German SAP User Group Conference 2025 in Bremen - The Art of Balance

Our business world increasingly resembles a balancing act. On the one hand, dynamic markets and growing uncertainties force companies to react quickly and flexibly. On the other hand, existing investments and regulatory hurdles make the necessary transformation more difficult. This very balancing act is the central theme of this year’s DSAG Annual Congress 2025 in Bremen, held under the fitting motto: “The Art of Balance – Is it all about balloons?”

SAP has set a clear course with its cloud strategy. But how can we generate the necessary lift without losing touch with reality? In this post, we share exciting insights from numerous keynotes and presentations.

Full Speed Ahead in Stormy Times

Today’s business environment resembles a stormy sea. Nevertheless, the motto is: full speed ahead! The journey is inevitably heading toward the cloud. With its new Business Suite, including integrated artificial intelligence, SAP has presented a clear target vision for future IT architectures. The course is set, but the crossing will be long and challenging. It is crucial that everyone pulls together.

In his keynote, Jens Hungershausen, Chairman of the DSAG Executive Board, emphasized that the central challenge for companies lies in finding the right balance. How can ambitious innovations be reconciled with existing conditions, legacy burdens, and individual needs? This journey into the cloud is not a short sprint but rather a long and arduous voyage – comparable to the migration from R/3 to S/4HANA.

Many customers feel pressured by SAP’s pace and are rightly demanding more support in the adoption process. Tools like Signavio and LeanIX are very helpful, but more is needed: transparency in costs, fair conditions, and flexibility for individual adjustments are essential.

Artificial intelligence could provide the necessary lift. SAP plans to deliver almost 500 AI use cases by the end of the year and is pushing ahead with the topic of Agentic AI. Success will depend on AI being understood as a tool that complements people rather than replaces them. In addition, licensing costs should be decoupled from the cloud and made available at predictable prices for on-premise systems as well, to create real value.

At the same time, geopolitical conflicts are causing increasing turbulence. Given the concerning security situation, especially in Germany, the importance of cybersecurity is rising massively. Companies are called upon to remain vigilant and to train their employees accordingly. At the same time, SAP has a duty to continuously improve its solutions and protect users in the best possible way. Furthermore, the topic of data sovereignty is gaining importance, which is why flexible operating models such as on-premise options remain indispensable.

Succeeding in the Cloud

As Jens Hungershausen already mentioned in his keynote, the cloud—along with AI and cybersecurity—is one of the major topics of this year’s congress. In his presentation, Thomas Saueressig, SAP Executive Board Member, highlighted the strategy with which SAP supports customers on this challenging journey. He showed how SAP enables customers to shape a stable and future-proof cloud future with a reliable data foundation, clean-core principles, and innovative technologies such as SAP Business AI.

AI is intended to become an integrated part of business processes. By the end of the year, SAP plans to deliver more than 60 agents. An agent-to-agent interface is also on the way, which sounds very promising. Saueressig stressed that the private cloud will be just as important for SAP in the long term as the public cloud. The two programs—RISE with SAP (for existing customers) and GROW with SAP (for new customers)—are essential for the transformation. It remains to be seen whether this will also be reflected in SAP’s AI strategy, which is currently heavily focused on the public cloud.

A global example of such a forward-looking journey was presented by the well-known jewelry manufacturer Pandora. The company is currently actively migrating to the cloud, with initial pilot applications already successfully live in Germany and Austria. A fundamental building block of Pandora’s strategy is its commitment to the “clean core”. For them, this approach is the key to ensuring the necessary agility and scalability in a dynamic market environment.

At the same time, Pandora recognizes the immense potential of artificial intelligence and is integrating SAP Business AI directly into its processes. By using SAP bots for process automation, workflows are being optimized.

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Business Data Cloud – Overview and Strategy of the Business Data Fabric

There were also numerous interesting contributions in the field of business analytics. Torsten Ammon, Head of Business Data Cloud Core Engineering at SAP, provided an outlook on the future of SAP Business Data Cloud. SAP’s core vision is to bring the worlds of business and analytics closer together and to think of them as one. He emphasized that no single provider in the market can do everything alone—a philosophy underscored by the recent integration of Databricks into the SAP ecosystem.

As with other presentations, AI played a major role. A central element of SAP’s strategy is the AI assistant Joule, which is based on an SAP metadata knowledge graph. However, the presentation did not make it clear whether a deeper MCP integration of third-party providers is planned. It also remained unclear what the strategy for advanced AI/ML applications and agents will look like. Will SAP develop its own product line here, or primarily rely on partner functions such as those from Databricks?

Another focus is on moving SAP BW systems smoothly toward modern object stores and data lakes. The proposed path envisions BW InfoProviders being transformed via a Data Product Generator into the Datasphere and then provided as a finished “data product” in an object store. For customers with existing Databricks environments, there was good news: an SAP BDC-Databricks connector has been available for two weeks, enabling a “brownfield” Business Data Cloud environment.

The roadmap presented includes several important points for the near future. Switching from Datasphere to BDC should not require a technical migration, but merely an account “rewiring.” The Data Product Generator will also be made available for BW Composite Providers. In addition, SAP plans better integration with partners such as Azure, Google, and AWS to open the ecosystem beyond Databricks. Many new data products and intelligent applications were also introduced. However, development of data products currently focuses primarily on S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition (PCE).

In summary, the vision is compelling, but the path raises questions. The product strategy for actual AI applications (RAGs, Agentic AI, etc.) currently appears thin at best. There was no indication that advanced AI functions from Databricks will be natively available in SAP BDC. At the same time, SAP makes it clear that it sees no future for on-premise systems and has no plans for an on-premise data lake option.

Simplifying Complex Processes with NextTables

A special highlight of the DSAG was our own presentation. We demonstrated how NextTables is revolutionizing data maintenance in SAP Datasphere and Databricks by enabling business users to manage data independently. With NextTables as a central no-/low-code platform, you can effortlessly create your own applications—for example, for data maintenance. The platform integrates seamlessly into your existing system landscape and data platforms.

This results in significant improvements in the maintenance of master data and authorizations. In addition, simple planning applications can also be implemented with minimal effort. The concrete use cases and resulting benefits were also part of our DSAG presentation.

Thanks to simplified master data maintenance, processes can be accelerated and errors reduced. One example is the grouping of products for reporting purposes. With our solution, users can maintain master data independently, adjust attributes, and flexibly group products. This reduces dependency on IT and speeds up processes.

Another use case is agile authorization management. NextTables functions such as intuitive text search for key values, value help, and integrated master data validations make the process not only extremely fast but also secure and error-free. Since all changes take effect immediately, long processing and waiting times are eliminated. The result is seamless data governance, directly controlled by the business department.

NextTables is also suitable for simple planning applications, such as decentralized ESG data collection. Manual data gathering via Excel and email is no longer necessary. Instead, managers can create tables themselves in Datasphere and assign access rights to subsidiaries—completely autonomously and without IT support.

The subsidiaries then maintain their data directly via NextTables. The data is validated, stored directly in SAP Datasphere, and immediately available for visualization in SAP Analytics Cloud Stories. The time-consuming and error-prone manual consolidation process is eliminated.

Our DSAG presentation positioned NextTables as a central no-/low-code hub, enabling business departments to create apps independently. The platform follows a “business-first” approach: it is developed for business users and optimized for IT, as it integrates seamlessly with existing data platforms. The data remains where it is. This preserves the single source of truth and minimizes security risks.

German SAP User Group Conference 2025in Bremen: Our Conclusion

We took away many impulses from this year’s DSAG Congress. We found the discussions around SAP Business AI and the announced AI agents particularly exciting. At the same time, it also became clear: the new SAP world is still in development—many companies are asking themselves how mature the solutions already are for practical use.

Here, we are happy to accompany you with a sober, independent perspective and help realistically assess both opportunities and challenges.

Where are you currently on your cloud journey? We’re here to help you strike the right balance between innovation, cost, and security. Let’s talk – we look forward to connecting with you!