Königstein im Taunus, Hesse, Germany
Prof. Dr. Alexander Zeier is Co-Founder & Chief Scientist at Nova Intelligence — the agentic AI platform for SAP, with customer deployments demonstrating triple productivity gains in SAP modernization. Backed by leading Silicon Valley investors Accel and Conviction, Nova transforms enterprises across ECC-to-S/4HANA migrations and the evolution of existing S/4HANA systems. Nova’s AI agents analyze legacy code, identify fit-to-standard opportunities, and recompose extensions — reducing time, cost, and technical debt. Before founding Nova, Prof. Zeier served as Deputy to SAP founder Prof. Hasso Plattner, initiating and leading the original Project “HANA” to invent the “New Architecture” for the next generation of SAP systems. He headed the core team from April 2006 to the 2012 launch and co-invented eight patented innovations. He is co-author with Prof. Plattner of In-Memory Data Management (Springer), which explains the key inventions and business value of the new SAP HANA platform — the “New Architecture” that became the foundation of SAP S/4HANA. He spent over a decade at Accenture as Managing Director and Global CTO for SAP, directing hundreds of enterprise transformations to HANA and S/4HANA and leading the world’s largest SAP practice with 85 000 professionals. He was Accenture’s first Cloud Fellow and a Master Technical Architect (MTA) on the Global MTA Board, and founded the Accenture Innovation Center for SAP HANA, building a fast-growing business with multi-billion-dollar annual revenue. Earlier (1998–2006) he earned his PhD on SAP’s supply-chain solution (SAP APO) under Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Peter Mertens — completed in three years — and then joined SAP as Product Manager, helping lead the solution to global market leadership by 2005. During his MBA (Diplom-Kaufmann) studies, he began working with SAP systems in 1992 on SAP R/3 1.2. With over three decades shaping the SAP landscape — from inventing the HANA data platform to leading its largest practice as CTO — Prof. Zeier is now leveraging his expertise as Chief Scientist at Nova Intelligence. Founded in June 2024 as a market-leading agentic AI coding platform, Nova Intelligence was specifically focused on SAP with his entry as Co-Founder in fall 2024. A dedicated Nova AI Knowledge Core preserves each customer’s legacy logic to power AI agents. Prof. Zeier has been Honorary University Professor of Computer Science at the University of Magdeburg since 2013, author of 150+ publications and 10 books, and served as Visiting Scholar at Stanford and Visiting Professor at MIT.
As Co-Founder & Chief Scientist at Nova Intelligence, I’m leveraging 30+ years of SAP experience—including co-inventing SAP HANA, the “New Architecture” powering S/4HANA, and serving over a decade as Global CTO for SAP at Accenture, where I led many of the world’s most complex S/4HANA transformations—for a new mission: Together with my co-founders Emma Qian (CEO, formerly Google DeepMind) and Sam Yang (CTO), we are building the first agentic AI platform purpose-built for SAP. Nova Intelligence was founded in June 2024 and was already a market-leading agentic AI coding platform. When I joined as Co-Founder in fall 2024, the platform was fully focused on SAP and is now in productive use at customers for SAP modernization. The platform triples the productivity of SAP teams — both internally and at service partners — across the entire SAP value chain. It particularly supports ECC-to-S/4HANA migrations as well as the modernization of existing S/4HANA systems. It reduces custom code to the truly differentiating process logic and rebuilds it Clean Core compliant on ABAP Cloud, RAP and BTP. Orchestrated by the Nova AI Knowledge Core, the platform combines deep SAP architectural understanding with frontier AI from leading minds of Google DeepMind and Meta AI. Nova Intelligence is backed by SAP.iO as strategic investor. Learn more at https://www.novaintelligence.com
First Honorary Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, focusing on Enterprise Systems, In-Memory/SAP, Cloud, and AI. Lectures center on Enterprise Transformation, building a lean Digital Core in S/4HANA through a Composable Architecture for a Composable Enterprise, and integrating Generative AI. In 2020, co-founded and joined the board of the Cloud Academy and the Open Enterprise Cloud Initiative (Google Cloud, Accenture, and Otto von Guericke University). Current research initiatives explore AI Agents for SAP Transformation, enabling end-to-end migration and optimization for SAP HANA and S/4HANA.
Legal Evaluation, Research, and Education reg. Generative AI and Superintelligence, and the Impact of AI Legislation on Companies, Industries, and Governments at Global, European Union, and German Levels. Development of joint custom GPT GenAI Models, e.g., GPT Media Law Advisor.
As a partner, I collaborate with a distinguished team of former executives, each boasting over 30 years of expertise in their respective fields. We specialize in advising enterprises on digital transformation initiatives, focusing particularly on upgrading legacy SAP ERP systems to S/4HANA. My role involves optimizing customer-specific extensions, enhancing our capabilities in SAP HANA & S/4HANA, generative AI (Custom GPTs, LLMs), real-time analytics, machine learning, and cloud transformations. Together, we address critical challenges related to risks, costs, and potential delays. We provide expert guidance that supports efficient and effective project execution. Our collective experience helps ensure that clients are well-equipped to achieve seamless transitions and implement strategic solutions that significantly improve system performance and business operations.
Senior Management Advisor for SAP ERP Optimization & Modernization to S/4HANA, Cloud Transformation, and Augmentation with Generative AI: Advisory on IT strategy, enterprise architecture, and S/4HANA implementation plan to assist in optimizing digital transformation initiatives. Advising members of supervisory boards (incl. GenAi / ESG), executive boards, C-Level Executives (incl. CAIOs), and investors, e.g., on comprehensive cloud transformations, modernization of legacy SAP systems, and evaluation of latest disruptive Technologies.