Parallel Line As The Next Evolution of Our Public Cloud ERP Product Journey

[BeSchulze]

From Steady Growth to Exponential Success: Parallel Line As The Next Evolution of Our Public Cloud ERP Product Journey 

When we first launched our product in 2017, we set out with the goal of providing a solution that would evolve alongside the needs of our users. Over the years, we witnessed steady, linear growth that reflected our commitment to consistency and quality and a growing business scope. As we moved through the years, customers reflected their demand to evolve, adapt, and think beyond just incremental functional increases. When we embarked onto a new chapter particularly in 2021 and providing to the market starting in 2022, we experienced a pivotal growth spurt that marked a major turning point in our journey. And now, in 2025, we’re excited to introduce another innovation that has the potential to kick it up a notch – the Parallel Line concept – which we believe will be a key to unlocking even more significant flexibility to our customers in the years to come. 

 

A Foundation of Steady Growth

When we first started our journey in 2017, we built our product with a vision of steady, reliable growth. We focused on creating a product that was solid, dependable, and offered clear value to our users for the most essential business processes. As we learned from the feedback of early adopters and refined our offerings, our growth remained steady but linear, reflecting the methodical way we were scaling. This steady pace allowed us to establish a strong base of users, build a team that was focused on innovation, and create a culture that emphasized excellence in every detail.

While the growth was certainly positive, it was clear that our customers will need more than SaaS delivered features. It was obvious that continuously adding capabilities could only take us so far. We needed to fire our next salvo of innovation.

2022: A Milestone in Our Growth Trajectory

The year 2022 marked a significant turning point in our growth trajectory. We saw the results of strategic decisions we had been planning for some time, and the introduction of key innovations sparked the growth that would lay the ground for the next level.

One of the most important milestones was the introduction of a 3-system landscape. This new system architecture allowed us to enhance the scalability and flexibility for our customers, making it more adaptable to the evolving needs of our users. This shift was more than just a technical upgrade; it represented a transformation in the way our customers could approach own developments, deployment, and expansion. The 3-system landscape and it´s maintenance schedule allowed our customers to better meet the needs of a growing user base and last-mile-individualization demand.

Alongside this, we also rolled out extended and new extensibility concepts that gave our users, but more importantly our partners more ways to customize and expand the product. By providing greater flexibility and empowering customers to tailor the product to their specific needs, we unlocked a new level of engagement and adoption. With these innovations, growth surged. We observed an increase in new companies joining the community, and existing customers deepened their commitment to the product. But we knew this was just the beginning.

Introducing SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Parallel Line (PL)

Now, in Q2 2025, we’re thrilled to unveil our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Parallel Line (PL) concept — an entirely new approach to how our customers and partners can manage projects and drive innovation.

PL is not just another feature; it represents a major leap forward in how customers can operate, collaborate, and scale. It’s a new way of thinking about simultaneous project development and allows to manage exploration of new features and production line in parallel without compromising quality or focus.

The PL concept is designed to further increase the addressable market for SaaS ERP and allows customers to handle the increasing complexity of scaling in today’s fast-paced market. By enabling customers to run projects in parallel in an encapsulated tenant, we give flexibility to better address the diverse needs of our customers and help them rapidly respond to new opportunities as they arise.

The Parallel Line is available for 3-system landscape customers and included in their subscription.

The Main line is used for the initial implementation and daily operations to define scope, set up the organizational structure, configure and test business processes and use them productively.

The Parallel line was intensively discussed and tested with selected customers during the Early Adoption phase, and 2 main use cases turned out to be most relevant for our customers:

1. Make business configuration enhancements and test them safely in a separate environment. The workspace is copied, including all configuration. Once enhancements are completed, they can be merged back into the main line, e.g. for a rollout of new countries/regions or other larger business configuration enhancements.
2. Leverage the project line as kind of a sandbox system, e.g. to test run data migrations.

Customers can initiate a parallel line provisioning via SAP4Me through the 'Branch' step (1). Branch is a function that is used to set up the parallel line and replicate the existing configuration of the main line to the parallel line. ‘Rebase’ (2) is a function that is used to send any configurations created in the main line to the parallel line after branch. To complete the cycle, ‘Merge’ (3) is a function that is used to send any business configuration changes from the parallel line to the main line into production, once ready.

For those eager to delve into more details, the Digital Library (accessible with any S-user) and Notes 3580675 and 3542536 provide comprehensive overviews of the parallel line.

This is an update on how far we’ve come. PL is designed to be the next catalyst for growth – allowing our customers to expand, scale, and innovate more rapidly than ever before.

 

Wrap Up

With the introduction of Parallel Line and the continued evolution of our 3-system landscape and extensibility features, we are poised for even more significant growth. But we aren’t just focused on scaling – we’re focused on ensuring that each innovation we introduce aligns with our core values of quality, reliability, and customer empowerment.

We are committed to continuing our journey with the same passion and drive that got us here in the first place. The road ahead is full of opportunities, and with the Parallel Line, we’re more equipped than ever to navigate it.

Final Thoughts

What started as a steady, linear growth trajectory has transformed into something far more dynamic and exciting. The innovations we’ve introduced over the past few years – from the 3-system landscape to extensibility concepts and now PL – have not only fueled our product’s growth but have also positioned us to lead in an increasingly competitive market. With PL, we are now ready to enter a new era of growth and innovation.

For those eager to read more, the following “How-To” Practitioner blogs have been released.

Parallel Line Branch via SAP for ME

Introduction to the Parallel Line - SAP Community

And further details can be found here: Set Up Your SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition | SAP Help Portal

Thanks for tuning in, looking forward to your thoughts

Bert