AI + ML
CEO says there is ‘no confusion at all’ after cloud-only innovation plan drew flak
SAP has navigated an apparent U-turn to bring AI to its legacy and on-prem ERP systems, as predicted in The Register earlier this year.
The German software giant had been steadfast that it would not introduce “innovation” such as AI for on-prem systems, including its legacy ERP platform ECC, a move that outraged some members of the user community.
In July 2023, CEO Christian Klein told investors SAP’s “newest innovations and capabilities” would only be delivered in the public or private cloud using RISE with SAP, the vendor’s lift-shift-and-transform program launched with partners and cloud providers in early 2021. “This is how we will deliver these innovations with speed, agility, quality and efficiency. Our new innovations will not be available for on-premise or hosted on-premise ERP customers on hyperscalers,” he said at the time.
However, during SAP’s Sapphire conference in Orlando this week, Klein said there was “no confusion at all.” New tech, such as the AI agents built on the SAP Joule platform, would be available to customers on-prem, so long as they had signed up for a cloud “journey,” he said.
“The majority of our Joule assistants and agents [will be available] also on-prem, on ECC, and S/4HANA for customers that have already committed the majority of the landscape to the journey, as an interim solution so that they can benefit from AI while they are modernizing. That’s absolutely the right thing to do, and I’m excited to see customers taking advantage of this.”
In March, Alisdair Bach, head of SAP practice at consultancy Dragon ERP, predicted that SAP AI agents based on Joule would become available for on-prem systems after The Register revealed SAP’s plan for migrating customers to the cloud was €2 billion off target in terms of declining on-prem support revenue.
Muhammad Alam, executive board member for product and engineering, told the conference SAP would bring “a significant percentage of Joule assistants and agents to work in hybrid landscapes with the ability to connect to your S/4 on-premises and ECC landscape.”
He said the offer would be available to “customers that have started their modernization journey on RISE with SAP.”
The new capability will be available in a bundle of services under the new Business AI Platform banner, he said. “We’ve done this so you can start generating value from AI today on the SAP Business AI Platform while you’re modernizing your estate.”
It will only be available to customers signing up for the Max Success Plan, a commercial deal. The company announcement said the plan would enable customers to fast-track assistant and agent activation, and allow “customers to adopt AI, including cloud and eligible on-premises systems, at their own pace as they move to the cloud.” General availability is planned for May 2026. ®
