What happened? On Friday we hosted Tom Dougherty, former MD at Accenture with over 20 years'' experience advising and implementing SAP ERP projects (among others). The call replay will be available on request. BNPP Exane View: Summary: Tom''s extensive experience ''at the coal face'' provided first-hand insight from the perspective of customers and partners on SAP''s product upgrade cycle and cloud transition. We came away with the following key conclusions: . Reinforcing why SAP''s product upgrade cycle appears to be de-coupled from the economic cycle: Tom''s first-hand insight on the extent of the customer planning across stakeholders (technical, strategic, operational, financial and even executive leadership) underscored the significance of the SAP upgrade / migration process that is almost unmatched in the software ecosystem. In our view, this helped articulate how SAP''s demand has remained resilient, despite the broader software demand environment seeing challenges over the past 12-18 months. Tom also outlined what SAP''s RISE initiative (launched Jan-2021) actually meant for customers, and why it was the necessary trigger to accelerate this process coordinating all of infrastructure, product, implementation and integration in a more structured format. . Why the music shouldn''t stop in 2027: As we recently wrote in our deep dive report (link) we think the market is focusing too much on the timeline to 2027, where SAP has imposed a deadline for customers'' legacy maintenance, with Group revenue growth expected to then decelerate back towards 6% by 2030 in Consensus estimates. Tom''s industry view supported our thesis that in reality the combination of a) capacity constraints in the partner / service integrator ecosystem and b) the lengthy migration timeframe (2+ years) should mean the upgrade cycle dynamics are in play well beyond 2027, and likely through 2030 in our view. We estimate SAP can grow Group revenue double digit % through 2029 and exit...