Vendor consolidation has emerged as the dominant priority for CIOs in 2025, driven by mounting pressure to reduce complexity, control costs, and maximize the full potential of AI – while creating greater mechanisms for resiliency.

Research from multiple industry sources indicates that this isn’t just an emerging trend — the emphasis on consolidation is growing at an unrelenting pace.

According to ADAPT’s CIO Edge research, a comprehensive study of more than 140 CIOs, 68 percent of technology leaders are planning to consolidate their vendor landscape.

This trend is not just about making minor adjustments to meet market demands; a majority of organizations are targeting a 20 percent reduction in vendor count, which represents a significant and fundamental shift in how enterprises approach their technology ecosystems.

The urgency for CIOs to transform their vendor landscape is palpable across all sectors and industries. A survey of more than 1,000 technology professionals revealed that 90 percent of IT professionals identified software consolidation as a priority, with 73 percent predicting their organizations will continue growing software investments while simultaneously consolidating vendors.

This paradox — expanding capabilities while reducing complexity — defines the modern CIO’s challenge.

The false promise of best-of-breed

This vendor consolidation trend contrasts with movements like the MACH alliance, which  promotes a pure “best-of-breed” approach. While its underlying architectural approaches (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless) are sound and arguably have become table stakes in the SaaS world, MACH created unexpected challenges for enterprises.

Initially lauded for its flexibility and agility, MACH ended up creating significant complexity — more than most enterprises can handle — at a time when they are looking for simplicity more than ever.

The economic reality is stark: fully MACH implementations usually require more money upfront compared to a unified solution that is pre-configured. Companies must consider not only the purchasing of multiple services, but also the cost and time required for employee training and adoption. Running MACH architecture requires people with highly specialized skills in cloud infrastructure, APIs, microservices, and tools designed to streamline development of the user-facing part of a website or web application. The job market for that talent is uber-competitive, even in the age of AI, meaning you’ll need to have the resources to pay them well or else your competitors will.

The hidden costs of fragmentation

Research reveals several critical drawbacks to the fragmented fully best-of-breed  approach:

• Increased complexity: Managing hundreds of microservices becomes exponentially daunting and expensive rather quickly, with system issues potentially impacting multiple services simultaneously. The management and expertise required to oversee such architectures can be daunting — and expensive. Once system issues are discovered, they could impact numerous services, which requires deep knowledge coordinated across multiple areas of expertise for troubleshooting and debugging. This can make resolution complicated and cost prohibitive.
• Integration challenges: Trying to make connections between services and systems that were not designed to work together requires additional development expertise, which is expensive.  Incompatibilities between functions like search, customer service, catalog management, and OMS can lead to degraded customer experience and loss of loyalty.
• Security concerns: The beauty of MACH architecture is also the beast: all of the composable microservices, APIs, and cloud offerings represent security risks. Comprehensive security requires consistent implementation across all components, which can be challenging when using solutions from different vendors. Businesses must develop robust security frameworks and governance models to ensure protection across their entire MACH ecosystem.
• Vendor management complexity: Best-of-breed usually means working with dozens of vendors rather than a few, which can add vast complexity to development and customer support depending on the long-term viability of each vendor, which must provide critical functionality for services or tools that could be discontinued or significantly changed in the future.

The strategic advantage of unified platforms

As CIOs prioritize vendor consolidation, SAP’s approach to “Suite as a Service” or “best of breed as a suite” offers a pragmatic solution that addresses the fundamental challenges of fragmented architectures. Rather than forcing organizations to choose between flexibility and integration, the SAP Customer Experience (SAP CX) portfolio provides both through a unified yet composable business suite that spans front and back-office operations, in conjunction with a pre-integrated and certified rich ISV ecosystem that allows businesses to compose with intention, wherever this makes sense business-wise.

The flywheel effect: applications, data, AI

The true power of consolidated platforms lies in what SAP calls the “flywheel effect.” In this model, applications generate data, data trains AI, and AI optimizes applications. This creates a virtuous cycle where:

• Better data feeds better AI
• Better AI feeds better applications
• Better applications generate better data

This integrated approach is only possible when organizations move beyond siloed point solutions to embrace unified platforms that can leverage the full spectrum of business data. Companies already invested in SAP technologies have discovered that a unified data strategy provides a proven path to the data architecture that AI requires.

Quantified benefits: the economic case for consolidation

Enterprise Strategy Group’s economic analysis of SAP CX solutions reveals compelling evidence for the vendor consolidation approach:

• Operational Efficiency Gains
  • Faster time to value: Organizations can fully connect and integrate their CX and ERP data in as few as six months
  • Reduced implementation time: Companies avoid roughly 25 to 50 percent of the time and effort required to build integrations from scratch
  • Improved productivity: Depending on job function, customers report 10 to 300 percent improvement in daily productivity
• Cost Optimization
  • Lower total solution costs: While individual solutions may appear cheaper, the holistic end-to-end solution approach is far more cost-effective
  • Reduced maintenance overhead: Organizations can eliminate up to 70 percent of the time required to manage and maintain systems
  • Resource optimization: Companies avoid having to grow teams by up to 2x to support custom development and integrations
• Strategic Advantages
  • Enhanced customer experience: Seamless connectivity between customer and operational data enables superior customer service
  • Faster innovation: End-to-end visibility enables quicker, more informed decisions leading to faster product launches
  • Reduced operational risk: Standard iFlows provide more reliable connections with fewer potential connectivity issues

The AI-driven imperative

AI is driving the consolidation trend as much as the need to reduce costs. AI models demand high-quality, accurate data to be useful. When organizations maintain data silos — often the result of disconnected digital tools — AI efforts fall short of expectations or stall entirely.

SAP’s unified approach addresses this challenge directly. By providing harmonized SLAs, UX, data models, and provisioning across the stack, along with embedded AI via SAP Business AI and a unified and semantically rich data layer via SAP Business Data Cloud, organizations can fully leverage AI capabilities across domains without the complexity of integrating multiple disparate systems.

The consolidation acceleration

The trend toward vendor consolidation is accelerating across multiple dimensions:

• Seventy-five percent of organizations pursued vendor consolidation in 2022, up from 29 percent in 2020, according to Capgemini research
• Gartner predicts that by 2027, 70 percent of organizations will optimize cloud-native application vendors to a maximum of three
• For midsize companies, the average number of SaaS tools decreased 18 percent in the last two years

The path forward: strategic consolidation

The evidence is clear: 2025 marks a pivotal moment for CIOs. Organizations that embrace strategic vendor consolidation and choose unified platforms over fragmented point solutions will gain significant competitive advantages in operational efficiency, cost management, and AI readiness.

SAP CX represents the future of customer experience technology — not as a collection of disparate tools, but as a unified, intelligent platform that can adapt and evolve with business needs. As CIOs navigate the challenges of 2025, the choice between complexity and consolidation will define their success.

The question isn’t whether to consolidate; it’s whether to lead the trend or be left behind.

With 68 percent of CIOs already planning consolidation initiatives, organizations that act decisively on vendor consolidation will be best positioned to win when it comes to the future of enterprise technology.

Geert Leeman is chief revenue officer of SAP Customer Experience.

Matthias Medert is global head of Sustainability at SAP. Here, he speaks about key aspects of the company’s long-term resilience plans and the challenges along the way. In the interview, he also discusses a new partnership to advance SAP’s commitment of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 and beyond.

Q: How does SAP view sustainability within its overall business strategy?

A: Sustainability is a core element of business strategy and deeply embedded in our vision to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. This means it is not a separate initiative, but an integral part of our leadership and long-term goals as a company. And as such, sustainability is a business catalyst and value driver.

What does SAP’s commitment to reach net-zero GHG emissions by 2030 mean in practice?

We recognize that with a customer base that generates 84 percent of the total global commerce, we have the responsibility and opportunity to lead in corporate climate action efforts. This isn’t just about reporting numbers; it’s a science-based transformation that is embedded in our operations, collaboration with suppliers, technology, and what we offer to our customers.

For us, it means our strategy aligns with the 1.5°C pathway set in the Paris Agreement. We aim to reduce gross GHG emissions by 90 percent across our relevant value chain (market-based). The remaining emissions — no more than 10 percent — will be neutralized through high-quality, verified carbon removal projects. Our reduction efforts have earned SAP’s inclusion in the EU Paris-Aligned Benchmarks, which gives climate-conscious investors confidence in our approach.

What does SAP’s decarbonization strategy consist of?

Our transformation is structured around four interconnected pillars:

With cloud transformation, we’re accelerating the shift from on-premise to cloud solutions, with SAP-managed data centers already powered by 100 percent renewable electricity. In parallel, we are collaborating with hyperscalers and our customers to push renewable electricity adoption upstream and downstream. An important part of this transition is enhancing GHG accounting and moving from estimates to primary data from our suppliers.

With upstream supply chain engagement, we are revising procurement policies and working closely with our suppliers to lower emissions across the supply chain. This includes aligning on data transparency and decarbonization targets. The rise of energy-intensive technologies like AI presents new challenges, but we’re addressing them through joint commitments and shared accountability.

In internal operations, we have several initiatives in place. For instance, since 2014 SAP has been running all offices, owned data centers, and co-locations on 100 percent renewable electricity. In addition to this, we are electrifying our vehicle fleet, and we have an internal carbon pricing scheme for business flights in place. The generated funds are invested in projects that have a positive impact on local and global populations as well as climate and biodiversity.

To neutralize SAP’s residual emissions that remain beyond 2030 after all feasible reduction efforts, we are investing in high-integrity carbon removals, ranging from nature-based to engineered solutions. Great examples of this are our long-term investments in the Livelihoods Carbon Funds and Climeworks’ Direct Air Capture solutions. The partnership with Climeworks marks a significant milestone for SAP and our commitment to durable carbon removals. Additionally, we make annual contributions to climate finance. The voluntary investments made during our transition to net-zero allow us to take responsibility for our emissions, increase our overall impact beyond our own decarbonization efforts, and help the world keep their climate targets in reach.

Where does the partnership with Climeworks fit into your strategy?

We have entered an agreement with Climeworks to secure 37,000 tons of high-quality carbon removal credits through 2034. This includes technologies like direct air capture, biochar, and enhanced rock weathering. More than just a carbon removal purchase, this is a strategic innovation partnership.

Together, we are co-creating ERP-centric carbon management tools, integrated into solutions like SAP Sustainability Control Tower, and making it available via SAP Store. These tools will help companies manage and mitigate emissions in real time, making carbon removal more actionable at scale.

Is Climeworks also adopting SAP solutions?

Yes, and that is part of what makes this partnership so compelling. Climeworks has implemented SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud through the GROW with SAP journey and is using the SAP LeanIX portfolio to support its rapid growth. These tools help with compliance, financial management, and operational efficiency — all critical elements for scaling in the climate-tech space.

How does this alliance benefit SAP’s business and customers?

It is a strategic move that strengthens our position economically and environmentally. As SAP Chief Sustainability & Commercial Officer Sophia Mendelsohn recently shared, this partnership allows us to lock in carbon removal capacity at preferred rates, hedging against future price volatility. But more importantly, it enables us to create new sustainability-focused solutions for our customers, helping them meet regulatory and stakeholder expectations.

As SAP pushes ahead with its decarbonization strategy, where do you see the biggest opportunities for positive impact, both within SAP and for the broader ecosystem?

As SAP advances its decarbonization strategy, the biggest opportunities for positive impact lie in leveraging our technology and ecosystem to drive systemic change — both internally and across industries.

Within SAP, our greatest opportunity is embedding sustainability directly into core business processes — such as procurement, supply chain, and finance — using our own solutions. This not only reduces our operational GHG footprint but serves as a model for our customers. Our sustainability solutions aim to empower organizations to measure, manage, and act on their sustainability goals. By doing so, we scale our impact.

We remain grounded in the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) Corporate Net-Zero Standard and see opportunities to lead by example, even beyond 2030, by continuously improving our net-zero program and sharing best practices.

In the end, we are not just preparing for a net-zero future; we are shaping it. Through collaboration, transparency, and technology, we are proving that climate action is essential to long-term success.

Karen Restrepo Avila is Sustainability and Net-Zero communications lead at SAP.

MADRID — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Team Liquid, one of the most decorated organizations in competitive gaming, is tapping into Joule Agents for instant access to game statistics, player performance trends and strategic comparisons using natural language.

Unlike traditional AI models, AI agents are designed to perceive their environment, set goals and take actions autonomously to achieve those objectives.

Team Liquid runs its data analysis through its “Next Level Esports Center” dashboard, built entirely on SAP Business Technology Platform. Team Liquid’s analysts rely on the dashboard to equip coaches and players with insights about upcoming opponents, managing high-pressure situations under short turnaround times and frequent data requests between games.

Instead of relying solely on technical analysts, players, coaches and marketing teams can ask the Joule copilot for player or team insights, tapping into more than 1.6 TB of data from 10 million games to find the right answer and uncover strategic advantages. This shift eliminates the need for manual data retrieval, empowering diverse users to make data-driven decisions at game speed.

“Thanks to the Joule copilot and Joule Agents, what once took hours of manual work is now available instantly, driving our strategies and enhancing team performance,” said Victor Goossens, co-CEO and founder of Team Liquid. “This partnership is changing the way we utilize our extensive database, proving that AI and data integration are becoming a vital part of our game preparation and success in esports.”

By smoothly integrating SAP HANA Cloud and the SAP Analytics Cloud solution, Team Liquid gains a robust and scalable data infrastructure, enabling fast, actionable insights. Joule helps users instantly access game statistics, player performance trends and strategic comparisons, making critical information available within seconds.

AI-powered chat agents change the game:

• Faster data access: Data can be retrieved and analyzed instantly. With easier access to insights, different departments—performance teams, marketing and communications—can make real-time, data-driven decisions.
• Empowered users: Regardless of function and technical knowledge, users can intuitively access insights through AI-driven queries.
• Enhanced strategy: Real-time data comparisons enable precise, data-backed decisions, giving Team Liquid a competitive edge in one of the most dynamic gaming environments.
• Proactive pattern recognition: The agent uncovers patterns in large datasets that might not have been discovered through manual data analysis.

Philipp Herzig, chief technology officer and chief AI officer, SAP, said: “Team Liquid’s use of Joule Agents is a compelling example of how AI can reduce the workload on analysts, allowing them to focus on high-impact tasks in a fast-paced environment. These agents don’t just automate through insights about gaming — they actually reason by understanding the context and then they act, enabling smarter, faster decision-making.”

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Media Contact:
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This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP’s 2024 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
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MADRID — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Heineken, one of the world’s largest brewers, has introduced an internal artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, “Hoppy,” to enhance business processes and offer real-time data access.

With operations in over 70 countries and more than 165 breweries worldwide, Heineken was looking to streamline data access so business users could quickly find and analyze data in their preferred language. Hoppy, an AI-driven chatbot that runs on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), represents a significant leap forward in Heineken’s commitment to streamlining internal processes and empowering its workforce.

By leveraging advanced natural language processing with data across multiple systems, Hoppy eliminates the need for time-consuming manual searches and allows business users to focus on more strategic and impactful tasks.

With the SAP Datasphere solution, the company now has a unified data model for improved data access and scalability. Additionally, with the generative AI hub capability integrated with SAP BTP, Hoppy enables natural language querying, visualization and more secure data access.

Andre van Schuijlenburg, director of global process management at Heineken, commented: “Building and integrating agents is not always an easy journey. There is still a lot to be discovered. But as we say in the team: ‘Don’t worry, be Hoppy!’”

Since Hoppy was introduced within platforms like Microsoft Teams, Heineken has seen the time knowledge workers need to retrieve information fall to one minute from 15 minutes. With SAP Business AI capabilities at Hoppy’s core, Heineken also is exploring automating repetitive tasks to enhance business processes and streamline communications and decision-making. Additionally, with a unified view across its data, Hoppy can now flag missing cost center information in purchase orders, promoting efficiency and accuracy.

“Heineken’s decision to leverage SAP Business AI for its internal chatbot exemplifies an innovative approach to reimagining operational efficiency and employee empowerment,” said Manos Raptopoulos, chief revenue officer for APAC, EMEA and MEE at SAP. “We’re proud to see our technology facilitating smooth internal communication and knowledge sharing for such an iconic global brand.”

Visit the SAP News Center. Get SAP news via LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Media Contact:
Lesa Plingen, +49 622 776 9000, lesa.plingen@sap.com, CET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP’s 2024 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
© 2025 SAP SE. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.

AI Innovations Aim to Boost Business Productivity by up to 30 Percent;
Partnerships with Perplexity and Palantir Bring out Customers’ Best

ORLANDO — At its annual SAP Sapphire conference, SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) unveiled innovations and partnerships that put the power of Business AI in every user’s hands, revolutionizing the way work gets done.

From a virtually omnipresent Joule assistant to an expanded network of Joule Agents that work across systems and lines of business, SAP heralds a new era that democratizes access to Business AI and can drive productivity gains of up to 30 percent.

“SAP combines the world’s most powerful suite of business applications with uniquely rich data and the latest AI innovations to create a flywheel of customer value,” said SAP CEO Christian Klein. “With the expansion of Joule, our partnerships with leading AI pioneers, and advancements in SAP Business Data Cloud, we’re delivering on the promise of Business AI as we drive digital transformations that help customers thrive in an increasingly unpredictable world.”

AI that boosts productivity

SAP’s generative AI assistant Joule can be everywhere you work, delivering personalized answers on everything you need to be more productive.

Joule can accompany business users throughout their day, in and out of the SAP application universe, to find data, surface real-time insights and streamline workflows. Joule’s new ubiquity includes an action bar powered by WalkMe that studies user behavior across applications, turning the assistant into an always-available, proactive AI that can anticipate users’ needs before they arise — always adhering to SAP’s strict ethical AI guidelines.

A collaboration with Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine company, enhances Joule’s ability to draw on structured and unstructured data to solve complex business problems. Powered by Perplexity and the SAP Knowledge Graph, Joule now instantly answers questions with structured, visual answers — such as charts and graphs — grounded in real-time business data within SAP workflows. For example, a user could ask the tool how recent external events might impact their business and get a forecast based on both current events and the company’s own business data.

SAP also unveiled an expanded library of Joule Agents that reimagine business processes and workflows from the ground up. Fueled by the world’s most powerful real-time business data and orchestrated by Joule, these AI agents work across systems and lines of business to anticipate, adapt and act autonomously so organizations can stay agile in a rapidly changing world. Partnering with industry leaders, SAP offers an ecosystem of interoperable agents that can execute end-to-end processes. The new agents span customer experience, supply chain management, spend management, finance, and human capital management.

Finally, SAP introduced an operating system for AI development that transforms how enterprises build, deploy and scale AI solutions. AI Foundation gives developers a single entry point for building, extending and running custom AI solutions at scale, making it the first real operating system for Business AI. A new prompt optimizer, designed collaboratively with the frontier AI lab Not Diamond, also helps developers create more effective AI prompts quickly, reducing work on complex use cases from days to minutes.

Data that drives smarter decisions

SAP also introduced new intelligent applications in SAP Business Data Cloud, each built for a specific line of business. These applications can continuously learn, simulate outcomes and guide actions using business-critical data, detecting changes to optimize processes, anticipate needs, and collaborate with both human and artificial thinkers to drive meaningful impact. The People Intelligence application, for instance, optimizes team performance by transforming people and skills data into workforce insights and AI-driven recommendations.

Additionally, SAP and Palantir are partnering to facilitate joint customers’ cloud migration journey and modernization programs. Seamless connectivity between Palantir and SAP Business Data Cloud will enable customers to build a harmonized data foundation across their enterprise landscape. Together the companies will responsibly deliver essential outcomes and support customers, including the U.S. government, to quickly adapt to changes and disruptions.

Applications that accelerate cloud adoption

The company also announced SAP Business Suite packages, which are designed for customers to simplify the adoption of SAP cloud solutions that address their specific business challenges. SAP Build is embedded in these packages, so organizations can customize applications to meet their unique needs.

Finally, SAP unveiled a new solution that helps customers transition to the cloud faster. With Joule as the entry point and drawing on insights from SAP solutions including SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX, the solution delivers personalized guidance and actionable recommendations tailored to an organization’s transformation objectives and can help deliver up to 35 percent faster time to value.

Learn more in the 2025 SAP Sapphire Innovation Guide.

Visit the SAP News Center. Get SAP news via LinkedIn and Bluesky.

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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