SAP: ‘The modern vision is not far removed from the old one, and we will continue to ensure interoperability, even with multiple providers.’

SAP held SAP Sapphire Madrid 2025, the European edition of the software manufacturer’s main event, which took place a few days ago in Orlando.

The company is in the midst of expanding everything related to generative artificial intelligence and AI agents in business, where it already has over 200 use cases. This figure is growing practically every day thanks to the potential it offers customers at different technological levels: platform, applications, data and AI.

In fact, to develop ‘world-class enterprise AI’, data is needed. And SAP ‘is the best at managing business data.’ Christian Klein, CEO of SAP, was convinced of this during his appearance before the media who attended the event. He did not hesitate to state that ‘no large language model on the planet is capable of accessing the vast amount of information that SAP allows its customers to manage through its portfolio.’

It is true that the vast majority of software manufacturers are working on these AI developments and implementations, but SAP aims to differentiate itself through the aforementioned platform, SAP Business Suite, which in turn is supported by the SAP Business Technology Platform infrastructure and with the possibility of using SAP Integration Suite, which allows for the simplification—with the assistance of AI—of the integration of different scenarios from SAP or third-party companies.

These capabilities should not go unnoticed if we consider the large number of business application developments that organisations have been building and customising over decades. This is highly sophisticated software that provides exactly what companies need, but it has not been easy to modernise to adapt to current cloud models. That is why SAP has been working on a series of components to enable customers to enjoy both capability and simplicity.

In other words, SAP claims to have found the key to enabling organisations that have been developing applications for four decades to modernise them and move to the cloud in a ‘suite as a service’ model, without any surprises in their bills, as spokespersons explained at a press conference: ‘In the age of AI and in uncertain times, there is pressure to simplify and reduce costs, but there is also pressure to leverage AI for innovation. Achieving all this in such a complex landscape is very difficult, but with the integration we offer through our ‘Suite as a Service’ and SAP’s commitment, it is possible,’ said Muhammad Alam, member of the SAP Executive Board, who did not hesitate to point out the stability of costs through annual licensing as a service.

This stability is also compatible with the modular nature that has served the software manufacturer so well in the past. For those companies that still want to maintain certain traditional workloads, SAP assures that ‘the modern vision is not far from the old one, and we will continue to ensure interoperability, even with multiple vendors or API standards in hybrid environments.’

Privacy and data sovereignty in the age of AI

Since ChatGPT appeared on the technology scene, one of the biggest concerns has been the privacy of corporate data. OpenAI’s ‘free’ model is able to feed on the data shared by users themselves to increase its capabilities and intelligence. This is the price we pay for using ChatGPT. But it is unacceptable in business environments. Software manufacturers have been aware of this for some time, and SAP is no exception.

As a result, we find various measures and certifications that ensure that the information shared with these models is and will remain private thanks to processes such as data masking or the use of closed environments, where it is only used for internal processing and is not shared with anyone else. ‘Both we and our partners guarantee these practices during production and operations,’ said the CEO of SAP.

When it comes to executing workloads, SAP allows customers to choose where these processes are carried out: ‘They can do so in US or European hyperscalers. But even in the former case, we ensure that the data remains in Europe or that only people in Europe have access to that information.’

However, Klein pointed out that SAP operates its own data centres: ‘Of the 50 we have worldwide, 20 are in the European region. We are also establishing partnerships with local providers to offer more choice in terms of privacy and data protection.’

SAP accompanies you on the journey towards business transformation

During SAP Sapphire Madrid 2025, we had the opportunity to chat with Jan Gilg, CRO of SAP Americas and SAP Business Suite and Member of the SAP Extended Committee, who confirmed the various messages offered by the manufacturer throughout the conference.

This is the case with the importance of data, which is critical in describing how business processes are executed and how companies around the world operate: ‘Around 80% of global trade passes through some SAP system. Our customers have fairly good and very valuable control and data sets. This allows AI to work seamlessly in an integrated layer on top of the data. The new agents we are launching on our platform allow companies to be much more productive because they extract all the value from the information they handle,’ Gilg said.

This is where SAP Joule comes into play. Thanks to its integration with business data, it is becoming increasingly intelligent and is becoming the new interface for end users: ‘It can answer any question asked in natural language and access processes and data from SAP or third parties, which is truly powerful.’ In addition, AI agents capable of launching other processes and communicating with each other to return valuable results in a matter of seconds are implemented, the cycle of efficiency and scalability is successfully closed,’ added the executive.

The implementation of artificial intelligence has also had a huge impact on the journey towards the modernisation of SAP applications, mentioned above.

When asked about the complexity of transforming traditional SAP applications and processes to adapt them to the cloud, Gilg explained that this began in earnest in 2021, when Rise with SAP was launched: ‘At that time, it was already a hybrid world with many interconnected cloud services. And AI was also there, although not as much as today. Customers agreed that they wanted to modernise their applications, but they knew it was going to be a long and complex journey. So we decided to get even more involved and define a more prescriptive methodology so that customers could not only move their workloads to the cloud without changing anything, but also make it easier for them to review their processes and redo them if necessary. That’s what Rise with SAP enables.’

Indeed, that philosophy was embodied in a product, Rise with SAP, capable of providing tools to perform process diagnostics, visualise the architecture used in depth, acknowledge its components, its maintenance, how the interfaces between the different components are defined, etc.

Gilg went on to say that Rise with SAP has become a key piece of modernisation not only for customers, but also for integrators and, in general, for the entire SAP ecosystem. According to him, they have focused heavily on providing partners tools to facilitate their migration to the cloud: ‘We continue to define these methodologies for our integration partners as well. Probably 90% of all projects are executed by partners and not by us, so it was essential.’

Joule, the end-user interface that also communicates with other agents

Another announcement that caught our attention during SAP Sapphire 2025 was the integration of SAP Joule with Microsoft 365 Copilot. These are two competing AI platforms, but starting in Q3 of this year, they will understand each other and collaborate.

When asked about this important development, Gilg acknowledged a growing degree of interoperability between platforms and collaboration between different manufacturers: ‘Our philosophy is to be quite open when it comes to interoperability. If a customer uses SAP systems and also Microsoft 365, it makes sense for us to make things easier for them. It may be the case that the customer is using our ERP but also Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents… Joule will be able to combine data from both systems by connecting to Copilot and returning joint data. Of course, this integration is designed so that users know at all times where each piece of information comes from and which of the two assistants has extracted it, but in general it is about making work easier and optimising efficiency.’

This integration is just the beginning of what Gilg predicts. It is only a matter of time before the major manufacturers agree to increase interoperability, even between autonomous AI agents, ‘because it is a request that comes from customers, and rightly so. Soon we will see integrations based on open protocols through APIs so that agents from different manufacturers can communicate with each other with the assurance that there will be no data leaks between systems. There will be certain limitations, as is already the case with traditional APIs, but the market is undoubtedly moving towards greater integration.’