Looking to extend its significant lead as the world’s fastest-growing enterprise apps, data, and AI vendor, SAP has booked about $88 billion in total cloud backlog while 90% of its biggest Q4 deals included its AI solutions or its Business Data Cloud.
In releasing SAP’s Q4 and full-year results, CEO Christian Klein outlined a 5-point growth plan centered on AI — particularly agents — and data, and I’ll get to that in a moment. But let’s first take a look at the key growth numbers that underpin my confidence in my recent decision to elevate SAP to the #4 spot on my Cloud Wars Top 10 weekly rankings:
- Total cloud backlog up 30% to $88 billion
- Total cloud revenue up 26% to $24.2 billion
- Cloud ERP Suite revenue up 32% to $20.8 billion
- Current cloud backlog up 25% to $24.2 billion
As shown in my recent analysis headlined “SAP Jumps to #4 on Cloud Wars Top 10 by Outgrowing Competitors up to 200%,” none of SAP’s primary competitors — including Oracle, Salesforce, Workday, and Microsoft — is coming close to SAP’s growth rates.
And with SAP’s total cloud backlog up 30% to about $88 billion and current cloud backlog up 25% to $24.2 billion, Klein believes his company can continue winning outsized shares of enterprise customers at least through 2027.
In SAP’s Q4 earnings call last week, Klein laid out his plan for maintaining SAP’s lead this year and into the next. Here’s a quick summary and then I’ll share Klein’s more-detailed comments for each:
- SAP’s large and fast-growing backlog (comparable to what some other vendors refer to as RPO, or remaining performance obligation)
- Cloud migrations result in 2-3X more revenue than on-prem
- Customers adding more SAP applications
- Booming mid-market growth driven by the SAP ecosystem
- Fast-growing contributions from Business AI and Business Data Cloud
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And here are Klein’s thoughts on each of those points.
1. $88-billion backlog: “This grew by 30%. It outperformed our current cloud backlog growth by five percentage points. In short, we have a significant amount of our future cloud revenue in the books, and given the ramps of the large deals over the next four years, we are increasingly building a strong foundation for total revenue acceleration through 2027.”
2. On-prem migrations to cloud: “Second, we will continue converting our installed base to the cloud with a multiplier of 2-3X. Considering our support revenue base of EUR 10.5 billion [about $12.1 billion], this represents a multi-billion euro cloud-revenue opportunity for us.”
3. Customers adding more SAP apps: “Third, the vast majority of our cloud customers are expanding their SAP footprint across the SAP Business Suite. They now clearly see the value of best of suite over best of breed, especially in the age of AI. So they leverage the best of suite approach not only to run their business processes end-to-end, but they also seek a harmonized data platform that provides the foundation for high-value business AI. As a result, in Q4 alone, almost two-thirds of our deals exceeding EUR 1 million [about $1.15 million] involved four or more lines of business, a remarkable increase of 25 percentage points. But we see this not only in increased up- and cross-selling numbers, but also in market share gains. Overall, we outperformed the cloud market by 10 percentage points in 2025.”
4. Booming mid-market business: “Fourth, it is not just the world’s largest enterprises that rely on SAP. With our Business Suite in the public cloud, SAP’s mid-market business is growing, too. We expand in the mid-market, and we are winning new customers through our Partner First strategy and the significant expansion of our reseller ecosystem. This channel is already growing more than 1.5X faster than our direct business, and we will substantially increase the contribution from our ecosystem.”
5. Huge Potential of Business AI and Business Data Cloud: “Finally, let’s conclude with the growth driver that has the highest potential and has, of course, the greatest strategic relevance by far: our Business AI and Business Data Cloud. The traction from 2025 is just the beginning.”
Final Thought
The world of enterprise software is changing far more rapidly than ever before — apps to agents, apps with agents, AI-infused apps, data clouds driving seamless data integration, etc. — and its potential to drive enormous levels of business value for customers is extraordinary.
Across that spectrum, SAP is the leading player and is setting the agenda. And the ultimate proof of that comes in the growth figures laid out above, which are crystal-clear and flawless reflections of where customers — in a market jammed with world-class competitors — are choosing to spend their money.
