Notes from inside the enterprise IT stack.
Operator-voice essays on SAP migrations, master data, IT procurement, enterprise transitions, and EU regulation — written from 15 years on both the vendor-distribution and buyer-operator sides. Real T-codes, real article numbers, real failure modes.
The Vihren Labs Operator Standard
Seven principles for running the enterprise IT stack — written from fifteen years in the operator's seat. The standard every product in the catalogue is held to, and the door to the whole catalogue. Free to read.
Read the standard →Governance, not agents: the operating model most AI programs skip
Most AI agent projects don't fail on the model — they fail on the operating model: no decision rights, no use-case gate, broken data, runaway cost, no owner after launch. Why the first question isn't 'which agent should we buy' but 'who owns this, and how do we decide', and what an AI Center of Excellence actually is — a thin function with a charter, a GO / PILOT / PARK gate, eval standards, a risk register, and run-and-maintain ownership across the agent lifecycle.
Read →Touchless ordering is a master-data achievement nobody sees
An operator's account of turning manual product creation into an AI-driven, rules-based, fully-automated master-data engine at distribution scale — ingestion to touchless quoting, the governance that holds it, and what actually breaks. From someone who came to master data from the reporting side, where the drift shows up first.
Read →Your AI agent will amplify your data problems, not fix them
An AI agent is an amplifier — point it at fragmented, duplicated, or stale data and it scales the confusion, fluently. Why bad data no longer looks broken but looks persuasive, why enterprise systems were never built for autonomous decisions, and the three readiness questions — identity, completeness, source of truth — to answer before you deploy an AI agent on anything that matters.
Read →Vendor-side observations on how enterprise IT procurement actually works
What the vendor and distribution side actually does when your IT spend comes up — whether it's a competitive RFP or a quiet renewal. The signals they read: is the competition genuine, who controls the channel and deal registration, the executive relationship map, your own internal fault lines, whether you can operationally switch — and the two renewal mistakes that cost more than any discount saves.
Read →The cutover-window decision nobody makes early enough
Every S/4HANA migration has a cutover window — and the rollback decision inside it is the hardest call in the whole project, not technically but psychologically. The three questions the best teams answer before T-Day: the written go/no-go criteria, who holds the call, and where the point-of-no-return actually sits.
Read →Three IT procurement mistakes I've watched repeat from the vendor side
From 15 years on the vendor-distribution side of enterprise IT deals: the three renewal mistakes that repeat across organisations — starting the conversation at T-30 instead of T-90, negotiating price instead of contract terms, and never asking what the distribution channel already knows — and what the best procurement teams do instead.
Read →What supervisory authorities actually look for in DORA and EU AI Act compliance
Modern EU ICT and AI regulation is no longer a document-based compliance exercise — it's a governance-maturity assessment. What that means in practice for EU AI Act deployment governance (the four controls that make you defensible) and DORA ICT third-party risk (why your register is a procurement inventory, not a concentration-risk picture), and the shift underneath both.
Read →The S/4HANA deadline math most organizations calculate wrong
SAP ECC mainstream maintenance ends December 31, 2027 — but for most mid-market organizations the real cut-off was mid-2025, because transformation capacity is finite. The lead-time math, the capacity crunch, why procurement misreads ERP sourcing, the readiness signals that beat RAG status, the rollback decision nobody pre-commits, and why hypercare is where the program is actually judged.
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