
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 share insights from my conversation with SAP COO Sebastian Steinhauser on how the company is using AI and internal agility to accelerate innovation and customer value.
Highlights
00.18 — Last week, at SAP’s big Sapphire event, I had a chance to sit down and chat with Sebastian Steinhaeuser who is now the Chief Operating Officer at SAP. Before that, he was the Chief Strategy Officer. So, in his new role, Sebastian is able to bring that strategy experience into the COO role, where he also oversees the partner program, IT, marketing, and a number of other areas.
01:23 — Sebastian oversees a lot of parts of the company, pulls that together, and one of the big responsibilities Sebastian has is to help ensure that SAP moves as fast internally — and in its ability to deal with customers — as those customers need to move in these crazy times.

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02:13 — Sebastian said one of his key goals is: How do we shorten the distance, the time, the effort, the cost between having an idea and being able to implement it, to execute it, and see the impact of that? And those are the types of things — those learnings — that Sebastian said his organization takes and tries to share with customers.
02.38 — So, it’s not only about really what SAP is doing internally, but how then those experiences can provide insights and lessons for customers — the approximately half a million customers now that SAP has around the world.
- Check out the full 10-minute interview with Sebastian Steinhaeuser here.