In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I unpack SAP CTO Philipp Herzig’s perspective on AI, APIs, and the company’s next era beyond traditional software.

Highlights

00:01 — As part of our ongoing analysis of the massive changes that SAP rolled out this past week at their Sapphire event in Orlando, I had an interesting one-on-one conversation with SAP Chief Technology Officer Philipp Herzig, where he discussed a range of things. Particularly this notion of how, as SAP begins to move beyond applications into the realm of AI, what that means across everything from their new Business AI platform [to] updates to their API policy.

00:37 — I think some people got their knickers in a knot unnecessarily over those API changes and the general pace of innovation that not only SAP is cranking out, but that customers are working very hard to consume so that those customers can become leaders in their industries.

01:24 — How does this shape the company that SAP is becoming in the future? And even as talked about with CEO Christian Klein posing the question during his keynote, will SAP be a software company in the future?

02:07 — One of the things that Herzig said was, we've got so many more people using more and more of our APIs, agents are going to access data from all across the company, and certain things just have to be tightened up. One of the biggest things [SAP] did, was try to ensure that there's more security.

03:20 — So, lively discussion here. I think this was a momentous event for SAP, the things they introduced, the way they're talking about going to market, the new sorts of expertise they're putting in. Philipp touches on a lot of this and gives a good insight into the foundational technology layer.

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