SAP solution: AI/Joule

Investors fear that expensive cloud software subscriptions will be radically devalued as sophisticated AI agents perform the tasks of office workers largely autonomously, drastically reducing the need for thousands and thousands of individual licenses.

E3 editor-in-chief Peter Färbinger spoke to Stefan Nogly, Chief Technology Officer at the German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG), at the Technology Days 2026 in Hamburg. Stefan Nogly tries to keep an eye on and orchestrate all aspects of the members.

While SAP CEO Christian Klein uses artificial intelligence primarily as a sales vehicle for his cloud strategy and invests huge sums in hyperscaler partnerships, Siemens CEO Roland Busch has a much sharper and more independent vision.

DSAG's Technology Days 2026 in Hamburg in March focused on AI, data and security. The user association is calling for more clarity from SAP. At the same time, companies themselves are required to consistently align their IT strategies and actively drive forward transformation.

AI and Agentic AI do not add value to ERP. AI will eventually replace, marginalize and eliminate traditional ERP. S/4 will be around for many years to come, but the future lies elsewhere.

Under the strict dictates of the SAP Clean Core strategy, the future of Abap is defined by cloud compliance, AI, strict governance and absolute upgrade stability. Users are forced to rethink their historically grown and individualized ERP architectures.

The year 2026 marks a historic and critical turning point for the SAP community, where the glossy visions of the Walldorf-based software group SAP meet the pragmatic reality of existing customers with full force. The deadline for the end of maintenance of the old ERP system in 2027 is approaching, increasing the pressure on S/4 migrations and having a noticeable and lasting impact on the service provider market.

The podcast for the E3 cover story is a supplement and continuation of the online texts from the E3 print magazine. A dialog between two AI avatars with knowledge from the German-speaking E3 editorial team provides an insight into the processes surrounding SAP and the SAP community. Translations into English, Spanish and French are provided by DeepL and Google.

RPT-1 is SAP's technical attempt to transfer Transformer technology from language processing to SAP's core competence - relational business data - in order to eliminate the weaknesses of conventional LLMs.

SAP has announced a major expansion of its learning ecosystem to fundamentally change the way professionals acquire and demonstrate SAP expertise in an AI-powered world.

Europe and Germany are clearly lagging behind the USA and China in terms of rapid AI scaling despite good prerequisites. KPMG study sees opportunity for Europe to strengthen technological sovereignty and reduce dependencies without abandoning responsible standards.

Cloud computing is no longer a megatrend. The SAP share price has fallen by up to 40 percent from its all-time high. In an interview with Manager Magazin, SAP CEO Christian Klein promises to restore the old glory, this time with AI.