SAP sits Joule at the helm of apps, data 'flywheel'
The vendor also made its Sapphire 2025 conference a showcase for solving AI data challenges with Business Data Cloud and integrated 'suites' of cloud applications.
ORLANDO, Fla. -- At its annual Sapphire conference, SAP filled in elements of its vision of automated enterprises managed by interacting with a Joule AI copilot hovering everywhere, answering questions, making recommendations and taking actions by accessing fully integrated cloud applications and data -- even from outside SAP systems.
In demos from the keynote and other presentations, SAP pitched this more responsive kind of ERP user experience as the perfect tool to respond to the current economic uncertainty. In one demo, a user showed how Joule provided alerts about new tariffs and drew on data from SAP supply chain, sales and HR modules to recommend quick responses to the change.
The company also repositioned its S/4HANA Cloud ERP and related applications including Ariba, Fieldglass and Concur as an integrated suite. Referring to them collectively as SAP Business Suite -- a throwback to the brand name of the application modules surrounding ERP Central Component -- SAP introduced these AI-infused SaaS application packages as a new enticement to migrate ERP to the cloud. For several years, it has emphasized its Rise with SAP and Grow with SAP services as the best route for customers to move off on-premises SAP systems.
"We will show you how we will get you to the Business Suite in the cloud, making your Rise and Grow with SAP journey even faster, simpler and at lower cost," said SAP CEO Christian Klein in the Sapphire opening keynote Tuesday.
Analysts found SAP's data story at Sapphire to be robust, competitive and promising, but they also noted that customers -- who have been down similar roads with SAP before -- will provide the real test.
Harnessing a flywheel of AI, apps and data
Throughout the keynote, SAP executives returned to the concept of a flywheel -- individual components that interact to build new energy and momentum -- to explain a three-layered digital transformation strategy that ties together AI, data and applications.
SAP showed new offerings in all three areas that it promised to deliver by either the third quarter or second half of the year.
SAP CEO Christian Klein speaks during the opening keynote of SAP Sapphire 2025.
The vendor took steps to make Joule omnipresent in business applications to help users find data, discover insights and streamline workflows while bolstering its agentic AI capabilities. Seventy-eight new use cases for Joule were unveiled at the show, adding to the 100 already released. SAP said this omnipresence will improve users' AI experience and scale productivity improvements. It also said it would soon deliver bidirectional interoperability with the Microsoft 365 Copilot.
A new action bar powered by WalkMe, a digital adoption platform the vendor acquired last year, enables Joule to study user behavior across applications, according to the vendor. Joule currently requires prompts and guidance, but the action bar will enable it to operate more independently.
Joule's ability to work across applications could also be enhanced by Perplexity, an AI search engine, in a collaboration announced at the conference. SAP said Perplexity will improve Joule's ability to draw on structured and unstructured data to provide "structured, visual answers" inside workflows. Access to both structured and unstructured data was a key aspect of SAP's descriptions of the data element in the flywheel.
SAP also packaged up its existing AI development tools, calling them AI Foundation and adding new features. Developers will soon be able to create and manage custom skills for Joule, and users will be able to explore more data in the input window used to query the generative AI copilot. A new AI agent hub puts all of SAP's agents in one place and maps them to business processes.
On the applications front, thevendor unveiled SAP Business Suite packages, which are designed to simplify the adoption of SAP cloud applications by aligning them more with a customer's business needs.
Each package comes with the SAP Build development platform to enable customers to extend applications while maintaining the clean core of standardized SaaS ERP business processes. The five initial packages cover finance, supply chain operations, human resources, procurement and sales.
SAP centered the data element of the flywheel on Business Data Cloud (BDC), a data integration platform introduced in February that uses technology from a partnership with Databricks to bring in non-SAP data.
"To enable an AI that has an end-to-end context, you can only do that with a set of applications where the data model understands the end-to-end context, " said Muhammad Alam, SAP's head of product engineering, in a media and analyst Q&A after the keynote.
At Sapphire, SAP announced new prebuilt, composable applications that run in BDC, combining data products with AI and simulation features. One application, People Intelligence, draws on employee and skills data in the SAP SuccessFactors HCM platform to make workforce recommendations.
New concept of ERP data as single source of truth
Analysts and consultants said they were impressed with the completeness of the SAP vision.
"This is the best data narrative SAP's ever had," said Jon Reed, co-founder of Diginomica, an enterprise applications industry analysis firm. But he said the approach still has to be validated with customers.
They've been through a number of transitions in recent years with SAP Analytics Cloud and Datasphere, two platforms that were likewise heavily hyped.
"It is a lot of change for customers to absorb," Reed said.
He added that SAP did not have its messaging about third-party data figured out and instead seemed to be emphasizing data collected in Business Suite. "I don't think that SAP did a slam-dunk job today of talking about the non-SAP data part of it," he said.
There's also no consensus in the industry about how best to provide the data AI needs to work well, including how much of it should be real time and which scenarios can work well with a certain amount of data latency, according to Reed.
There are so many benefits to having the data together. … Having access and understanding -- that is a very good situation for any ERP vendor in general, and for SAP in particular.
Holger MuellerAnalyst, Constellation Research
Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research, said SAP is taking the right approach by using the Databricks partnership to bring third-party data into the mix through the use of data lakes. "It's a standard, proven tool that many customers are using," he said.
SAP's data strategy versus those of ERP competitors such as Oracle and Infor is bolstered by being able to offer a complete integrated suite of S/4HANA Cloud applications for the most common business processes, according to Mueller.
"There are so many benefits to having the data together," he said. "When something matters to an enterprise, it's a transaction. People get hired, get raises and get paid, suppliers get paid, customers take orders and so on. Having access and understanding -- that is a very good situation for any ERP vendor in general, and for SAP in particular."
The fact that SAP now has a more comprehensive data strategy will be crucial in getting value from generative AI, according to Mark Shields, S/4HANA and cloud transformation leader at PwC, an accounting firm and IT consultancy.
"Bringing that data together is super important. Now I can actually get the benefit of GenAI," he said. "But if you're not standard, if you're not clean from a customization and data perspective, you're not going to get the value."
David Essex is an industry editor who covers enterprise applications, emerging technology and market trends, and creates in-depth content for several Informa TechTarget websites.
