Sovereign SAP Sapphire Europe

Personally, the SAP in-house exhibition Sapphire in Orlando (Florida, USA) has been creepy and unappealing to me for many years. I'm not a fan of the USA. I'm also concerned about the work-life balance: flights to the USA, especially to Florida, have never been attractive - even Lufthansa's Business and First Class have failed to convince me. It is and remains a hassle and the connecting flights from Frankfurt and Munich are a residual risk.

A very good argument against Sapphire USA this year was Sapphire Europe in Madrid: unfortunately, I was unable to attend personally, but I only heard positive things from my colleagues, my DSAG colleagues from the Executive Board and, of course, from my SAP regulars. So it works in Europe too! An event relaunch for the Sapphire customer event with a focus on Europe could therefore be a real kick-off for sovereignty and authenticity in 2026.

The IT scene and the SAP community are currently focusing on the topic of cloud computing and hyperscalers in particular are being pilloried. However, SAP is also being criticized for its heavy liaison with hyperscalers and other providers such as Cloudflare. Of course, SAP is often caught between two stools: The US business is hugely important to SAP and therefore S/4 availability via the hyperscalers. In Europe, I am observing an awakening process in an emerging discourse on sovereignty.

In a networked world, moving away from SAP cloud computing and returning to your own data center seems like a cheap move. With SAP Sovereign Cloud, we can choose between different deployment models. Control over our ERP infrastructure, IT platforms and processes should enable us to adapt to regulatory and operational requirements. SAP wants to help us comply with local laws in Europe and scale our ERP systems according to our own specifications. To summarize: an old demand from our DSAG.

Martin Merz, President of SAP Sovereign Cloud, said: „Europe's digital resilience is based on sovereignty that ensures security, scalability and sustainability. The full-stack offering for sovereign cloud solutions gives customers the ability to choose their preferred deployment model while helping them meet the highest compliance requirements.“

They say that paper is patient, and my SAP regulars are very pleased with this insight from SAP. But SAP should think more comprehensively, more sustainably and further: it is not just the ERP architecture that is affected by the desire for sovereignty, but the entire infrastructure of a business organizational structure and process organization. If you want to be truly sovereign, you have to operate in sovereign end-to-end processes based on a sovereign hardware and software foundation. This orchestration requires more than an SAP commitment to the on-prem idea.

How confident is SAP BTP with a generative AI hub that primarily uses the US LLMs? Which agent AI will have access to S/4 Hana in the future? Who secures and orchestrates data sovereignty on a Business Data Cloud? My SAP regulars are emphatically pleading and arguing that sovereignty should first and foremost be a mindset in the SAP community and not just a technical function that SAP quickly makes available.

An initiative for a sovereign ERP on the occasion of a central Sapphire Europe in Madrid, Paris or Frankfurt would be a lasting commitment that SAP wants to help us European - but globally active - existing SAP customers. Double-entry bookkeeping was invented in Europe. Business administration teaching is deeply rooted in European universities. SAP is a European IT birthplace. We should cultivate and preserve this heritage with care and respect.