SAP Autonomous Suite: Insights from Jan Gilg, Pres. for Customer Success

**Bob Evans** (0:00)
Hello, my friends, welcome back to Cloud Wars Minute. You know, the company that more than 50 years ago really started the whole enterprise applications business, SAP, last month at its big Sapphire event, rolled out the latest, greatest, newest AI-powered version of their long-running ERP suite, but this time it's called the Autonomous Suite. So that's a huge change, not just in the technology, but what that means for customers as customers move more and more into AI-powered enterprises. So I had a chance to sit down with Jan Gilg, who's a global president for customer success for the Americas at SAP headquarters, and had a chance to ask Kim about a number of things that customers now have the opportunity to move into with this newer, more fully integrated, more AI-powered Autonomous Suite. And I know there's been some risk that SAP took in selecting this name, because at this early stage in the whole rollout of AI, well, there's lots of things going on. SAP often gets in where, you know, you're running your company on this stuff. So Jan and I had a chance to talk in some detail about, you know, the implications of that and how that rolls together. So we shot the video at SAP's New York City headquarters, beautiful place. We're in their customer experience center. So you'll probably hear in the video, and you've got the link to the full video interview here in the show notes.
There were robots running in the background, simulating and doing some of the creation of some merchandise for the World Cup that will be coming on. New York City is going to be playing a big part in that. So it was an interesting setting for this. But the major topics that Jan and I discussed, and I'll just mention first to Jan has been at SAP for about 15 years. He was on the development side for a long time, and he was leading from several years ago, the development of S4 and that whole version of Suite. So he knows the technology inside and out, and now as sort of the global customer success offer for the Americas, he's got huge engagements with customers and can bring the technical side to that, but also seeing now more what's happening on the business outcome side. So he brings a very balanced and broad view to this. So the first thing I asked about was I said, SAP has been referring to the Autonomous Suite, that it can be the operating system for the enterprise. What does that mean? How does that cloud? Some interesting thoughts from Jan on that. We also talked about this issue of trust. Like I mentioned a minute ago, Autonomous is right there in the name, and it's one thing for Autonomous technology to manage. We see it with cars, we see it in other things coming up, and more and more applications, Agenic AI taking control of some things. But when you talk about the Autonomous enterprise, the whole thing, and then, so we got into the discussion here of what does SAP have to do to build up the trust among its customers, for them to be able to say, okay, we'll move with you into this new Autonomous AI running, not just some functions, but the whole business on that is the eventual goal. So, the significance of trust. And then, good conversation with Jan Thun is technical background help, but also is able to see that to the filter of now what customers want. What's the interplay between a Agenic AI and applications going in both directions here? Now, I've mentioned before, I think Oracle has been doing a great job. They now refer to their Fusion Applications as Agenic Applications.
Is SAP doing everything it can to clarify in the minds of customers where do applications end and agents begin and the same thing in the other direction? So Jan has some great thoughts on that.
We talked about some of these stories of is AI going to become wildly expensive for customers. We've all heard that story. I really hope it's one of those stories that didn't really happen. Somebody just made it up that some company got a bill for spending $500 million in a month. Everybody in the company, I guess, was running tokens 24 hours a day. So Jan has some good thoughts on this. Then we talked about customer examples. Let's see, there was one from a retailer, I think H&M.
There was one from a manufacturing company. We had some different ones in here that he brought up. But he really brought some good perspectives on that and the business goals that those companies were pursuing. And the role now that the Autonomous Suite has played in that. And also, I enjoyed talking to them about that CEOs now seem to be leading their conversations much more from a business perspective. This has been a long running story. CEOs have to be responsible for the technology, but they've got to apply that in a business context. So all of that in this one-on-one interview with Jan Gilg of SAP, we got the links in the show notes. We'll be posting again the full interview directly later on today.