I was deeply saddened when learning about the sudden death of Burkhard Juhl. We only spoke a few weeks back and I was already looking forward to seeing him again soon. Burkhard and I had stayed in touch after he went into his well-deserved retirement, and once we even privately met in Venice – the city we both fell in love with.
The first time I met Burkhard I wasn’t even a SAP employee – I was a partner employee at DEC and Burkhard led the first ever EarlyWatch training for partners back in 1998.
At the time, I often complained about “that one tough guy from SAP” – Burkhard. He wouldn’t give us any room for excuses and he wouldn’t accept if one of us wasn’t able to answer a technical question. “How do you want to serve your customer if you don’t know this?” – his default reply.
 
It was only a few years after, when I understood the gift he had given us. I will never forget the days of the “Primo Verlag”, where Burkhard was instrumental in creating a volume delivery machine out of nothing – in a matter of weeks (and it is only a few weeks back that I mentioned to a colleague “we need to do it like back at the Primo building”)
 
I owe Burkhard a lot, he made me a better person. His memory will live on.