SAP’s Jan Gilg Explains Why Trust Will Determine the Future of Enterprise AI

**Bob Evans** (0:08)
Hello, everybody, welcome to this special episode of Cloud Wars. We're at SAP's New York City Headquarters at Hudson Yards, and I'm delighted to be speaking with Jan Gilg, who's president and CRO for SAP. Jan, good to see you.

**Jan Gilg** (0:20)
Yeah, good to see you both, as always.

**Bob Evans** (0:21)
So Jan, there was lots of things going on at Sapphire. I mean, I thought that that was one of your best events ever, and you could just see from the participation of customers on the events and the speaking that they did in the different sessions. They seem to be at a point now where there's great enthusiasm and optimism for what AI can bring, but also because nobody's done this in a way.
There's still some work that has to be done. What's your general sense of the feeling among customers now?

**Jan Gilg** (0:50)
Yeah, I think I agree with you. The Sapphire was pretty remarkable. I think it's been my 15th or something like that.
I have to say probably one of the best ones, if not the best one. I do believe we gave a very clear and concise response to how we see AI in the enterprise and I think everybody was kind of anticipating and then wondering, okay, what's SAP going to do? How are we going to position ourselves? And I believe the narrative around the Autonomous Suite, the Business AI platform, that resonated very well. Of course, you create also expectation with that. And to your point, many customers, after three years now of a lot of experimentation, probably also spending quite a bit of money, they still are looking for the big impact in the enterprise specifically. And I think there's quite a gap between what we see in the consumer world and all the amazing things that people do, and how they improve their personal productivity and so on. And the big decisions that you have to make in an enterprise and how AI can support those kind of decisions.
And that was pretty much a part of every conversation with our customers. So how is this now going to become real? How is SAP going to help me and answer a lot of the questions that are above and beyond pure features and functions? So we really talk about the non-tangible questions.

**Bob Evans** (2:12)
Right. So Jan, I've heard you mentioned before that some customers are looking at the Autonomous Suite. Now it's almost like an operating system for the enterprise.
I'd love to hear, what do the customers mean by that? And how are they then changing what they do now that they've got this new operating system that has a lot of smarts behind it?

**Jan Gilg** (2:35)
Yeah. For me, I think it's really moving from the system of record to a system of execution. And that's what I mean with an operating system, because at the end, all the discussions around the SaaS apocalypse and so on. But I truly believe, and I had not a single customer or CIO who talked to me about, hey, can I replace ERP now with something that I vibe code or maybe somebody else vibe codes for me real quick?
So the system of record is here to stay. And a lot of the logic that's been built there and the business process knowledge that's in there has accumulated over decades now, and it's very valuable, right? And so therefore, you need to have this almost as foundational layer in the enterprise. And now the question is, how do you put AI on top and generate the innovation or really truly then help customers to run business processes in a much, much more autonomous way? And not only support the end user to get their job done, but actually get the job done itself, right?
And so therefore, the foundation plus that agentic layer really makes SAP kind of the operating system in the enterprise with ERP as the brain, especially laid out on stage. And I'm an old ERP guy, so that was kind of music to my ear. But I think it's true. At the end of the day, that is really the core of what companies do and how they operate. And that's why this is definitely the absolute essential to have that in place.

**Bob Evans** (4:10)
Yeah, and I just want to mention to the audience here, if you hear some of the noise in the background, where the Experience Center that SAP has set up, and so it's almost got like an Autonomous Warehouse, right at some here behind us. But Jan, the way you laid that out, if you're a technologist or business person, it makes perfect sense. But then they're going to make that jump, because you very purposefully picked the name Autonomous Centrifiyer. That implies, okay, it sort of runs itself. The AI is sort of taking control. Is it hard for customers to make that leap of faith and to have that trust that we're going to surrender more and more control to the AI systems?