In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I talk about what I expect the focus to be at SAP’s imminent Sapphire event.
Highlights
00:01 — I want to suggest five key strategic issues that I think will dominate Sapphire. First, Business AI and its Joule copilot. SAP has moved aggressively to try to position Business AI as something natively built in. I can remember back when any SAP application was “industrial.” The interface was pretty clunky.
01:08 — Now, SAP CEO Christian Klein says it’s going to have natural language and human speech. Contrast that to what it had been like a while back; it’s a very different world ahead. The Joule copilot is a huge part of this idea.
01:57 — On-prem migration. If you want the advantages of AI, you have to get to the cloud. We’re going to hear more, I expect, about the new group formed by Thomas Saueressig, around customer success and adoption. A key part of this will be to help push those on-prem customers over to the cloud.
02:51 — The third big point is the emergence of the Cloud ERP Suite. This is a package of existing SAP applications across financial, supply chain, HCM, procurement, and others. But it’s not like in the old days, where, if you wanted a piece, you had to take everything. These are now offered in a modular format that allows customers to pick and choose as they like.
04:07 — In the industry space where SAP has always been strong, the emergence, clarification, and enhancements made to its Business Network are going to be a big deal in helping customers be able to engage with entire value chains and move as quickly as their markets need them to move.
04:35 — Last, the Business Technology Platform and Datasphere. The Business Technology Platform is like the central nervous system for SAP and its applications. Datasphere is in some ways what some companies call a data cloud, but SAP says it’s much more, a fabric that helps business customers unleash the power of their data, and access not just SAP data, but also third-party data.
