TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY
Muhammad Alam, Member of the Executive Board of SAP and lead of the Product & Engineering Board, says the build vs buy debate often ignores the hidden cost of fragmentation. He argued at SAP Sapphire that years of ad-hoc technology adoption have left many enterprises with a“ disparate and heterogeneous application landscape” that stifles innovation.
“ We estimate that organisations can spend up to 80 % of their effort and budget putting together this fragile balance of apps and data, leaving only 20 % of your resources to focus on value creation,” he says.
The SAP alternative is to stop building connections and start leveraging what Muhammad calls a unified“ flywheel of apps, data and AI”. By adopting SAP’ s Business AI approach – anchored by the omnipresent copilot Joule – companies can skip the integration headaches. Instead of building custom AI agents from scratch, they can deploy SAP’ s library of agents or use the new AI Foundation to extend capabilities safely.
For Muhammad, that true differentiation comes from“ end-to-end context” and not complexity.“ This can only happen when you simplify and innovate your core and not add another layer of complexity to your landscape.”
Introducing SAP Build
Muhammad Alam, Member of the Executive Board,
Product & Engineering SAP SE