What are you personally excited by that you think will make a profound difference in the way businesses operate?

“I’ll admit I’m a great optimist, I’ve seen several of these paradigm shifts in the past, including one not so long ago that SAP was a part of when we moved from client-server to three-tier architecture before we ultimately moved into service-orientated architecture and then multi-cloud. So, I’m more optimistic and excited about AI than not. 

One of the things I’m particularly excited about is the balance between the artificial intelligence that is in production today – through basic machine learning models that understand better the insights and connections at different data points – and the new generative AI which goes a step further by proactively helping an end-customer decide where to go next.

And when I think about what AI is going to do for all our end-customers I always go back to the statistic that 87% of the world’s gross domestic product goes through an SAP system. The power of AI against all that data coming from the daily flow of transactions across the world, I think is going to be fascinating. I can’t predict with a crystal ball all the new scenarios but applying AI to the heartbeat of the economy at every level, contracts, supply chains, human capital, etc. all over the world, that I find exciting.

SAP is making bold investments in the AI ecosystem when it comes to Generative AI. Sapphire Ventures committed more than US$1 billion to invest in the next generation of AI-powered startups along with our key partnerships with large language model providers and hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google Cloud, and IBM. We are doing this so customers can benefit from all the innovation happening with AI.

There is no better time than now to be an SAP partner, we’re at the beginning of something very different.”