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 report on SAP’s AI plan, which includes strategic partnerships and acquisitions as well as major shifts toward consumption pricing and customer alignment.
Highlights
00:28 — Over the past couple of years, SAP has been the growth leader in applications, growing anywhere from 50% to 250% faster than some of its major competitors.
00:41 — The company has undergone a shift to consumption pricing. This is something that will be phased in over the next couple of years. CEO Christian Klein says it reflects the way that people are using AI and the value they’re getting out of the product.
01:12 — SAP is developing tighter relationships with AI innovators. An interesting one is Palantir, which is now billing itself as an AI infrastructure company, serving as the software foundation enabling AI to do its best work.
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02:00 — There are three recent notable acquisitions:
- Reltio for Master Data Management
- Dremio for more SAP and non-SAP data pulled together
- Polar Labs to help SAP move forward with structured data
02:52 — Evidently, SAP is trying to capitalize on what’s happening with the AI Revolution and the new capabilities that come with it. I think that Klein’s leadership, focus, and willingness to take ambitious moves with acquisitions and strategic partnerships will be force multipliers in the market.
03:47 — Forward-deployed engineers will be a big part of SAP’s new AI alignment with customers, to help those customers rapidly develop and deploy AI agents and applications.
