- Professor Zeier graduated from the University of Wuerzburg in Business Management (Dipl-Kfm./MBA) and successfully completed his studies in Information Technology at the Technical University He worked for two years as a strategic IT Consultant before he gained his PhD. in Supply Chain Management Systems at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
- After three years as Product Manager for SCM Software and Director for Strategic Projects at SAP AG he joined Hasso-Plattner-Institute in 2006 as Deputy of Prof. Dr. Hasso Plattner for the Group “Enterprise Platform and Integration Concepts” (EPIC).
In April 2006 start of the research project “HANA”, hiring all core team members, project lead, and key driver of the development of In-Memory Technology, which resulted in SAP HANA, the basis of S/4HANA, launched in 2015 by SAP AG.
Co-author with Prof. Dr. Hasso Plattner of the book “In-Memory Data Management – An Inflection Point for Enterprise Applications” (2011). Extended version in 2012 focusing on innovative In-Memory Applications Development (“In-Memory Data Management – Technology and Applications”).
As a Co-Inventor, number of patents granted (e.g. US9626421B2, US8601038B2, US9542424B2, US8756686B2) regarding In-Memory Technology and Applications with Prof Dr. Hasso Plattner and the HANA team.
Since 2006 Executive Director of the MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation Europe. - 03/2007-08/2012 Project Pricipal of the Design Thinking collaboration and joint projects at d.school with Prof. Larry Leifer and Prof. Terry Winograd e.g., on global distributed Design Class ME310 and several Design Research Projects.
- From 05/2009-08/2012 Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 03/2012-08/2012 in residence. Guest talks and joint research in the area of innovative Enterprise Applications, Supply Chain, and Business Process Optimizations leveraging In-Memory Technology/SAP HANA.
- Joined Accenture in Sept. 2012 as Global Managing Director In-Memory Solutions (incl. SAP HANA) and as CTO for the Platform Solution Group (Analytics, Database & Technology, Big Data, Mobility). In 2013 founded the Accenture Innovation Center & Global HANA CoE. In 2016 responsibility for the global Line of Business for HANA-related Services and grew this to a multi-billion business.
Since 2017 CTO of SAP Business Group, a new created Group of 80.000+ skilled SAP people across Accenture. First Cloud Fellow of Accenture; advising Accenture’s 200+ Diamond clients (CIOs/CTOs) globally to create and implement market-leading, technology-led innovations leveraging e.g., the SAP HANA as a Digital Platform and S/4HANA as a lean Digital Core. Member of the Board “Master Technology Architect” (MTA), main focus as an MTA is on SAP and Cloud transformations. Development of Digital Cloud Coupling, a patent-granted, flexible, and resilient Composable Enterprise Architecture that gives companies the agility to continuously innovate on SAP Cloud (BTP), Google Cloud, MS Azure, AWS, and open-source multi-cloud solutions. - In June 2013 appointed as first honorary Professor at the faculty of Computer Science at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, focusing on In-Memory & Cloud Technology and Applications. Lectures also focus on topics and skills for Cloud Transformation, new lean Digital Core in S/4 HANA combined with a Composable Architecture to realize a Composable Enterprise.
2020 founding and board member of the Cloud Academy and Open Enterprise Cloud Initiative of Google Cloud, Accenture, and Otto-von-Guericke University.
More than 30 years experience with SAP/IT Systems: started with SAP R/3 Version 1.2 in 1992, SAP R/3/SAP ERP in the late 90s, SAP SCM (incl. SAP APO), HANA, SAP HANA, S4HANA, Cloud Transformation.