Line-drawn portrait of Masoud Ahanchian

Masoud Ahanchian

Enterprise ArchitectBuilderAdvisor

Dubai · London

// about

I'm an architect by trade and a builder by inclination; the kind of person who can spend the morning helping a CIO reason about a multi-million-dollar ERP roadmap, then spend the afternoon arguing with a DINOv2 model about why its embeddings look like that. After 25+ years across enterprise transformation, energy, and finance, I now sit in SAP's specialist architecture team working on the region's most complex cloud deals. Outside the day job, I ship open-source AI projects, write the occasional opinionated thing on LinkedIn, and working my way through quantum computing on the basis that nothing keeps you humble like discovering a whole new tier of things you don't understand.

// story

  1. 1980s–90s the magic box

    I grew up in the 1980s when computers were only a thing you saw on a TV screen and I was fascinated by this mysterious magical box. So I started learning GW Basic at the ripe age of 11 on a Commodore 64 (for the younger readers, that's 64 KB of memory!). And this is how the journey started. I got hooked on the magic and as one mystery was solved to some extent, a new one opened up: what's inside the box? And how does the magic work? So as a teenager I started learning about circuits and basics of binary logic, gates etc. which clarified the path for me: I decided to study Hardware Engineering. I was convinced that the magic lies in the hardware, not the software!

  2. 2000–2005 infrastructure

    The early part of my career was focused mainly on infrastructure, networking (Microsoft and Cisco) and data centres. I enjoyed spending time in cold rooms with large square boxes of routers, switches and servers. But then came a realisation: hardware was mostly invisible. It was commodity. What people and businesses saw, liked, valued and wanted was the software. So surely that was the magic! A two-year part-time Master's degree in "Business Computing" was a great learning opportunity to expand my horizons and pivot more towards software and business processes.

  3. mid-2000s software & SAP

    The world of software was a new discovery for me and then came SAP with a world of its own. I spent the next few years learning about SAP in various roles including hands-on technical roles, Technical Project Manager, Technical Architect and service delivery and operations. In parallel, I got interested in Enterprise Architecture which in the mid 2000s was still a fairly new concept in most organisations. I met John Zachman, the original pioneer of the concept, at a conference and started applying the principles in my work.

  4. now the synthesis

    The journey has taken many twists and turns into the world of Energy and Finance and eventually back to SAP, where I am now. And my current thinking is that the magic is not the hardware or the software. The magic is the combination of both working hand in hand to deliver value. Like an artist who needs both an artistic mind and an artistic hand to create a masterpiece.

    What I learned over the years is that although technology changes very rapidly, the principles remain the same. You always need a clear definition of the business problem and what the value is. On a personal level I love technology for the sake of it and could happily spend hours, days, weeks tinkering and building. But in business and the wider society, technology alone is not enough and should not be the starting point. And although new technologies can seem complex and confusing, once you start breaking it down into smaller logical components, you can start making sense of it.

And as the legendary Werner Vogels says, now go build…

// projects

// elsewhere