SAP to Acquire Reltio: Make SAP and Non-SAP Data AI-Ready

WALLDORF & REDWOOD CITY— SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and Reltio Inc. today announced that SAP has agreed to acquire Reltio, a leading master data management (MDM) software provider, to help customers make their SAP and non-SAP enterprise data AI-ready. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Amplify the value of AI with your most powerful data

Once closed, the acquisition will strengthen SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC)—integral for SAP’s AI-First and Suite-First strategy—and accelerate the evolution of SAP BDC to a fully interoperable enterprise data platform for enterprise-wide agentic AI. It will provide customers with the tools they need to unify, cleanse and harmonize data across sources for superior enterprise-wide agentic AI.

“Reltio is a natural fit with SAP,” said Muhammad Alam, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, SAP Product & Engineering. “Acquiring them will further improve our position as a leading business AI provider, combining SAP and non-SAP data to deliver data context that business AI requires. AI cannot reach its full potential when data is fragmented across business units, platforms and domains without connection or context.”

By integrating Reltio after closing the acquisition, SAP will make customers’ enterprise data fully AI-ready. Customers will be able to rely on trusted, high-quality data across SAP and non-SAP sources that Joule and Joule Agents use to deliver faster time-to-value for business AI.

Reltio’s platform helps organizations manage and govern structured and unstructured enterprise data from start to finish. Its AI-based entity resolution identifies and merges related records from different formats and applications into one reliable “golden record” system of context. Its cloud-native, AI-first design supports a single, consistent view of customers, products, suppliers, locations and employees across both SAP and non-SAP applications. Customers running AI tasks will benefit from increased reliability and consistency of data, bundled in a single source of truth, improving business AI. With that, customers can trust that AI results are correct, and AI-interactions are resolved fast.

“Joining forces with SAP presents a tremendous opportunity for us to accelerate our mission,” Reltio Founder and CEO Manish Sood said. “Enterprise AI needs trusted context that is open and interoperable across the heterogeneous IT landscapes our customers run. This combination accelerates our ability to deliver Reltio as the system of context across SAP and non-SAP environments, while maintaining continuity for our customers and our partner ecosystem.”

Reltio’s data cleansing, unification capabilities and agent-driven workflows will work alongside SAP Business Suite applications to improve decisions, reduce integration complexity and deliver trusted, consistent data critical for successful business processes and AI use cases. Low latency delivery and support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) enable real-time, multiagent workflows across SAP and non-SAP environments, allowing AI agents, such as a procurement agent, to assess supplier risk and trigger actions almost instantly using trusted, real-time data. Reltio offers prebuilt, industry-specific “velocity packs” that include data models, rules, matching logic and integrations, and solutions tailored to sectors like life sciences, healthcare and financial services.

By integrating Reltio after closing the acquisition, SAP intends to accelerate its customers’ ability to govern and expose master data as trusted and context-rich data products across multiple sources that serve both traditional analytics workloads and AI agents. Reltio will become a core capability within SAP BDC, with a flexible commercial model where customers can purchase Reltio as a separate solution or with other SAP products. The Reltio portfolio will also remain available as a standalone offering for the foreseeable future.

The transaction is expected to close in Q2 or Q3 of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.

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About Reltio

Reltio is a leader in data unification and management, delivering cloud-native, AI-native master data management (MDM) to help enterprises create trusted data and unlock context intelligence for analytics, automation, and agentic AI. Designed for complex, multi-vendor environments, Reltio helps organizations unify, cleanse, harmonize, govern, and activate core data from multiple sources in real time—across SAP and non-SAP systems. The Reltio Data Cloud uses advanced entity resolution, continuous data quality, and relationship intelligence within an intelligent data graph to connect data across systems and reveal the full context behind customers, products, suppliers, and other key business entities. This enables organizations to reduce data friction, improve operational execution, and accelerate time to trusted decisions. For more information, visit www.reltio.com.

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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SAP and UnternehmerTUM Drive Co-Innovation in Embodied AI

SAP is expanding its collaboration with UnternehmerTUM (UTUM), Europe’s leading center for entrepreneurship and innovation based at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). One of the latest outcomes of this collaboration is SafetyGuard, a prototype for automated safety inspections that combines artificial intelligence and robotics to detect workplace hazards and help companies comply with safety standards.

SafetyGuard was created as part of a program at UTUM’s Digital Product School—where teams of selected students work on real-world challenges—in just 12 weeks by a student team, “MIDAS,” and SAP Research & Innovation. This project illustrates just how effective cross-location collaboration with the ecosystem can be in rapidly creating prototypes as a foundation for product development at SAP.

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Embodied AI: a joint focus of innovation

The objective of this particular prototyping project was to identify use cases in which robotics and AI could be seamlessly integrated into business processes. Based on its research and on user studies, team MIDAS pinpointed the reliable detection and documentation of safety risks as one such use case.

Safety inspections are essential in many industries, but they are often time-consuming and error-prone. SafetyGuard could change that: leveraging embodied AI, it makes inspections faster, more efficient, and more reliable, without increasing the workload for employees.

Embodied AI—the integration of artificial intelligence into physical robot systems—will be a focal point of investment and development work at SAP going forward.

SafetyGuard combines two technologies: modular robotics and AI-powered autonomy. In this prototype, robots, such as drones and humanoid systems capable of inspecting work environments without human intervention, are equipped with a specialized AI model that is trained, for example, to detect where protective equipment is missing and to automatically document safety-related incidents. What’s more, the robots can multitask. While they are carrying out inspections, they can transport materials and monitor machinery—an approach that combines efficiency gains with increased safety levels.

“SafetyGuard demonstrates just how effective our ecosystem approach is. In this project, an SAP team in Potsdam and a group of students in Munich joined forces and very quickly built a prototype that will have a real impact on product development,” Tobias Riasanow, head of Ecosystem Development at SAP Labs Germany, says. “It’s the perfect example of what SAP understands by ‘ecosystem development.’”

The project is also strategic to SAP in that SafetyGuard addresses real-life industry requirements and complements SAP’s solutions for environment, health, and safety management. The prototyping approach that led to SafetyGuard could therefore become part of the SAP portfolio in the future to help further reduce the time it takes to get from an idea to a product.

SafetyGuard was created as part of a program at UTUM’s Digital Product School

A close partnership

UnternehmerTUM (UTUM) (translates as “entrepreneurship”) was founded in 2002 and has become Europe’s largest center for innovation and business creation. Each year, its 500 employees support more than 120 scalable startups and 300 innovation projects. UTUM’s close links with leading industry partners create an environment in which new technologies can rapidly be deployed in real-world settings.

SAP has been working with UTUM since 2017. The non-profit organization is one of the founding partners of influential programs such as Digital Hub Mobility, Circular Republic, and Energy Innovation, which enable teams to test their ideas, validate them with partners, and hone them.

Programs with impact

To date, 13 prototypes have been developed for SAP under programs run by UTUM, all in close collaboration with product teams at SAP and directly related to their respective road maps. The programs offered by UTUM include:

  • Innovation Sprint: Here, students have just one week to work on prototypes for solving specific user challenges. The most recent sprint, The Future of Retail with SAP Joule, produced five such prototypes, including solutions for intelligent inventory optimization, virtual shelf monitoring, and retail assistance systems.
  • Digital Product School: This 12-week program for students is designed as a platform for developing executable software prototypes. One prototype created out of this program was Carbon Data Exchange, which is now part of SAP Sustainability Control Tower. Another is an application that makes it easier for developers to access the extensive documentation for SAP Field Service Management. Instead of wasting valuable time searching, they can simply type their questions into a chatbot and receive helpful answers, including code examples and direct links to the documentation they need.
  • Multistakeholder projects: Additional prototypes have been created in longer-term programs such as Digital Hub Mobility and Circular Republic. Programs like these bring together experts from companies, startups, and research institutions over several months and allow SAP to test innovations in real-world customer and partner environments at an early stage in their development.

Co-innovation gets results—faster

The collaboration between SAP and UTUM shows how quickly ideas can lead to tangible results when students, researchers, and SAP teams work together to apply scientific approaches to real-life industrial challenges. SafetyGuard is an example of how embodied AI innovations can be created and how different groups of experts can benefit from one another.

“SafetyGuard demonstrates the extensibility of SAP’s approach to embodied AI. SAP’s embodied AI layer integrates the business context and triggers actions across the suite. SafetyGuard’s AI-native, manufacturer-agnostic design is scalable across different use cases and enables multitasking, allowing, for example, robots to process safety incidents while performing other tasks such as industrial asset inspections. SafetyGuard is a proof point for SAP for the added value of using cognitive robotics in safety scenarios.”

Adelya Fatykhova and Dr. Łukasz Ostrowski, Initiators and Supervisors of the student challenge

This first appeared on the German SAP News Center.

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Team Liquid Turns to Joule to Unlock the Power of Esports Data

The world’s largest esports organization is turning to Joule to transform how it manages the vast amounts of data generated in competitive gaming.

“There’s so much data; I would say in esports, too much data,” said Thom Valks, partnerships manager at Team Liquid, referring to the 1 trillion points of data his company deals with. “How do you figure out what the right questions are to ask? And then how do you get quick answers to those questions? That was the main problem.”

Founded more than two decades ago, Team Liquid has become a global powerhouse in professional gaming.

Haleon Chooses SAP Solutions to Accelerate Growth Through Technology

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and Haleon, a global consumer health company, today announced Haleon’s decision to adopt SAP Business Suite to enhance the enterprise’s digital infrastructure and advance AI capabilities across its business.

SAP Business Suite: Deliver exceptional business value and help your business stay ready for what’s next

This decision will help Haleon operate, scale and serve consumers in new ways by building stronger, more agile foundations for delivering its trusted everyday health products. It marks a significant milestone in Haleon’s transformation into a world-class consumer company.

“Delivering a better consumer experience starts with strong foundations, and leading digital technology and infrastructure are at the heart of this,” said Claire Dickson, Haleon’s chief digital and technology officer. “Our latest partnership with SAP is another important step in our journey to becoming a world-class consumer company. It will revolutionize how we operate, with AI-enabled systems driving faster, simpler, more integrated ways of working. This will allow our people to focus on what matters most—serving consumers and unlocking growth.”

SAP Business Suite will drive the simplification and standardization of critical processes across Haleon’s global operations, enabling more integrated, automated end-to-end processes across diverse parts of the organization.

With clearer visibility across markets and more intuitive systems replacing fragmented workflows, the business can operate with greater speed, consistency and resilience. These improvements strengthen supply chain responsiveness, support innovation and help Haleon better respond to changing consumer needs. This enables Haleon to deliver trusted everyday health products at scale while strengthening collaboration with the healthcare professionals who recommend its products to consumers worldwide.

Haleon can drive greater business efficiencies by integrating core processes across finance, supply chain, HR and sales in one connected system with real-time data. By building AI into everyday work and embedding it within Haleon’s digital infrastructure and across its functions, teams can make better data-driven decisions and respond more quickly to changing consumer needs. The automation of routine work across multiple functions frees up employees’ time so they can focus on more strategic work that delivers value for the business and consumers while accelerating growth.

This digital transformation program builds on a long-standing relationship between the two companies, with the transition from Haleon’s current platform on SAP ERP Central Component beginning later this year.

“AI outcomes depend on connected processes and trusted data,” said Peter Maier, SAP’s senior vice president for strategic customer engagements. “With SAP Business Suite, Haleon is building an AI-ready foundation that embeds intelligence across the enterprise, helping simplify operations, improve resilience and scale innovation.”

Haleon plans to adopt SAP Cloud ERP applications with embedded AI and deploy the SAP Business Data Cloud solution to harmonize SAP software and third-party data in a governed, single source of truth. This connected platform will be able to support AI-assisted innovation and enable agentic AI, where AI agents can identify issues earlier and recommend actions across key business processes.

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Media Contacts:
Lawrie Benfield, SAP, +44 7776515259, lawrie.benfield@sap.com, GMT
Sonya Domanski, SAP, +44 7345465928, sonya.domanski@sap.com, GMT
SAP Press Roompress@sap.com
Gemma Thomas, Haleon, gemma.x.thomas@haleon.com

The agreement referenced in this announcement was signed outside SAP’s first quarter reporting period.

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Top image courtesy of Haleon

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 2025 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
© 2026 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.

How Würth Standardizes B2B E‑Procurement with Customers via SAP Business Network

The Würth Group, a subsidiary of Adolf Würth GmbH & Co. KG, is one of the leading players in the development, production, and sale of fastening and assembly materials.

Connect across companies to build stronger supply chains and deliver on the customer promise

The company manages an extensive portfolio of more than 125,000 products. Despite its strong market position, digitalizing procurement across diverse customer environments remains a key challenge, particularly in e-procurement, where large customers often have very different requirements, even when market standards exist.

To address this, Würth recognized the need to better connect procurement processes and now collaborates closely with leading e-procurement systems and platforms. The company has driven the harmonization of customer processes and ensured seamless onboarding to SAP Business Network. At the same time, Würth actively supports its customers in harmonizing and digitalizing their own internal workflows.

As the world’s largest procurement platform, SAP Business Network enables more efficient procurement and automated order processing and provides end-to-end transparency across the purchase-order‑to‑invoice flow between Würth and participating customers. This scope involves purchasing orders, delivery confirmation, and invoices, with exceptions managed through clearly defined workflows.

Save time and boost efficiency: seven minutes saved per order

Manual processing of orders, sent as PDFs or via non‑integrated channels, creates disproportionate effort, especially in relation to the order value, since indirect materials often involve smaller order values with many order items.

 With automation, Würth saves approximately seven minutes per order on average — approximately 490,000 minutes annually or about 8,167 hours. The platform enables digital order transmission, catalog exchange, and automated invoice matching, materially improving process efficiency.

Seamless customer purchasing journey

With around 3,000 sales representatives in Germany, more than 600 pick-up branches, and numerous on-site storage solutions, including automated dispensing machines, Würth offers customers a truly omnichannel purchasing experience. Through SAP Business Network, all these touchpoints can be seamlessly integrated, giving customers that adopt this approach full transparency, as every order becomes visible directly within their own system.

One construction industry leader worked with Würth to integrate dispensing machines and branch pick‑ups into SAP Business Network, digitalizing its procurement processes. This integration has largely eliminated manual activities in day‑to‑day order handling of standard processes. Exceptions are automatically identified and routed through defined workflows, while payment instructions are triggered once the purchase order, goods confirmation, and invoice are successfully matched.

Stronger supplier-customer partnership

Beyond operational savings and improved collaboration, Würth enhances the customer experience through near-real-time integration across procurement, invoicing, and logistics. Digitalized procurement processes help meet customer requirements more reliably and further strengthen the supplier-customer partnership.

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Optimizing for Next-Level Fan Engagement and Game-Day Operations in Real Time

With 34 German national soccer league championship wins in its 125-year history, FC Bayern Munich is one of the largest and most successful sports clubs in the world. It has built a massive global audience, with more than 200 million social media followers, up to 75,000 spectators in attendance at every men’s league home match, and a growing fan base for its other teams, including women’s soccer and men’s basketball.

Keeping FC Bayern at the top is no mean feat, and the action on the pitch is supported by a global administrative team of over 1,200, in addition to the thousands of operational staff who work to deliver a seamless experience to the fans who fill the Allianz Arena for each home match. The focus on match-day operations encompasses everything from security to ticketing to retail, as well as managing one of the largest parking garages in Europe, which accommodates up to 12,000 cars that must enter and exit within a few hours.

FC Bayern’s match-day operations generate a staggering volume of data, but capturing and making sense of every fan interaction—both in the stadium and among the hundreds of millions tuning in worldwide—was becoming a herculean undertaking. Fan data was siloed in more than 50 legacy systems, creating a fragmented information landscape that hindered FC Bayern’s ability to understand and serve its legions of fans.

Learn how one of the most successful sports clubs is delivering an elevated experience for its fans

Thankfully, a club that has been in the business of winning for over a century is no stranger to innovation.

Game plan: data

Dominik Winter, head of Development and Process for FC Bayern Munich, captured the club’s challenge in a nutshell: “Everything needs data.” Everyone from the firefighters and police who supported match days to the IT teams and retail staff “needed data, and everyone needed the same perspective on the data,” Winter explained.

But the club’s data was sprawled across dozens of siloed systems, each tied to different vendors and service providers. And when it came time to make crucial match-day decisions, team members had to rely on analog, piecemeal methods of sharing information—often through SMS and radio. As a result, no one ever had the same information at the same time.

FC Bayern needed to harness its vast amount of information with a single, integrated system that provided a unified, 360-degree view.

From silos to a streamlined system

The storied sports club has enjoyed a partnership with SAP dating back more than a quarter of a century. Therefore, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) was a natural fit for the next step in the club’s digital journey. The platform includes SAP Integration Suite to help capture and combine data from disparate sources and systems, including both SAP and non-SAP systems. This newly integrated data landscape provides a single source of truth across the organization, enabling real-time data analytics that not only streamline match-day operations and optimize the fan experience on-site but also provide invaluable insights to fuel long-term strategic planning.

For example, Winter explained, the club now has access to an up-to-the-minute, “high-level” overview of FC Bayern fans—”how they behave, what they’re interested in, how old they are, whether they buy jerseys, whether they only go to soccer matches, whether they are already interested in basketball,” and more—that has facilitated a much deeper understanding of fans, not only on the individual level but also across the entire fan base.

Forecasting the future

With a solid, integrated data foundation established, FC Bayern is looking ahead and will be adding AI to its technology line-up to maximize the value of its data across the organization, from amplifying process efficiency to developing robust, data-informed predictive capabilities.

For organizations looking to undertake their own digital transformations, Winter advised to not put the cart before the horse: “To use AI, you need to have good data.” And while Winter cautioned that every organization’s process is unique, he recommended listening as a good first step for everyone: “Talk to your users. What are their problems? What do they need to know? What processes are they trying to optimize?”

While the journey is not always easy, FC Bayern knows that winning is always worth the effort.

For the full FC Bayern Munich episode and the on-demand Better Together: Customer Conversations series, visit sap.com/btp.

The full episode

Learn more about how FC Bayern Munich has transformed match-day operations:

  • Thought leadership podcast: Dominik Winter, head of development and process at FC Bayern München, talks with Thulium CEO Tamara McCleary about why it was mission-critical to enhance the fan experience by integrating their data to deliver a more personalized and targeted omnichannel experience, catering to individual preferences, from parking to purchases.
  • Practitioners’ video: Dominik Winter talks with Timo Elliott, vice president and global innovation evangelist at SAP, about the herculean undertaking to capture and make sense of the staggering volume of fan data siloed in more than 50 legacy systems. And then, with an eye on AI, they discuss what’s next.

To access the full on-demand Better Together: Customer Conversations series, visit here.

Do you have ideas for topics or technologies we should cover, or would you like to be a guest on the show? We’d love to hear from you. E-mail us.


Timo Elliott is the vice president and global innovation advocate for SAP BTP at SAP. 

Top photo courtesy of FC Bayern München AG

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SAP Announces 2026 Winners of SAP Partner Awards – Regional

SAP Partner Awards – Regional locally recognize partner success in sales, innovation, technology, services, and solution areas within each region.

SAP has restructured the award recognition to provide more meaningful distinction, reflect our partners’ essential contributions, and ensure all award categories align with the Partner Ecosystem Success strategy. The newly created SAP Partner Awards replace previous recognition programs, including SAP Pinnacle Awards, SAP Global LoB Partner Excellence Awards, and SAP Regional Partner Excellence Awards.

In-region winners are announced at local kick-off events and regional partner summits in Q1. These partners have proven success in transforming customer business by harnessing cloud and AI technologies aligned with SAP’s business strategy. To encourage continued innovation, these partners are recognized for the value they deliver in fostering exceptional customer impact.

Recipients of these prestigious awards are a part of SAP’s wide-ranging partner base. Selections are made using system-generated data on key performance indicators and weighted metrics aligned with SAP’s communicated business strategies. A steering committee of designated regional representatives review and rank achievements accordingly.

Congratulations to the 2026 winners for this esteemed recognition!

SAP Partner Awards showcase top-performing partners that have excelled in helping customers bring out their best

2026 SAP Partner Awards – Regional

Recipients by region

Middle and Eastern Europe (MEE)

  • Business Transformation Management, Excellence: NTT DATA Business Solutions
  • Customer Transformation, Large Enterprise: Deloitte
  • Innovative Solution, SAP Store: Qualtrics
  • Innovative Solution, Solution Extensions: Tricentis
  • Managed Service Provider, Top Performance: T-Systems International
  • RISE with SAP Methodology: Accenture
  • SAP Business AI, Partner Innovation – Customer AI Use Case: PwC

Latin America and Caribbean (LAC)

  • Customer Transformation, Partner-Led Territories: Seidor
  • Customer Transformation, Corporate: Seidor
  • Customer Transformation, Large Enterprise: Accenture
  • Small Enterprise Growth: Heinsohn
  • Delivery Quality: Globant
  • Customer Success Management: ADP
  • SAP Cloud ERP, New Customer Acquisition: Seidor
  • SAP Cloud ERP, Installed Base Transformation: Seidor
  • Rising Star: Kyndryll
  • SAP Business Data Cloud Success: Solveplan
  • SAP Business AI, Customer Adoption: Seidor
  • Business Transformation Management, Excellence: NumenIT
  • SAP Business Suite Success: Seidor
  • Innovative Solution, SAP Store: Fioneer
  • Innovative Solution, Solution Extensions: Tricentis
  • Procurement Transformation Sales Excellence: Team Eight
  • Finance Transformation Sales Excellence: Seidor
  • Customer Experience Sales Excellence: Seidor
  • Supply Chain Management Sales Excellence: NTT DATA Business Solutions 
  • Human Capital Management Sales Excellence: ITGES
  • The Best Partner of the Year: Seidor

North America (NA)

  • Customer Transformation, Partner-Led Territories: Syntax
  • Customer Transformation, Corporate: NTT DATA Business Solutions
  • Customer Transformation, Large Enterprise: Accenture
  • Small Enterprise Growth: Vision 33
  • Delivery Quality: Deloitte
  • Customer Success Management: NTT DATA Business Solutions
  • SAP Cloud ERP, New Customer Acquisition: VistaVu Solutions
  • Rising Star: KPMG
  • SAP Business Data Cloud Success: The Hackett Group
  • SAP Business AI, Customer Adoption: Accenture
  • Business Transformation Management, Excellence: Impriva
  • SAP Business Suite Success: Cognitus
  • SAP Store: Redwood
  • Innovative Solution, SAP Store: Laidon Group
  • Partner Solution Success: OpenText
  • Innovative Solution, Solution Extensions: Vistex
  • Partner Learning and Skills Growth: Deloitte
  • RISE with SAP Methodology: Accenture

Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)

  • Customer Transformation, Large Enterprise: Accenture
  • Delivery Quality: Deloitte
  • Partner Learning and Skills Growth: EY
  • RISE with SAP Methodology: IBM
  • SAP Business Data Cloud Success: Accenture
  • SAP Business AI, Customer Adoption: Deloitte
  • SAP Business Suite Success: Accenture
  • SAP Business AI, Customer Use Cases: PwC
  • SAP BTP Extensibility: Capgemini
  • Customer Transformation, Corporate: Seidor
  • Customer Transformation, Partner-Led Territories: Tano Digital Solutions
  • Rising Star: KPMG
  • SAP Store: Planon
  • Partner Solution Success – Best Solutions Extensions Performance: OpenText
  • Innovative Solution Extension – Growth: BlackLine
  • Corporate Social Responsibility: Seidor

Asia Pacific (APAC)

  • Customer Transformation, Corporate: PwC
  • Customer Transformation, Large Enterprise: Accenture
  • Customer Transformation, Partner-Led Territories: NTT DATA Business Solutions
  • Delivery Quality: Abeam Consulting
  • Partner Learning and Skills Growth: Infosys
  • RISE with SAP Methodology: Deloitte
  • SAP Cloud ERP, New Customer Acquisition: Citek Technology Joint Stock Company
  • SAP Cloud ERP, Installed Base Transformation: PwC
  • Rising Star: KPMG
  • SAP BTP Extensibility with SAP Build and Clean Core: Accenture
  • SAP Business Data Cloud Success: Accenture
  • SAP Business AI, Partner Innovation – AI Cloud Application: Deloitte
  • SAP Business AI, Partner Innovation – Customer AI Use Case: ASPN CO, LTD.
  • SAP Business AI, Customer Adoption: EY
  • SAP Store: Qualtrics
  • Business Transformation Management, Excellence: DyFlex Pty Ltd
  • SAP Business Suite Success: PwC
  • Partner Solution Success: OpenText
  • Sustainability: Deloitte
  • Managed Service Provider, Top Performance: Accenture
  • Procurement Transformation Sales Excellence: ABeam Consulting
  • Finance Transformation Sales Excellence: PwC
  • Customer Experience Sales Excellence: PT Eclectic Consulting
  • Supply Chain Management Sales Excellence: PwC
  • Human Capital Management Sales Excellence: Deloitte
  • Regional Strategic Services Partner: ABeam Consulting

Dina Blasi is a global partner marketing director, leading partner awards and recognition at SAP.

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SAP Recognized as a Six-Time Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Integration Platform as a Service

SAP has once again been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS), our sixth consecutive recognition. 

We believe this recognition reflects our continued investment in a modern, scalable AI-ready integration platform that meets the needs of organizations operating across increasingly complex hybrid and multicloud landscapes.

2026 Magic Quadrant for IPaaS
This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request.

Why orgnizations continue to choose SAP Integration Suite

Integrate your business across SAP and third-party landscapes with a modern, scalable, secure IPaaS

Part of SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), SAP Integration Suite brings together API management, event‑driven architecture, process integration, and AI‑assisted development in one unified offering. It gives customers a reliable way to connect distributed systems, orchestrate workflows, and operate securely across hybrid and multi-cloud environments—whether those landscapes run primarily on SAP solutions or a mix of third‑party applications.

By using metadata, events, and APIs as its backbone, the suite provides an integration foundation that supports AI agents and increasingly autonomous enterprise processes. Organizations in manufacturing, logistics, retail, and other highly regulated industries rely on this foundation to maintain performance and stay compliant at global scale.

Innovation that scales with your business

Over the past year, SAP expanded its AI‑assisted capabilities to help customers move faster and operate with security and reliability. New AI-assisted features include anomaly detection, script optimization, traffic prediction, and integration‑flow generation. Combined with more than 4,000 prebuilt integration flows and over 250 connectors, organizations can accelerate design and reduce manual effort.

SAP Integration Suite now runs in more than 40 data centers worldwide, giving customers flexibility for in‑region processing and data‑sovereignty requirements. These enhancements help teams detect issues earlier, optimize performance, and shorten time‑to‑value across complex hybrid landscapes.

Accelerating agentic AI adoption

Gebr. Heinemann modernized its global retail checkout platform with SAP Integration Suite and advanced event mesh, enabling the company to process 300,000 price‑change events in 30 minutes without system degradation.

“Advanced event mesh has completely changed the way integration and process orchestration run. Everything works better.”

Benedikt Althaus, team lead, Integration Services and Platform Solutions, Gebr. Heinemann SE & Co. KG.

Shimano Europe benefits from the efficient, scalable, and future‑proof integration foundation of SAP Integration Suite to accelerate its go‑to‑market process. By streamlining integrations across systems, the company improves operational efficiency and enhances the overall customer experience through a more agile and reliable integration landscape.

“To accelerate the go-to-market process, we provided an effective and efficient integration platform with SAP Integration Suite, a future-proof and scalable solution that improves our customers’ experiences.”

Fernanda Ribeiro, IT application architect, Shimano Europe

Siemens AG relies on SAP Integration Suite to harmonize global reporting processes and ensure compliance with evolving regulatory requirements. By standardizing integrations across regions and supporting diverse country‑specific tax protocols, SAP Integration Suite helps Siemens streamline compliance operations and maintain consistent reporting quality worldwide. This foundation strengthens Siemens’ ability to adapt to changing regulatory environments with greater confidence and efficiency.

“Managing international tax requirements is much easier. It will be implemented around the globe.”

Andrea Spandau, head of Digital Tax Ecosystem, Siemens AG

Looking ahead

We believe this year’s recognition underscores our commitment to advancing SAP Integration Suite with deeper AI capabilities, more reusable business content, broader industry coverage, third-party adapters, and an improved developer experience. Our goal is to help customers automate more of their operations, innovate with confidence, and scale as their businesses evolve.

Learn more


Sid Misra is chief marketing officer for SAP Business Technology Platform.

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Gartner does not endorse any company, vendor, product or service depicted in its publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s business and technology insights organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this publication, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Gartner and Magic Quadrant are trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.

Kito Crosby Secures Its Future with Cloud ERP Transformation

As a global leader in the lifting and securement industry, Kito Crosby manufactures and distributes products like critical lifting and rigging solutions, specialized hardware, cranes, and electric hoists. Headquartered in Richardson, Texas, with facilities worldwide, its mission focuses on safety, innovation, and global impact.

With a diverse portfolio of brands—Kito, Crosby, Harrington, Gunnebo Industries, Peerless, and eepos—the company has experienced rapid growth, scaling its business from millions to billions in revenue. But the number of acquisitions left the company with a fragmented IT landscape of outdated, unsupported, and unscalable systems.

To establish a unified digital core and standardize processes, Kito Crosby embarked on a RISE with SAP journey, implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition to achieve its long-term single global instance strategy.

A winning strategy

Kito Crosby chose a greenfield, clean core strategy to eliminate the existing fragmentation and enable long-term scalability, Johnson Lai, Chief Digital Transformation Officer and Chief Information Officer, shared in an interview. “In the past, we did not integrate our ERP systems, and this left our IT landscape very fragmented and limited our business process capabilities,” he said. “Therefore, we wanted to refresh all of our ERP systems and really lay down a greenfield start that we can begin to create a transformational change for the entire company.”

Selecting a greenfield and clean core approach—basically standing up an entirely new system that prioritizes standard functionalities over customizations—was key to remedying Kito Crosby’s current technology landscape, so that processes like order to cash, accounting, manufacturing, and shipping could be integrated. This approach also allowed the company to take a close look at core processes and streamline operations, especially in warehouse management and S&OP, Lai said.

Get a tailored-to-fit cloud ERP that adapts to your organization’s unique transformation

Considering the project scope, Kito Crosby did not have the internal talent needed to stand up the servers and infrastructure, so it decided to move forward with RISE with SAP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. “SAP comes with a lot of great stuff, and we wanted to take advantage of that,” Lai said.

The company began the transformation in North America, as that is its largest market and therefore posed the greatest risk in operating on a legacy, unsupported ERP system.

Never underestimate change management

While Lai shared that employees were motivated and excited to get started initially, the enormity of the project quickly became overwhelming.

Ironically, many wanted to customize the new SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition solution to act like the legacy tech. “Everyone agrees to the clean core approach until it’s their turn to look at their function, at which point they want customization. There was a piece of resistance to using ‘vanilla’ functionality,” Lai said. “Once we showed people live demos with their own data, that’s when the change resistance started to decrease,” he added.

In IT specifically, there was a strong desire to build and run their own infrastructure and servers rather than have another company step in. A sense of ownership and accountability is important, Lai said, but ultimately Kito Crosby’s need to get off the legacy system in North America quickly made it necessary to partner with SAP. And it was the right move: “Now some of the folks who questioned why we outsourced some of that to SAP are our biggest champions…We find working with the SAP team is no different than working with ourselves.”

For companies with digital transformation projects on the horizon, Lai cautions to “never underestimate the change impact that employees face.” Projects of a global scale require planning on all fronts, including allocating time for employees and business leaders to get on board.

Lessons learned and benefits gained

The ERP system revamp delivered measurable business value to Kito Crosby, including improved customer service, stronger inventory control, and more efficient manufacturing and warehouse operations. Notably, the business process improvements and enhanced system functionality drove Kito Crosby’s on-time delivery to its highest levels in more than 10 years.

“We see that benefit across the globe and we’re excited about taking what we’ve done in North America throughout the entire world, consolidating all those little ERPs that are outdated and unsupported into SAP to get to that single global instance,” Lai said. Since going live on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and fully embracing its native capabilities, Kito Crosby has unlocked measurable business value and operational excellence. The transformation has driven strong performance gains across critical KPIs, including higher customer on‑time delivery, meaningful reductions in back orders, improved inventory accuracy, and accelerated intercompany processing.

At the same time, warehouse operations are setting new benchmarks for efficiency, achieving record volumes for receiving and put‑away, replenishment, and shipping. These results have been delivered safely, with zero injuries and fewer resources.

To the cloud—and beyond

Following its recent acquisition by leading worldwide designer, manufacturer, and marketer of intelligent motion solutions Columbus McKinnon, Kito Crosby is continuing to build on its strong digital foundation.

“Because we started with a greenfield and kept a clean core as much as possible, we feel like the upgrades will go even faster and with less effort,” Lai said. “We want to get to the latest [SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition] version so we can take advantage of the AI capabilities of Joule.”

Next on the ERP systems consolidation docket: the SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) 6.0 system in Europe.

“This is just one example of how our IT team is empowering the broader organization to further delight our customers and end user,” Lai shared. “As we continue to scale our business, we expect even greater returns as we further capitalize on the technology, expanded capabilities, and AI tools within our SAP landscape.”


Gillian Hixson is an integrated communications specialist at SAP.

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Harvesting the AI Dividend

Productivity, typically measured as output per hour worked, is the primary long-term driver of income growth and living standards. Both the U.S. and Europe have experienced slower productivity growth since the mid-2000s compared with earlier decades.

Now, however, many economists and policymakers view AI as a potential catalyst for reversing that slowdown. AI—especially the rise of generative AI and AI agents—is widely expected to shape the next phase of productivity growth in advanced economies, including those in the U.S. and Europe.

The key question for business leaders is not whether AI will matter, but how large the productivity gains will be, how quickly they will materialize, and which region will benefit most.

Productivity growth

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that AI could raise annual labor productivity growth in advanced economies by roughly 0.4 to 1.3 percentage points, depending on adoption intensity and sector exposure. These gains would be meaningful because even an additional half percentage point of annual productivity growth compounds significantly over a decade.

However, the OECD and other economists stress that outcomes depend heavily on complementary investments in digital infrastructure, workforce training, and organizational change, rather than on technology alone.

Between 1995 and 2019, U.S. labor productivity grew at 2.1% annually compared to one percent in Europe. This disparity arose in part because companies in the U.S. invested more aggressively in information, communications, and technology while those in Europe were constrained more by regulatory and other factors.

Expectations for AI-driven productivity gains remain generally stronger in the U.S. than in Europe. Goldman Sachs suggests that widespread adoption of generative AI could raise U.S. labor productivity growth by around one to 1.5 percentage points per year.

Several structural factors support this view. The U.S. has a deep technology ecosystem, global leadership in AI research and venture capital, and a large, digitally intensive services sector, including finance, professional services, and IT, where generative AI tools can be rapidly deployed.

Agentic AI

In both Europe and the U.S., AI agents represent a particularly important development. Unlike earlier automation tools that handled isolated tasks, AI agents—like Joule Agents from SAP—are designed to plan, reason, and execute multi-step workflows. For example, an agent might manage customer service tickets, draft responses, query databases, escalate issues, and update systems—all with limited intervention.

With Joule Agents, drive enterprise-scale productivity with trusted SAP intelligence in every workflow

In knowledge-based industries, this kind of workflow automation could significantly raise output per worker. But rather than replacing entire occupations, AI agents may reduce time spent on repetitive administrative and “long-tail” tasks, enabling workers to focus on higher-value analysis, strategy, and interpersonal activities.

Despite stories about failed corporate AI projects, which can typically involve bolt-on or stand-alone AI pilots rather than a more integrated, holistic approach, recent evidence from the U.S. suggests that productivity gains are already emerging in some sectors. For example, financial institutions have reported significant efficiency improvements in back-office operations through AI deployment.

Similarly, experimental studies in professional services show that generative AI can increase output quality and speed, particularly for less experienced workers, effectively narrowing skill gaps within teams.

European outlook

The outlook for productivity gains in Europe from AI is more mixed. According to a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report the medium-term gain in productivity from the AI alone would vary considerably across countries, and for Europe as a whole would be rather modest: about 1.1 percent cumulatively over five years.

But with pro-growth reforms, the IMF suggests that much bigger gains are possible over the longer run. Like the OECD, the IMF emphasizes that regulatory frameworks, labor market structures, and the pace of technology diffusion will strongly influence outcomes.

Several structural differences shape Europe’s trajectory and the size of what has been called the “AI growth dividend.” First, AI adoption among small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), which form a larger share of the European economy than in the U.S., tends to be slower. Second, Europe’s digital market remains more fragmented across national boundaries, languages, and regulatory systems, which can complicate scaling technology platforms. Third, the European Union has taken a more precautionary regulatory approach to AI governance. While this may reduce certain risks, it could also dampen short-term productivity gains if compliance burdens slow deployment.

Europe’s strengths

That said, Europe has strengths. It leads in advanced manufacturing and industrial engineering, sectors where AI-driven optimization, robotics, and predictive maintenance can raise capital productivity. In these areas, AI agents embedded in industrial systems could significantly enhance supply chain efficiency and reduce downtime.

In addition, as SAP executives have pointed out, Europe has an enormous repository of structured business and manufacturing data, which is essential for reliable and effective AI systems as well as trust in AI Agents.

If AI adoption accelerates in manufacturing and energy systems and if European companies seize the opportunity to build advanced AI agents and apps using their business data, Europe could see much more robust medium-term productivity gains. As an example, SAP’s internal use of AI tools has already significantly improved its own developer productivity.

Labor flexibility

A critical factor in both the U.S. and Europe is labor market adjustment. Historically, the U.S. labor market has demonstrated greater flexibility, with higher rates of job switching and occupational mobility. This flexibility may facilitate faster reallocation of workers into AI-complementary roles, amplifying productivity gains, though this could be offset by more effective existing workforce retraining.

As the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has noted, AI’s productivity effects are unlikely to be automatic. Productivity gains from AI depend on complementary investments in skills, management practices, and digital infrastructure. The BIS warns that without these, AI tools may produce only marginal efficiency improvements.

The historical lesson from past general-purpose technologies, such as electricity and IT, is that productivity surges occur only after organizations redesign processes to exploit new capabilities and take a holistic rather than piecemeal approach toward implementation.

No AI bubble

While some investors have expressed concerns about an AI bubble, total AI spending in the U.S. is still below one percent of GDP. Joseph Briggs, senior global economist at Goldman Sachs, notes that this is well below historical infrastructure cycles. For comparison historical infrastructure investments such as IT spending, railroads and canals typically represented between two and five percent of GDP.

Like these previous investment waves AI, particularly agentic AI, is likely to generate significant productivity growth and a corresponding boost to GDP in those regions and sectors that seize the AI opportunity.

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