The SAP data that runs the world’s largest companies is the critical enabler of a true Enterprise AI strategy. We’re announcing several key hires at Mindset, and I’d also like to share a few thoughts on how we are approaching this challenge.
As I build AI agents personally, or as we scale the ones we build for business, the critical thing to know is what makes them powerful: really good data. We aren’t satisfied with summarizing a PDF or writing a memo anymore. Now we want to know what the order is, what the contract says, or why a shipment is late and what we can do about it, and then actually do that thing.
For most large companies, that data all lives in SAP. SAP says its customers generate “87% of global commerce.” Even if that number is exaggerated, it’s still big! The world’s transactions do run through these systems, and the data is what agents need to be intelligent.
SAP CTO Philipp Herzig at Sapphire put it plainly: “agents are only as powerful as the context they operate on,” and Christian Klein described Knowledge Graph as the compass or map for finding the right data and process.
The rules changed.
SAP, I think, really gets this, and where the value of their platform now sits, and for better or worse (depending on which side you sit on), they have heavily restricted how third parties can access this data. You can read a good analysis of the new rules and API policies elsewhere. But the gist of it is that SAP prohibits large-scale data extraction and AI systems operating outside of SAP-endorsed architectures.
So what does this mean for the historical shortcuts to moving data out to Snowflake and data lakes? Mostly gone. Now this runs through BDC. While this may be disruptive, I truly believe in this architecture and approach.
How we build
Our strategy isn’t just to deliver AI solutions on SAP for our customers. It’s also to deliver them with MIND, our consultant AI harness. MIND is a hybrid of best-of-breed AI capabilities, selected MCP servers, data sources, plugins and skills, plus our proprietary project knowledge and history. It is built on our years as the most advanced BTP consultancy, and it powers accelerators and products across every stage of consulting, from mapping and inspiration through navigation and delivery, and across SAP BTP, BDC, AI, and UX.
We are now rapidly expanding MIND into BDC. We have an early roadmap that we will share in the coming months, aimed squarely at the thousands of customers sitting on legacy BW, HANA, and analytics who need to get ready for BDC and Joule. If you want the deeper technical view in the meantime, Jon Bragg has been writing a series on BDC.
The team
And so we are investing rapidly in this practice, and I’d like to share a few key hires we’ve made in the last five weeks.
Terje Sorlie joins to lead our Data and Analytics practice. He spent 26 years at Accenture, starting as an analyst in Oslo and ending as a Managing Director who led their SAP Analytics domain globally and served as SAP Analytics Capability Lead for NA. He has been on stage with SAP when they needed an expert to share the vision for Business Data Cloud.
Peter Mobert joined as Associate Director of Strategy from Rizing, through its acquisition by Wipro, where he ran product design and architecture.
Tuncay Karaca joined as Principal Developer with more than a decade of experience in SAP development and data solutions ranging from BusinessObjects and BW to HANA modeling, SAC, and Datasphere, and is also an official SAP instructor.
Abhijeet Gupta joined as a Senior Solutions Architect, coming from KPMG, where he built a 20+ person BTP competency, focusing on AI, Application Development & Automation, and the Integration pillar, and delivered 15+ AI use cases across SAP ERP and cloud products.
Each of these folks will help us rapidly expand our products, IP, and offerings, and work with our strategic customers to scale their Data & AI capabilities.
Come talk to us about it in person. We’re a Gold Sponsor at SAP Connect Days in Houston on September 2, where Terje will be, and again in Philadelphia on September 16 and Chicago on September 23. We are also running a BDC Roundtable online on October 22.
My bet
Over the next decade, the value of SAP will be decided by this data layer, because AI will need that context to truly work, inside SAP or outside SAP.
Our goal at Mindset is to be the world’s best at SAP AI, and at building the critical infrastructure and data that serves this transformation.
If you are running SAP and have an old extraction tool feeding a lakehouse, would love to talk. You may have a deadline coming, and why not get started on your AI journey?
