Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I give a quick preview of my conversation with SAP CEO Christian Klein for our CEO Outlook series.
Highlights
00:05 — I recently had a fascinating discussion with SAP CEO Christian Klein. More and more in 2025, Klein believes we’re going to see a lot of agent-powered transformation. This high-end goal of customers to be able to see things on an end-to-end basis, agents are really going to be the technology that allows these final — almost like these last mile — wishes and desires to happen.
01:44 — Klein said that four years ago, when he took over as the sole CEO of SAP, the big thing customers are coming to SAP for is to improve the efficiency of their existing processes. Today it’s different. They’re coming to SAP and saying, ‘Help me transform my business, not my technology, but my business, so that I can become the sort of company that I need to be in this very different future.’
02:32 — SAP has been hugely successful with its cloud ERP suite. I think it’s 10 straight quarters of growth of 30% or more. Klein said the agents will optimize and accelerate business processes from end to end. What SAP originally introduced as an assistant called Joule, has now been enhanced where it is an agent or super-agent.
AI Agent & Copilot Summit NA is an AI-first event to define opportunities, impact, and outcomes with Microsoft Copilot and agents for mid-market and enterprise companies. It takes place March 17-19 in San Diego, CA. Register now to attend.
03:41 — He talked about the importance of end-to-end processes. Like on a quote to cash, how that’s changing, the role that agents will play in ensuring that those things happen quickly, that they don’t get caught up in a lot of paperwork and exchanges or fragmented processes within companies.
04:04 — Klein believes that this is a new world of Business AI and the Joule super agents are going to unlock the ability to get end-to-end visibility and processes and close gaps. Now I want to point out that SAP was by far the fastest-growing enterprise applications company in the Cloud Wars Top 10. SAP’s growth rate was anywhere between 50% higher than anybody else’s or 2x and even 3x faster.
05:04 — Klein is not depending on that past success to hold true into 2025 but instead is hypercharging the company with a lot of these capabilities, reacting to what the new priorities of customers are. He was a Cloud Wars CEO of the Year in 2023, and he certainly has not lost his desire for ongoing innovation and great business outcomes for customers.
