Decades of SAP’s experience in securing mission-critical operations now powers the demands of sovereignty, regulation, and AI-driven growth

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced a comprehensive new approach to digital sovereignty and AI innovation.

Expanded offerings within the SAP Sovereign Cloud portfolio give European customers access to a comprehensive technology stack, including SAP Cloud Infrastructure and SAP Sovereign Cloud On-Site. With the announcement, SAP sets a new standard for secure, compliant, and scalable innovation, reinforcing digital sovereignty as a core element of Europe’s technological resilience and strategic autonomy.

“Europe’s leadership in the next era of digital innovation—especially in AI—will depend on how effectively we apply AI to solve differentiated industry use cases,” said Thomas Saueressig, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Customer Services & Delivery. “With our expanded SAP Sovereign Cloud offering, SAP is unlocking access to the full spectrum of cloud innovations and AI capabilities for all markets and industries—including the public sector and regulated environments—while ensuring these advancements are delivered in a sovereign framework and on customers’ own terms.”

Deployment choices for every security profile

With the expansion of SAP Sovereign Cloud, customers can choose from new deployment models that offer control across infrastructure, platform, and software tailored to their specific regulatory and operational needs. This flexibility enables organizations to innovate securely and in compliance with local laws while maintaining the freedom to scale on their own terms. SAP Sovereign Cloud solutions are available on:

• SAP Cloud Infrastructure (in Europe): SAP Cloud Infrastructure is SAP’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform that is developed and operated with open-source technologies within SAP’s data center network. All data is stored within the EU to maintain compliance with European data protection regulations.
• SAP Sovereign Cloud On-Site: SAP offers SAP-operated infrastructure within a customer-owned or customer-selected data center. This solution delivers the highest levels of data, operational, technical, and legal sovereignty while maintaining SAP cloud innovation and architecture.
• Delos Cloud: SAP offers Delos Cloud in Germany, a secure and sovereign cloud that supports the flexible and rapid transformation of the public sector, to meet country-specific sovereignty requirements.

Long-term Investment in Europe’s digital resilience

With a long-term investment of more than €20 billion Euros, SAP is making digital sovereignty a strategic priority. This commitment reflects SAP’s determination to support Europe’s digital autonomy through more secure, local, and regulation-compliant cloud solutions tailored to the public sector and highly regulated industries.

With SAP Sovereign Cloud, customers not only gain infrastructure control but also unlock the full potential of cloud solutions from SAP. The offering enables organizations to run their SAP Business Suite in sovereign environments while benefiting from continuous innovation cycles, including SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and embedded SAP Business AI capabilities. This helps ensure that customers can innovate more securely and locally without compromising on the pace or depth of transformation.

“The digital resilience of Europe depends on sovereignty that is secure, scalable and future-ready,” said Martin Merz, President, SAP Sovereign Cloud. “SAP’s full-stack sovereign cloud offering delivers exactly that, giving customers the freedom to choose their deployment model while helping ensure compliance up to the highest standards.”

Today, SAP Sovereign Cloud is available in multiple countries with substantial additions to come​, supported by hundreds of localized delivery experts and a broad set of certifications. The offer helps ensure full-stack sovereignty across data, operational, technical, and legal dimensions, empowering customers to maintain control, meet regulatory requirements, and innovate with confidence.

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About SAP

As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP (NYSE:SAP) stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

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The next generation of workers is stepping into an environment unlike anything that came before it—where AI tools evolve faster than curriculums and job descriptions shift with every product update. According to a LinkedIn study, 34% of employees—particularly younger professionals—say they feel overwhelmed by the pace of change, citing a desperate need for support in adapting to new technologies and digital ways of working.

In response to this mounting pressure, SAP has launched SAP Learning Hub, student edition—a no-cost global program that can provide students and academic educators with all the curated resources needed to get and stay certified and stand out with proven skills in the latest SAP innovations. It offers guided learning resources, including expert-led live sessions, access to practice systems to get hands-on experience, and two SAP Certification exam attempts.

Available globally since April 2025, the program is designed to close the gap between classroom theory and real-world readiness, giving students access to all resources they need to future-proof their career with the latest skills and credentials.

Closing the global skills gap—one student at a time

The need for a program like this has never been higher. With AI-related course enrollments spiking by 117% in the last year alone and increased fears of digital obsolescence, students and early-career professionals are looking for practical, on-the-job experience—not just theoretical knowledge—to empower them to meet change with adaptability, not anxiety.

The timing of this initiative is critical, too. IDC projects that by 2026, over 90% of organizations will suffer from a shortage of IT skills, costing them trillions in missed opportunities. Employers are struggling to find graduates who not only understand digital technologies but can also use them effectively from day one. Dr. Katharina Schäfer, global head of SAP University Alliances, believes SAP Learning Hub, student edition will help bridge this skills gap: “SAP Learning Hub, student edition simplifies lesson planning and instruction for lecturers while also ensuring students gain practical experience with the latest SAP technologies to prepare them for today’s job market.”

Students, educators, and employers alike win

Designed for students, the site offers self-paced content and guided and tailored learning to help gain practical skills. Along with accessing the latest practice systems for SAP solutions, students can connect directly with SAP experts in live sessions to cover more complex topics. With SAP Learning Hub, student edition, students can gain the confidence to work on key SAP projects, drive innovation with their proven proficiency, and continuously develop the skills to stand out to employers.

Beyond students, the benefits of SAP Learning Hub, student edition extend to lecturers who can now have access to guided, practical resources to help empower their students to graduate with an SAP Certification. “This program lowers the barrier for me to teach with real SAP tools,” said Nancy Jones, a lecturer and curriculum developer. “My students are walking away not just with knowledge—but with proof that they can apply it.”

The solution can also give companies a powerful new lever to tap into certified, workforce-ready talent—many of whom have been trained in the technologies they use on a daily basis. HR leaders and hiring managers can also benefit from an efficient recruitment process by easily identifying candidates with validated SAP expertise. This also helps reduce the need for extensive training, shorten onboarding times, and ensure the company’s readiness for future challenges—a win for all.

Overcoming with future-ready skills

SAP Learning Hub, student edition arrives at a time when AI and digital transformation are redefining job requirements. This digital solution can give young talents—and the educators who support them—an effective way to keep pace. In doing so, they’re laying the foundation for a more resilient, skilled workforce that’s ready to meet the challenges and opportunities of the modern economy head-on.

More information can be found here:

• Students: http://learning.sap.com/free-student-edition  
• Lecturers: https://learning.sap.com/lecturers

Andre Bechtold is president of SAP Industries & Experiences.

In an era of rapid technological advancement and increasing complexity, the manufacturing industry faces unprecedented challenges. Companies worldwide must adapt to market changes while maintaining highly cost-efficient and productive supply chains. To thrive in this dynamic landscape, businesses need innovative strategies and technologies that go beyond isolated efficiency gains.

At SAP, we believe in empowering manufacturers to bring out their best. By connecting processes beyond the silos of individual functions and by converging and contextualizing critical data, we are laying the foundation to leverage cutting-edge technologies like generative and agentic AI. This strategy helps businesses build more sustainable, resilient networks that are adaptive to overcome unforeseen risks and seize bold new opportunities.

This vision will be on full display at Hannover Messe 2025, the world’s leading trade fair for industry, where we will showcase how SAP is revolutionizing manufacturing through the following key areas.

New paths with SAP Business Suite

SAP Business Suite offers a comprehensive solution that transcends traditional ERP systems. By leveraging seamlessly integrated, end-to-end supply chain processes in the cloud, supported by context-rich business data and real-time analysis, artificial intelligence and predictive algorithms, we help companies manage their supply chains efficiently while responding to new requirements with agility.

In an era of mass customization, this agility is crucial for maintaining competitiveness. Transparent access to manufacturing data allows companies to manage their production capacities more flexibly and recover from short-term supply disruptions better. We empower companies to meet new customer requirements promptly and efficiently, reducing costs and shortening time-to-market for new products.

One example is Siemens Energy digitalizing service operations with SAP Field Service Management. This optimization of the entire service order process — from customer demand to spare parts planning and finally technician and tool planning, dispatching, and execution — allows manufacturers to streamline their operations and enhance overall efficiency in a single, unified experience.

Applications that drive excellence

In manufacturing, downtime is costly. That’s why our digital applications play a key role in vertically connecting machines and devices through critical manufacturing data with enterprise processes. By optimizing production processes, reducing downtime, and increasing transparency, we’re turning reactive maintenance into a predictive strategy.

SAP Digital Manufacturing provides manufacturers with the ability to coordinate complex and short-term changes to customer orders on the shop floor across multiple functions, ensuring smooth operations. Our new embedded IoT technology based on our partnership with Cumulocity AG in SAP Asset Performance Management allows operators to monitor asset health with plug-and-play simplicity. Meanwhile, the integration of SAP S/4HANA for product design and sourcing and SAP Integrated Product Development for collaborative product data management is enhancing collaboration with direct material suppliers, orchestrated through the SAP business network.

Real-world success stories, like SMA Solar Technology AG, demonstrate the tangible benefits of our solutions. SMA Solar achieved a 15 percent increase in supply chain workforce productivity, 10 percent improvement in overall supply chain planning costs, and 10 percent lower inventory carrying costs and stock turnover rate using SAP Digital Manufacturing for electronics manufacturing.

The power of data

To enable automation in mass production with individualized requests, companies need real-time integration of operational, sustainability, and business data. SAP provides real-time access to data-driven insights, eliminating delays and silos with instant access to unified data across SAP and non-SAP systems. This enterprise-wide operational alignment connects supply chain data with finance, human resources, and other business areas, streamlining processes and reducing costs.

SAP Business Data Cloud further enhances this capability by providing a comprehensive platform for data management and analytics. Moreover, our AI-powered predictions and insights help improve sustainability by optimizing energy consumption, eliminating waste, and minimizing environmental impact.

Integrating AI for greater efficiency

Companies today need to redefine their business management by integrating automation and AI-driven decision intelligence into their business processes. SAP solutions enhance productivity and efficiency across all business processes, from product development to execution and continuous process improvement.

SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP) offers planning analytics, what-if simulations, and real-time information for sustainable and risk-resilient decision-making. The new AI-assisted planning capabilities with SAP’s co-pilot Joule in SAP IBP allow supply chain planners to customize Excel add-in planning views using natural language commands, streamlining daily tasks and strategic decisions.

Joule revolutionizes SAP IBP by introducing intuitive conversational search, navigation, and transactional capabilities. By harnessing natural language processing, it effortlessly interprets user queries and instantly retrieves relevant information, significantly enhancing overall user productivity. This ability allows even highly experienced planners to understand the outcome of complex optimization and machine learning-based planning algorithms revolutionizing their user experience and ultimately increasing user adoption of these advanced AI-based technologies.

In SAP Digital Manufacturing and SAP Asset Performance Management, machine learning-guided visual inspection enables the execution of multiple inspection tasks such as for production and maintenance quality or even automates the process entirely, reducing human errors, improving product quality, and lowering operational costs.

Joule in SAP Integrated Product Development facilitates help-content discovery with conversational access to development documentation, covering idea-to-market processes such as collaboration, formulation, and handover. Users can inquire naturally, access relevant documentation, and receive concise summaries, enhancing efficiency and decision-making.

For the manufacturing industry, SAP Field Service Management with AI provides technicians quick access to equipment service history and key job details, improving diagnostics and first-time fix rates. This increases operational efficiency, reduces downtime, and enhances customer satisfaction.

Lastly, the integration of Joule with SAP Business Network Freight Collaboration allows transportation planners to use simple natural language searches to find order details and reduce manual errors by autonomously cross-referencing multiple data sources.

Join SAP at Hannover Messe 2025

Visit SAP in Hall 15, booth C19 at Hannover Messe 2025 to discover how our modern manufacturing, supply chain, and cloud ERP solutions can help your business, regardless of its size. Experience firsthand how we’re maximizing the impact of technology, running resilient and sustainable supply chains, and unlocking the power of business networks.

Meet our experts and industry-leading partners to learn how manufacturing and supply chain processes in the cloud can help you succeed in an AI-enabled world. Together, let’s bring out your best and shape the future of intelligent, sustainable manufacturing.

Dominik Metzger is president and chief product officer for SAP Supply Chain Management at SAP.

In today’s retail landscape, customer expectations have never been higher. Shoppers want to move effortlessly between in-store visits, mobile browsing, social commerce, and digital marketplaces, expecting every interaction to be seamless and personalized.

Behind the scenes, retailers struggle to deliver these experiences due to fragmented, outdated, and incomplete data that makes real-time decision-making nearly impossible and hampers engagement, operational efficiency, and, ultimately, profitability.

The hidden costs of disconnected data

When retailers’ data exists in silos, the problem is compounded from all angles. With sales, inventory, marketing, and customer engagement data living in separate systems, retailers lack the clear view of customer behavior and business insights they need to respond with critical actions in real time. Lack of context within the data means businesses struggle to extract meaningful insights.

Consider the impact:

• Limited inventory visibility leads to stockouts and overstocks, frustrating customers and eroding profits.
• Lack of real-time insights hinders personalized customer engagement, diminishing loyalty.
• Disconnected operations make omnichannel fulfillment—such as buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) or hassle-free returns—difficult to execute smoothly.

At a moment when retailers must optimize every facet of their business to remain competitive, a unified data strategy isn’t optional—it’s essential.

A data-driven future: Turning insights into action

To break these silos, retailers need a unified data foundation—one that consolidates insights across all customer touchpoints, enabling real-time intelligence and business agility. SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC), as recently announced, is an integrated solution that can bring data together from all sources, owned and external, to help create a single, trusted source of truth.

With SAP Business Data Cloud, retailers can have the total picture of data from sales, inventory, marketing, loyalty, service, and near-real-time statuses of third-party logistics.

With this holistic view, retailers can:

• Enable seamless cross-channel fulfillment, such as buy online, pick up in-store or return anywhere.
• Optimize operational efficiency for everything from intelligent sourcing and promotional planning to inventory visibility and availability across sales channels.
• Personalize customer engagement by leveraging data-driven insights to boost loyalty and increase revenue.

By shifting to a data-first approach, retailers can move beyond managing transactions to driving intelligent, customer-centric experiences for long-term loyalty and growth.

Why physical stores still matter—more than ever

Despite the rise of e-commerce, more than 80% of retail interactions still take place in physical stores. Brick-and-mortar locations remain central to the retail journey, yet, as retailers’ largest cost center, they also encompass the biggest operational challenges—from inventory carrying costs to labor and store operations.

Although today’s consumers are fluid in how they shop—researching products across multiple platforms or buying online and picking up in-store, for example—they still expect accurate, real-time visibility into inventory wherever they engage. In this landscape, data is the lifeblood that allows retailers to orchestrate orders, manage workflows, and ensure that customers can trust the information they see. Yet, according to a new report released today from SAP Emarsys, 51% of U.S. brands say their organization suffers from “dark data,” which is data that is collected but not effectively used.

To remain competitive, retailers must harness real-time transactional insights to optimize store efficiency, maximize revenue, and provide seamless customer interactions.

Bringing it all together: Intelligent order management

Retailers don’t just need data—they also need actionable, real-time intelligence that helps them drive smarter decision-making. That’s why SAP is integrating advanced order management capabilities as part of our broader data-driven customer experience strategy. SAP has a long history of helping thousands of retail and B2C customers manage vast amounts of data. Today we’re tailoring this expertise, trusted by market leaders worldwide, to help meet the scale, flexibility, and time-to-value required by fast-growing organizations.

As part of the SAP Order Management Services bundle, we are launching the SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit solution today at Shoptalk in Las Vegas, Nevada. This modular, cloud-native solution can empower retailers with real-time visibility into transactions and inventory, helping to reduce friction and improve customer satisfaction. SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit can unify POS data from multiple systems, process high-volume transactions in real time, and help ensure inventory accuracy across all channels to improve stock availability, financial reporting, and customer engagement—without the burden of complex, custom-built integrations.

Apart from omnichannel sales and audit capabilities, the SAP Order Management Services bundle also includes additional modular, cloud-native capabilities including SAP Order Management foundation and the SAP Order Management solution for sourcing and availability. The SAP Order Management Services bundle is natively connected with SAP S/4HANA, which can enable retail and consumer products organizations and other consumer brands to unlock real-time inventory visibility, streamline fulfillment, and reduce operational costs without complex and costly custom integrations. And, integrated with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business, announced at NRF earlier this year, the cloud-native capabilities of the SAP Order Management Services bundle can be even more scalable, secure, compliant, and affordable, enabling retailers to realize value more quickly than ever before.

Other benefits of SAP Omnichannel Sales Transfer and Audit include:

• Seamless POS integration can connect multiple POS systems with different data structures, working to eliminate silos and ensure data accuracy.
• Real-time inventory updates help keep omnichannel inventory accurate so customers can trust what they see online matches what’s available in-store.
• Smarter data processing and configurable data transfer and aggregation help update inventory, financials, and even loyalty programs effortlessly.
• Optimized sales data validation process can automate checks that are executed through configurable workflows.

By embracing a unified data strategy, retailers can eliminate complexity, reduce costs, and unlock new opportunities for growth—all while delivering the frictionless experiences today’s consumers expect.

Hornbach: The future of omnichannel retail in action

For Hornbach, one of the largest DIY stores in Germany, the idea of interconnected retail is more than just omnichannel. It needs to be able to add new channels quickly—and to maintain a seamless customer experience over all channels. Hornbach adopted SAP Order Management Services as a foundation for this vision, enabling the flexibility to address new markets quickly, connect new systems, process orders rapidly and efficiently, and adopt new innovations. With the addition of SAP Omnichannel Sales and Transfer Audit, the Hornbach team expects to get more visibility in day-to-day operations, like checking fraud detection and the completeness of transactions.

“The most exciting thing will be the combination of all these new technologies we’re seeing: artificial intelligence, event-driven architecture, as well as native cloud solutions,” said Carsten Mueller, head of Enterprise Architecture and Security, Hornbach. “The combination will give Hornbach great power in the next year.”

The future of retail is data-driven

The retail industry is evolving at an unprecedented pace, with AI redefining how businesses operate and interact with customers. According to the same SAP Emarsys report, 89% of U.S. consumer product marketers believe AI will be essential for engaging new customers. However, the effectiveness of AI hinges on the reliability and accuracy of the data it processes.

Retailers that embrace AI-powered data intelligence will lead the next era of omnichannel excellence. The future isn’t just about connecting data—it’s about activating it in real time to drive seamless customer interactions.

To stay ahead, retailers must:

• Invest in AI-driven analytics to predict demand, optimize pricing, and personalize engagement at scale.
• Implement intelligent order and transaction management to automate fulfillment, reduce friction, and improve supply chain agility.
• Leverage AI-powered customer insights to create hyper-personalized experiences that drive loyalty and lifetime value.
• Enable real-time inventory intelligence to ensure products are available where and when customers need them.

As omnichannel complexity grows, brands that fail to unify their data risk falling behind. SAP Business Data Cloud and intelligent order management solutions can provide the foundation for a future-proof transformation. As AI continues to evolve, retailers must shift from reactive decision-making to proactive, predictive commerce, where every transaction is optimized for efficiency and profitability.

The future of retail is here. Those who harness AI to unify, analyze, and act on their data will define the next generation of customer experience and retail success. I’m excited to partner with companies navigating this transformation and empower them to seize new opportunities for success.

Want to learn more? Stay tuned to see how leading retailers are leveraging SAP’s data-driven approach to optimize their operations and stay ahead of the competition and learn more about SAP’s solutions for retail.

Balaji Balasubramanian is president and chief product officer for SAP Customer Experience and Consumer Industries.