SAP
Is sustainability still a business priority? According to Gunther Rothermel, the answer is a resounding yes. Despite an at-times challenging news cycle, the Chief Product Officer and Co-General Manager for SAP Sustainability sees more progress in corporate projects now than two years ago.
A 25-year SAP veteran, Gunther heads product engineering for SAP’ s sustainability-related capabilities, innovation and strategy, and customer adoption, and co-manages the portfolio with Chief Sustainability and Commercial Officer Sophia Mendelsohn. Leading on solutions that support clients with sustainability solutions, Gunther admits that the energy consumption of AI presents a real trade-off.
“ At SAP, we place great emphasis on the sustainability impact of AI,” he says.“ Internally, we train our developers to write more energy-efficient code, regularly measure product performance and always seek to balance energy usage with the wider sustainability impact. We actively monitor and seek to improve our energy use policies.”
Can you introduce or explain the sustainability ethos at SAP? Sustainability has mattered to us for a long time, both as a company – we have ambitious internal sustainability targets, which we are very successful in meeting – and also in terms of our role supporting customers as they pursue their own sustainability objectives. We have had our sustainability product portfolio on the market for many years now, and we
58 January 2026