{"id":164776,"date":"2026-07-01T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/?p=164776"},"modified":"2026-07-01T10:54:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T08:54:49","slug":"autonomous-driving-with-sap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/autonomes-fahren-mit-sap\/","title":{"rendered":"Autonomous Driving with SAP"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the fast-paced world of the global software giant SAP, strategic visions now have the half-life of a mayfly; after all, just a year ago, the so-called North Star Architecture was hailed as the ultimate ERP savior, but now SAP CEO Christian Klein has already taken that star down from the sky and replaced it with the next glossy narrative: the \u201eAutonomous Enterprise.\u201c.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the term \u201eautonomous,\u201c Christian Klein means a magical ERP utopia in which so-called digital \u201esuper workers\u201c and an army of autonomous AI agents are supposed to handle complex business processes\u2014such as the quarterly financial close in the finance department\u2014not over grueling weeks, but in just a few days, virtually on their own.<\/p>

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The way SAP uses this term in its communications with its often long-suffering existing customers resembles a masterful, almost comical case of false advertising. Instead of truly reinventing the much-cited ERP wheel from the ground up, the company is resorting to a simple semantic shift, in which familiar Software-as-a-Service solutions are simply reorganized and embellished with the marketing-friendly prefix \u201eAutonomous.\u201c.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The cartoon by Robert Platzgummer (1975\u20132016) was first published in the May 2014 issue of E3. At the time, SAP CEO Bill McDermott (still without glasses) and SAP Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka were trying to sell a fast HANA to the enthusiastic existing SAP customer.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When we examine the technical foundation of this autonomous pipe dream, a four-part architectural puzzle emerges that, upon closer inspection, has a certain charm\u2014provided it functions flawlessly in the harsh reality. The foundation of this construct is the \u201eSAP Business AI Platform,\u201c which serves as the lowest level of orchestration and centrally integrates the deep process context, business data, and AI models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, since even the most intelligent large language model would fail miserably when faced with the historically evolved, notoriously cryptic table structures of an SAP system, SAP has introduced the \u201eSAP Knowledge Graph\u201c as a semantic \u201eBabelfish\u201c (the fictional creature from Douglas Adams\u2019 novel *The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy*) to act as an intermediary (see also graph theory in computer science and the SAP HANA Graph Engine). This graph is intended to make the highly complex SAP data readable and accessible to AI agents in the first place by translating the relationships between the countless data nodes, so that the machine does not begin to hallucinate dangerously and erratically within the ERP context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201eSAP Autonomous Suite\u201c\u2014the operational core of the system\u2014rests on this freshly translated database, where more than 50 domain-specific assistants and a subset of over 200 highly specialized AI agents are expected to diligently carry out their digital tasks. This entire orchestra of agents is ultimately orchestrated and commanded by SAP Joule in the top-level interaction layer, which has been simply named \u201eJoule Work.\u201c (pmf)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAP takes its existing customers for a walk on its own (autonomously),
\nwhile they aim to reach the summit with their ERP.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,7,44463],"tags":[35728,73,65,44326,624,43834,236,5246],"coauthors":[27825],"class_list":["post-164776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-satire-das-letzte","category-meinung","category-mag-26-06","tag-christian-klein","tag-erp","tag-hana","tag-ki-agent","tag-ki-joule","tag-openai","tag-sap","tag-satire","pmpro-has-access"],"acf":[],"featured_image_urls_v2":{"full":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450.jpg",1000,450,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-400x180.jpg",400,180,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-768x346.jpg",768,346,true],"large":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450.jpg",1000,450,false],"image-100":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-100x45.jpg",100,45,true],"image-480":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-480x216.jpg",480,216,true],"image-640":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-640x288.jpg",640,288,true],"image-720":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-720x324.jpg",720,324,true],"image-960":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-960x432.jpg",960,432,true],"image-1168":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450.jpg",1000,450,false],"image-1440":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450.jpg",1000,450,false],"image-1920":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450.jpg",1000,450,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450.jpg",1000,450,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450.jpg",1000,450,false],"trp-custom-language-flag":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-18x8.jpg",18,8,true],"bricks_large_16x9":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450.jpg",1000,450,false],"bricks_large":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450.jpg",1000,450,false],"bricks_large_square":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450.jpg",1000,450,false],"bricks_medium":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-600x270.jpg",600,270,true],"bricks_medium_square":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-600x450.jpg",600,450,true],"profile_24":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-24x24.jpg",24,24,true],"profile_48":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-48x48.jpg",48,48,true],"profile_96":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-96x96.jpg",96,96,true],"profile_150":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"profile_300":["https:\/\/e3mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Das-Letzte-Satire_1000x450-300x300.jpg",300,300,true]},"post_excerpt_stackable_v2":"

SAP f\u00e4hrt die Bestandskunden eigenst\u00e4ndig (autonom) spazieren,
\nw\u00e4hrend diese den Gipfel mit ihrem ERP erreichen wollen.<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"Satire: Das Letzte<\/a>, Die Meinung der SAP-Community<\/a>, MAG 26-06<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"Peter M. F\u00e4rbinger, E3 Magazine","url":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/author\/peter-m-faerbinger-e-3-magazin\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164776"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164874,"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164776\/revisions\/164874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164776"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e3mag.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=164776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}