Databricks and SAP unleash end-to-end data & AI capabilities to level up enterprise AI transformation

Today's AI models are more capable than ever. What they still lack is the business context to understand how your company actually runs. For most enterprises, that context lives in SAP systems. Over 90% of Fortune 500 companies use SAP solutions to manage key business processes, enhance operational efficiency, and gain a competitive edge through data-driven decision-making.

Last year, SAP and Databricks introduced SAP Databricks, which natively embedded the Databricks Data + AI Platform in SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC). Since general availability, customers including Adidas, Zalando, Mondi, and CAF have used SAP Databricks and SAP BDC Connect for Databricks to analyze, govern, and build AI on live, semantically rich SAP Data Products through zero-copy, bi-directional OpenSharing.

This week at SAP TechEd, we are announcing the next phase of our partnership. Now, we’re bringing together the expanded scope of Databricks to SAP Databricks in SAP Business Data Cloud. This makes it much easier and more performant to work with SAP enterprise data, allowing customers to realize AI value from their data.

Customers want to put their data to work: forecasting demand from years of order history, detecting anomalies in the financial close, optimizing procurement decisions, and grounding AI agents in how the business actually runs. Accessing SAP application data has been possible, but it has typically meant building and maintaining custom extraction pipelines that copy data, lose business context along the way, and fragment governance.

How customers put SAP application data to work in SAP Databricks

As SAP announced at TechEd, SAP Application Data Foundation makes data from SAP applications available for consumption in the SAP Business Data Cloud engine of choice, including SAP Databricks. It provides a cloud-native way to access SAP application data, helping to lower total cost of ownership and reduce time to value. For SAP Databricks customers, that means:

• No more custom extraction pipelines: SAP data products can be shared with SAP BDC Connect for zero-copy access, avoiding additional pipelines, data copies and silos.
• AI built on SAP business semantics: Data engineers can build models on a semantically rich foundation, so analytics and AI reflect how the business actually runs.
• The full Databricks Data + AI Platform on SAP data: Genie, Lakeflow, Unity Gateway and Lakebase turn that data into enriched data products, apps and agents.

For example, a manufacturer running finance and supply chain on SAP ECC on-premises, while planning its move to the cloud, can use SAP Application Data Foundation to bring years of order history into SAP Databricks. Its data engineers can enrich that history with third-party data and build demand-forecasting models on SAP's business semantics, without custom extraction pipelines, and keep that work as they move to the cloud.

What Databricks capabilities are coming to SAP Databricks

The expanded partnership plans to bring the full range of Databricks data and enterprise AI capabilities to SAP Databricks, embedded within SAP BDC.

• Genie: An AI coworker that gives every team instant access to governed data and AI, with enterprise context built in. Genie delivers the context in core SAP data to every team and agent. A planned bi-directional integration between Genie and Joule can bring those answers and actions into SAP experiences.
• Lakeflow: A unified data engineering solution to ingest, transform, and orchestrate data, so teams can build pipelines that combine SAP data with IoT, CRM, and third-party sources.
• Unity Gateway: Multi-AI governance and cost control across agents, tools, models, and MCPs, so teams can scale AI on SAP data with guardrails and spend controls in place.
• Lakebase: The first serverless, mission-critical Postgres database built for AI apps and agents that helps teams build operational data apps on SAP and enterprise data.

Why SAP data matters for enterprise AI

• One place to govern data and AI. Unity Catalog and Unity Gateway govern data, models, and agents across SAP and non-SAP data.
• Choice of architecture. Customers can use SAP data inside SAP BDC with SAP Databricks or bring governed SAP data or data products they create based on SAP data into an existing Databricks estate, with any model on any cloud.
• Faster time to value. SAP and Databricks are expanding our go-to-market partnership, with joint teams in the field so joint customers can accelerate their AI transformation based on critical enterprise data helping customers get value faster.

What leaders are saying

“Data is the foundation for enterprise AI. By bringing the latest scope of Databricks into SAP Business Data Cloud, we’re combining SAP’s deep understanding of business processes and mission-critical applications and agents with Databricks’ industry-leading data platform. With that, we help customers turn their enterprise data into a powerful foundation for the Autonomous Enterprise.” - Philipp Herzig, Chief Technology Officer, SAP SE

"This partnership brings together the most critical business data in the enterprise, SAP data, with the leading Data + AI Platform, Databricks. With the new SAP Application Data Foundation and SAP Databricks in BDC, companies can finally bring all of their SAP data together and unleash the full capabilities of the Databricks platform to drive business insights. They can also combine Genie with Joule to deliver that business context to every team and agent so they can get trusted answers and act on them."- Michael Kiermaier, SVP Business Strategy and Operations, Databricks

SAF-Holland, a global manufacturer of chassis components for trailers, trucks, and buses, uses SAP BDC and SAP Databricks to unify more than 100 million records of customer, delivery, and material data. The company applies machine learning to predict the reliability of customer delivery schedules. SAF-Holland now generates analyses 5x faster than with traditional reporting approaches, and turns complex SAP data into planning and supply chain insights in minutes instead of weeks.

"Opening the SAP data ecosystem to Databricks has unlocked better analysis for our internal teams and ultimately helps us deliver better outcomes for our customers."- David Gund, Senior Manager of Global Digital Intelligence, SAF-Holland

SAP Databricks and SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for Databricks are available today. Talk to your SAP or Databricks account team to learn about the new SAP Application Data Foundation and expanded SAP Databricks capabilities and plan your path to analytics and AI on all your SAP data.