• Lecturer: Prof. Dr. h.c. Hasso Plattner, Dr. Matthias Uflacker
• Teaching support: Franziska Dobrigkeit
• 6 ECTS (graded)
• Initial seminar introduction:October 22, 2018 at 9.15 AM (D.E-9/10, Campus 2) - Slides
• Enrollment until October 26, 2018
• Schedule:
  • Introduction: October 22, 2018
  • Workshop: November 8/9, 2018 (F.E-7, Campus 2), various talks and group exercises
  • Intermediate presentations: February 18, 2019 - 9.15 AM (D.E-9/10, Campus 2)
  • Seminar block week: February 25, 2019 - March 1, 2019, D-School Mainbuilding 3rd Floor
  • Documentation due 31st March 2019 - Requirements

In this year's trends and concept seminar we focus on the transition from a classical ERP to an Enterprise Cloud Platform. The main focus will lie on the migration and accompanying changes and adaptions. In Case Studies with real customers and through their real-world examples, students will deal with the questions how a migration to the cloud platform will allow a company to converge closer to the standard software, which customer-specific extensions will still be necessary and how those can be implemented or migrated.

The goal of the seminars is to identify strength and weaknesses in current migration approaches and extension possibilities and to develop concepts that help to transition to the cloud platform from a process or a technical view point.

Three main things will support you in your task, an introduction into use cases and possibilities for extensions and customizations in directly SAPs ERP system (ECC) and its cloud platform, an introduction into interview and observation techniques, contact to domain experts and customers.

The course is composed of multiple interwoven parts. At first, the students are given a challenge (this year, improving the migration experience from classical ERP to cloud based ERP). In an introductory workshop students will get acquainted with the topic and gather first hands-on experiences. Following the workshop students will be in contact with customers to conduct case studies about their transition experience. Based on these case studies, areas for improvement will be identified and process-oriented or technical concepts for improvement will be developed. Finally, Students will document the knowledge they gained and their results.

The participation in Trends and Concepts in the Software Industry I is recommended as a preparation for this lecture, but not mandatory.
The seminar schedule consists of the following:

• We start with a 2-day introduction workshop on the 8th and 9th of November where basic knowledge about ERPs and the need and possibilities for customization and extensions will be explained and experienced in hands-on exercises.
• The second part of the seminar is a case study with actual customers about their transition to the cloud, identifying strength and weaknesses of this customers journey.
• The next part of the seminar comprises the block lecture with Prof. Plattner where the cases will be presented and concepts for improvement will be developed, refined and polished, following a hackathon-like process for technical solutions and a design thinking style work for process oriented-solutions. The seminar week will close with a final presentation of the developed concept.
• The lecture concludes with a documentation of the case study and the developed concept.

Participants will

• learn about fundamental principles behind enterprise cloud platforms
• become familiar with real business use cases and how they can be mapped to a cloud offering
• understand the need for customization and extensibility of cloud-based enterprise applications
• work hands-on and write, test, and deploy code for cloud-based systems
• improve their presentation skills

Prior knowledge about the fundamentals of in-memory database technology & enterprise data management is beneficial, e.g., through:

• having attended the previous lecture Trends and Concepts in the Software Industry I
• having attended the online lecture In-Memory Data Management

We expect active participation in the team and during the block seminar. Grading will be determined by

• Engagement in discussions, the project, and team work (25%),
• Implemented prototype and the final presentation (50%),
• Brief documentation of your insights, proposed solution and the resulting implementation (a written report per team - 15-25 pages LNCS, 25%).