The age of artificial intelligence (AI) is here, creating unprecedented opportunities to reshape industries. Yet, the path to meaningful adoption is riddled with challenges ranging from data complexity to organizational resistance.

This is where the latest update of the SAP Preferred Success offering comes in. It now offers a workshop designed to transform AI adoption into a structured, achievable process. Tailored support focuses on scaling AI initiatives confidently and responsibly in cloud solutions from SAP.

Adding a business AI accelerator workshop to SAP Preferred Success demonstrates SAP’s commitment to going beyond advancing technology adoption. Combining deep expertise, strategic frameworks, and cutting-edge AI capabilities, the workshop helps empower companies to unlock their full potential with bold innovations and measurable business outcomes.

Setting a transformative foundation for AI integration

Supported by a comprehensive framework, the business AI accelerator workshop provides essential knowledge, strategic frameworks, and a clear action plan to leverage AI for improved business processes, data-driven decision-making, and enhanced customer experiences. But what makes this new addition remarkable is its focus on delivering reliable, relevant, and responsible AI.

Enhanced with the software industry’s broadest data sets, the service can integrate AI into business processes while upholding the highest standards of ethics, data privacy, and governance. This can enable companies to embrace AI with trust and transparency while achieving tangible outcomes.

Accelerating time to value is another key benefit of the workshop. By rapidly deploying AI models and solutions, organizations can quickly realize the benefits of automation, optimization, and data-driven decision-making. They can participate in tailored sessions to identify high-impact use cases that align with their unique needs and plan a road map for simplifying the complexities of integrating AI capabilities into existing processes.

Beyond its technical strengths, the workshop emphasizes effective change management and comprehensive governance. These practices can foster organizational buy-in, strengthen compliance, and support a smooth transition to AI-driven operations. And when combined with SAP’s scalable, cloud-based AI services, businesses can gain the flexibility to grow sustainably, adapt to evolving demands, and future-proof their operations.

Guiding the path to bold innovation and simplicity

The workshop can provide a structured approach for organizations seeking effective AI adoption. It begins by introducing foundational business AI concepts, SAP’s AI strategy, and the AI services available from SAP. This initial overview highlights AI’s possibilities, helping organizations understand its potential impact on business operations.

Building on this foundation, the workshop conducts an AI readiness assessment of the customer’s SAP landscape, IT infrastructure, and overall consumption behavior. This evaluation identifies suitable AI use cases and establishes a tailored road map for AI adoption.

In parallel, the workshop can strengthen governance, compliance, and ethical considerations by establishing a comprehensive data governance framework. This helps ensure data accuracy, legality, privacy, and security across AI applications, enabling organizations to maintain high data quality, regulatory compliance, and stakeholder trust while mitigating legal risks.

Change management is another essential component of the workshop. Organizations can learn best practices for AI adoption in SAP solutions, including strategies to secure organizational buy-in, reduce resistance, and transition smoothly into AI-driven operations.

Next, a resource and skill set evaluation is conducted to help identify gaps in AI expertise. Organizations can leverage this information to build a skilled team capable of effectively adopting AI solutions and sustaining long-term success.

The workshop then focuses on strategic use-case identification, guiding participants through interactive sessions to uncover high-value AI opportunities aligned with business goals. This process can provide customers with AI use cases tailored to meet each organization’s specific needs and strategic objectives.

By the end of the workshop, organizations can gain a comprehensive action plan that helps transform insights into execution—driving AI adoption with confidence while fostering co-innovation and collaborative growth.

Shaping the future with AI and innovation at the core

We at SAP and our customers can work together to shape a future where technology drives meaningful impact with the business AI accelerator workshop. Whether identifying impactful use cases relevant for business or adopting AI-driven solutions, organizations can maximize the value of their technology investments and help ensure lasting outcomes with greater agility, scalability, and efficiency.

Discover how the SAP Preferred Success offering can guide your organization toward bold innovation, measurable outcomes, and lasting success.

Kiron Satyavarapu is global solution owner of SAP Preferred Success at SAP.

Security is in our DNA. SAP security measures meet the highest standards for cybersecurity, operations, and privacy protection tailored to the individual needs of our customers.

We manage security and compliance risks and operate cybersecurity and physical security programs across our technology landscape, including cloud environments, facilities, events, and employees. We apply our security framework for every customer, all the time.

Recent geopolitical shifts and technological advancements have heightened the challenges for organizations responsible for society’s most critical functions, such as government, defense, and essential infrastructure. These security-sensitive organizations face growing threats from malicious actors targeting their mission-critical operations. As national security and sovereignty become top priorities, regulatory requirements are rapidly tightening. Any lapse in security could have serious consequences not only for the organizations themselves but also for the states and societies they serve.

Many security-sensitive organizations may face obstacles in their digital transformation due to these unique requirements and challenges. This has consequences, because in today’s environment, leveraging data to its full potential is just as relevant for national security and sovereignty as the highest level of protection.

At SAP, the needs and success of our customers are our focus. SAP understands the challenges these security-sensitive organizations are facing and is committed to supporting them in their sovereign digital transformation. Thereby, we are convinced that we need a new view on sovereignty in the digital age. One that goes beyond eliminating risk by actively creating value. With SAP Sovereign Cloud, we are implementing this approach.

With SAP’s Sovereignty Commitment, we underline what we at SAP consider also critical for sovereignty in the digital age: a commitment to contribute to building a secure and sovereign future, together.

SAP has been living this commitment through actions for many years. Starting in the U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Germany, we have highlighted our commitment to sovereign cloud solutions. The announcements of several billion-dollar investments in SAP Sovereign Cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) alone in the past months underline that.

With SAP’s Sovereignty Commitment, we underscore this commitment and dedication to supporting even the most security-sensitive organizations with specific sovereignty requirements to navigate their unique challenges in their sovereign digital transformation in the selected countries. Recognizing the urgent need for transformative action, we are determined to cooperate with those organizations on building a strong pillar for a more secure and sovereign tomorrow.  

In the Sovereignty Commitment, we outline how we do it and what we plan in the future.

“In today’s complex geopolitical landscape, digital sovereignty is not just about reducing risk; it’s about actively creating value,” said Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Customer Services & Delivery. “SAP is proud to be a trusted partner for most security-sensitive organizations around the world. With SAP Sovereign Cloud, even the most security-sensitive organizations are enabled to maintain control over their mission-critical workload while unlocking its full potential.”

We are an experience and trusted partner

Most security-sensitive organizations with specific sovereignty requirements need a partner that can flex to their specific regulatory needs and unlock operational value without compromising on sovereignty, protection, or control.

Backed by the world’s leading business data and a more than 50 year legacy of enterprise innovation, SAP is pioneering sovereign cloud transformation to help leaders in government, defense, and highly regulated industries comply with sovereignty requirements and seize new opportunities.

Pioneering sovereign cloud transformation, our sovereign cloud portfolio includes Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

SAP Sovereign Cloud: A holistic approach based on national requirements

At SAP, we take a holistic approach to sovereign cloud, in which we consider four major dimensions based on the national requirements: data sovereignty, operational sovereignty, legal sovereignty, and technical sovereignty.

With SAP Sovereign Cloud, we tailor solution delivery to the regarded countries’ specific national requirements — a sovereign cloud transformation is not empowered with a one-size-fits-it-all approach. We build on ​the SAP solution portfolio, which is secure by design. We offer with SAP Sovereign Cloud bespoke solutions on dedicated​ in-country infrastructure ​and operations covering the central sovereign cloud capabilities in line ​with our customers’ needs and deliver state-of-the-art solutions based on our innovation pipeline.

With SAP Sovereign Cloud, our customers can simultaneously unlock the potential of technological advancements, ensuring competitiveness and innovation in fulfillment of the national sovereignty requirements. SAP invests in and expands the SAP Sovereign Cloud portfolio, recognizing our most security-sensitive customers’ urgent demand.

Today, SAP Sovereign Cloud is available in six countries​. We are planning to further expand our established footprint with additional geographies and SAP solutions.

We take a forward-thinking approach

At SAP, we strive to think ahead, focusing on the unique and evolving needs of our most security-sensitive customers.

• Dedicated leadership for national security: Recognizing the critical importance of national security, the Supervisory Board of SAP SE has established a dedicated Government Security Committee. This committee ensures that the specific requirements of our security-focused customers remain a strategic priority at the highest levels of our organization.
• Centralized unit for sovereign solutions: To better serve security-sensitive customers, SAP has established the Sovereign Services & Delivery unit. This dedicated team consolidates expertise across cloud infrastructure, regulatory compliance, and digital transformation to address the most stringent sovereignty requirements. The unit ensures seamless collaboration along the entire value chain, enabling faster and more tailored responses to market demands. By fostering closer integration, we empower customers to achieve secure, compliant, and scalable sovereign cloud solutions.
• Investing in sovereignty: We are making bold investments to support cloud sovereignty. SAP plans to invest more than double-digit billion into AI and research and development, as well as cloud infrastructure, over the next five years in Europe. In Germany alone, we plan to invest €2 billion in SAP Sovereign Cloud, underscoring our commitment to strengthening digital independence and the sovereignty of the societies we proudly serve.

Martin Merz is president of Sovereign Services & Delivery at SAP.

In December 2024, SAP Business Network—the world’s largest B2B platform, facilitating more than US$6.2 trillion in commerce annually in 190 countries—launched its first data center in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), representing a major step forward in the execution of SAP’s data federation strategy. SAP Business Network has now become a distributed, decentralized, and federated business network for SAP Business Network for Logistics and SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration across the EU, U.S., and KSA. With this milestone, SAP has delivered on a crucial promise made to a highly consequential set of customers.

But what exactly is data federation? And why does it hold so much promise for customers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere?

To counter the ever-present threat to global supply chains posed by disruption—whether arising from geopolitical conflict, labor unrest, financial crisis, natural disaster, or other upheaval—businesses are turning increasingly to cloud-based solutions to extend visibility and instill resilience across their operations and those of their trading partners, particularly when managing supply chains, logistics, and dispersed capital equipment or other mission-critical assets. Yet just as businesses must assess risk on an international scale to stay competitive, they also must comply with a burgeoning set of regulations around the world requiring operational data to reside physically within a nation’s borders. By applying cloud-based solutions, businesses can transact commerce through global digital networks while adhering strictly to regional data residency requirements through an approach known as data federation.

Data federation permits operational information from disparate sources to be accessed and updated as though it resided in a single, unified location. Instead of moving or copying data from one system to another, federation provides users with real-time access unburdened by duplication.

Federation becomes crucial when an organization must unify its data across different storage platforms while ensuring the integrity and security of the underlying operational sources. This becomes particularly vital for companies with complex data architectures, whose data may reside in SAP systems, cloud data lakes, or third-party applications. Data federation brings multiple advantages, especially in hybrid or multi-cloud environments, including global access, cost efficiency, unified governance and security, and faster time to insights.

But the advantages extend still further. With the launch of our KSA data center, SAP Business Network core services have been deployed. This includes multilingual support, such as proficiency with languages read right-to-left like Arabic, and a Federated Trading Partner Index Service for routing transactions between different data centers. Saudi customers can thus adhere to local data privacy regulations while retaining the ability to collaborate and transact with trading partners around the world.

Why Is This Important?

With the deployment of SAP Business Network in the KSA data center, public sector or critical national infrastructure (CNI) customers and prospects in KSA can rest assured that regulations have been followed strictly, allowing these organizations to transact on SAP Business Network for Logistics and SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration. Data federation helps ensure that trading partners can find each other, regardless of where they may be registered.

What’s Next?

The deployment of SAP Business Network for Logistics and SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration for Saudi customers in the public and critical national infrastructure sectors, for whom data federation is crucial, marks only the initial step. Later this year, both products will become available for private-sector customers in KSA as well. SAP Business Network Commerce Automation and SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration will also be deployed in the KSA data center in coming quarters. Meanwhile, SAP will continue to expand its data center footprint and data federation program across the globe, with the expansion of SAP Business Network capabilities throughout 2025 and beyond.

For information on SAP Business Network and how we are equipping enterprises with business AI and related capabilities needed to instill resilience, counter disruption, and foster collaboration, visit sap.com/businessnetwork and sap.com/ai.

Jörn Keller is chief product officer for SAP Business Network.