This is a very realistic take on SAP strengths. As an “operating system” for business, it’s really strong. There is quite a lot of depth in the ERP applications and, despite warts, they just work for many, many businesses.
However, the SAP cloud offerings represent a risky move for many customers. They have years of experience and operations based on their existing SAP ERP. In some cases, this is supported with extensive customization. Those customizations aren’t available in a multi-tenant cloud application and so the business process would have to change. That’s difficult to do.
As someone heavily involved with SAP, I’m very interested in how this will play out. Not very many companies are capable of developing their own ERP (like Tesla did) so there is still a lot of space for SAP (and their competitors). It’s a matter of balance and figuring out how to get existing customers comfortable with moving to new technologies while simultaneously attracting new ones.