond Gross, Chief Blockchain Strategist at SAP, spoke to Ledger Insights at the Blockchain Summit in London. One of the questions put to him was rather blunt: “isn’t SAP likely to be disrupted by blockchain?” Usually, people avoid or deflect that sort of question. Not Gross. He even responded “potentially”, but SAP has a plan.
Future vision
Before looking at that plan, it’s worth exploring Gross’ vision of the future in the next ten plus years. After all, SAP is an enterprise software company, so if enterprises are going to evolve SAP will need to as well.
SAP coined the term intelligent enterprise because they envision systems becoming more intelligent and integrated and taking over more of the repetitive tasks. This is a version of the artificial intelligence-driven picture shared by many.
That scenario will mean that business ecosystems need to change. At a technical level, today integrations between companies use APIs which are point to point. Going forward there will be more shared infrastructure like distributed ledger technology (DLT), thus enabling businesses to share data instead of having to integrate with numerous partners.
SAP also envisions a continuing evolution in business models. For example, the relatively new ride-sharing concept, and we’ve seen the start of usage-based insurance. In the future medication might be paid for based on how well it performs.
So given that context, how will blockchain impact SAP?
Source/More: Will blockchain disrupt SAP? – Ledger Insights
