In this On Location report from SAP Sapphire, Bob Evans and John Siefert provide insightful commentary on the dynamic AI landscape, strategic partnerships, and the pivotal role of data in driving business transformation.
Highlights
SAP’s Accelerated Expansion (00:37)
Bob is at Sapphire, which he says, “has been a booming, bustling event.” Christian Klein is entering his fifth year as CEO. He is keeping his foot on the accelerator. Bob was struck by a couple of numbers shared at the event: SAP says it has 300 million end users now. By the end of this calendar year, 80% of the most frequently used business process applications and processes will be used with Joule. The Joule copilot is the front end. Klein says 300 million people are going to be 20% more productive by the end of this year. Joule isn’t going to be just on a limited number of SAP apps, but on many of its mainstream, most heavily used applications.
Gen AI: Redefining Business (03:00)
SAP’s building tooling and solutions in its GenAI Hub to help partners and customers extend and move forward like this because SAP believes, and Christian Klein really pushed this point home, that AI and GenAI is not just sort of a different way of doing things, but profoundly different in terms of what happens, what are the outcomes, and what’s possible. The speed at which this transformation or this move to AI will happen is going to be breathtaking. Bob thinks SAP wants to be sure that it’s not getting caught on the backside of that.
Amazon and Microsoft Partnerships (05:30)
There’s a very strong expansion of the long-term relationship with AWS and Amazon related to the SAP Business Technology Platform, which is now going to be fully available on AWS. They’re also going to have full, unconditional integration of Microsoft Copilot with Joule from SAP — and that’s going to happen right away. While Microsoft has been doing other integrations like this with other vendors, SAP and Microsoft execs believe what they’re doing together is the deepest and most comprehensive; it’s a strong relationship that’s extending into the world of AI.
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Co-opetition (07:57)
Microsoft and SAP have had a strong relationship for decades. They’re definitely competing in the enterprise application market but are now collaborating – similar to Oracle and Microsoft. They recognize they can do more things for customers together than either could do individually. The same is true of ServiceNow and Microsoft.
Data is Gold (09:36)
If you look at the world’s two largest enterprise applications vendors, ServiceNow and SAP, they’re both now starting to position themselves as data companies. Marc Benioff hasn’t been using the term “applications” anymore; he’s been calling them “platforms.” In the earnings call last week, Benioff was calling data “gold.” SAP has been using the term “data treasure.” Bob suggests this shift could be due to the surge in what’s happening with AI.
The data in the SAP systems and the way it goes end-to-end is increasing in significance. That’s one of the biggest things to come out of Sapphire.
Final Thoughts (11:15)
Bob thinks SAP has been reflecting on the promises it has made ad what the business outcomes are turning out to be. The tech companies that invest in SAP will gain value out of the innovation, speed, simplicity, and better engagement with its customers.
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