Mueller latest to leave SAP leadership ranks
SAP CTO Juergen Mueller is leaving the company as the result of an incident at an event, leaving questions about the direction of SAP's Business Technology Platform.
SAP's leadership shakeup continues with the exit of CTO and executive board member Juergen Mueller after more than a decade of service and just months after extending his contract for three years.
Mueller and SAP will part ways Sept. 30 after reaching a mutual agreement. The catalyst for the decision stems from inappropriate behavior involving Mueller at a past company event, according to SAP, but the company did not provide additional information.
"I want to address an incident at a past company event where my behavior was inappropriate. I regret being inconsiderate and sincerely apologize to everyone affected. I recognize my behavior at that moment did not reflect our values at SAP. I take full responsibility and believe stepping down is best for the company. I wish the team continued success," Mueller stated in a press release.
Mueller's departure comes a month after the company announced chief marketing and solutions officer Julia White and head of sales Scott Russell would depart SAP at the end of August. SAP described their exits as a "strategic transition" to streamline its executive board and to focus on a "Suite- and AI-first strategy."
Mueller joined SAP in 2013 as head of the company's Innovation Center Network and assumed the position of chief innovation officer in 2016. He was promoted to CTO and the executive board in 2019. In April, SAP renewed Mueller's contract through 2027.
In the CTO role, Mueller was instrumental in developing and setting the strategy for the SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP's development and integration environment. SAP BTP is now being used by more than 23,000 customers, according to the company.
Mueller also served as the one of the main proponents of SAP's clean core technology strategy, which is focused on enabling customers to prepare legacy SAP systems for the transition to S/4HANA Cloud systems. SAP believes its BTP and clean core technology strategy are crucial for customers to take advantage of the cloud and cutting-edge technologies such as generative AI.
SAP CEO Christian Klein will take over most of the Technology and Innovation Board that Mueller leads until a successor is named, according to the company. Mueller also oversees the SAP Global Security and Cloud Compliance team, which will now join the Customer Services and Delivery Board under executive board member Thomas Saueressig.
Major changes unlikely, but timing is challenging
Mueller has been in his role for years and is generally well-regarded, so there will likely be some negative disruption for SAP's technology and platform story, according to Liz Herbert, an analyst at Forrester Research. His departure comes at a sensitive time with SAP's developer conference TechEd slated for October where BTP often takes center stage.
Herbert believes SAP will name a replacement fairly quickly since it's such an important role for the company and it has other platform and technology focused executives to choose from.
"My sense is that we won't necessarily see a large deviation from their technology and platform strategy since [Mueller] doesn't seem to be leaving due to professional differences, but rather this unfortunate personal incident," she said.
The future of SAP BTP as the platform to extend SAP applications across the cloud should not be a concern with Mueller's exit, as it has complete buy-in across the board, according to Jon Reed, co-founder of Diginomica, an enterprise industry analysis firm.
"But [Mueller] was an identifiable and relatable voice for the developer community, and SAP developers are going through a lot of transitions right now, so that's definitely a change for SAP,” Reed said.
Mueller's exit is the latest indication that the era of co-founder and company icon Hasso Plattner is ending, as several executives that he had hired and mentored are leaving, according to Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research who is not related to the SAP executive.
Klein has always supported SAP BTP, so a change in the importance for the platform is unlikely, he agreed.
However, SAP now has its least experienced board in its history, with just three members having served more than one year, Holger Mueller said.
"That does not have to be a bad thing, and we see Klein setting up SAP as he wants it to work," he said. "The new chief revenue officer and chief marketing officer hires will be crucial to complement the team to get done what really matters, which is getting customers to upgrade to S/4HANA."
Jim O'Donnell is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial who covers ERP and other enterprise applications.
