New Way Now: SAP fuels innovation by transforming data into solutions with AI-powered analytics

*Summary:* Frederik Pohl, vice president and head of strategic cloud management at SAP, leads the team responsible for orchestrating the enterprise software giant’s cloud strategy across their own infrastructure and with large partners like Google. He discusses how the long co-engineering relationship between SAP and Google has resulted in ways for SAP customers to turn their data into innovative solutions with AI-powered analytics on Google Cloud. *Challenge:* SAP wanted to completely transform its entire cloud computing landscape to support its investment integrating AI into its applications to optimize user experience. But a diverse technology stack — grown primarily through acquisitions over several years — made a unified cloud solution elusive. *Solution:* SAP chose Google Cloud to be one of the key cornerstones of a cloud strategy that would scale along with its growing customer base. Developed in tandem, the cloud migration plan included a capacity management process to ensure SAP had the infrastructure it needed to support its applications. This process was so efficient, SAP was able to successfully migrate 5,000 Ariba customers off its legacy systems to Google Cloud in just 17 hours. The migration has also served to support SAP’s ambition of becoming the No. 1 business AI company, providing access to the latest AI technologies, including generative AI. Using Vertex AI and Gemini through the SAP Business Technology Platform, customers now have new opportunities to gain actionable insights from their data using natural, everyday language. *Results:* Together, SAP and Google Cloud are delivering innovative solutions that help organizations seize the AI opportunity to drive digital transformation and gain more value from their most critical business data. For example, the SAP Datasphere for BigQuery enables customers to query SAP data with BigQuery in real time — without having to move or copy data. With thousands of customers already using SAP AI solutions