Insights from SAP TechEd Berlin 2025: why data became SAP’s strategic core
Reflecting on SAP TechEd Berlin 2025, one theme stood out above all others: data has become the foundation of SAP’s future strategy.
While AI demonstrations and development tooling attracted attention, the most meaningful announcements focused on how enterprise data is accessed, shared, and activated across platforms.
At the center of this shift is SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC), a strategic layer designed for organizations operating in increasingly complex, multi-platform landscapes. Its implications are significant for customers navigating increasingly complex data landscapes.
SAP Business Data Cloud: embracing reality, not fighting it
Enterprise data is no longer confined to a single platform. SAP systems, cloud data warehouses, and analytics tools already coexist in most organizations. What SAP Business Data Cloud does differently is acknowledge this reality instead of trying to replace it.
BDC is designed as an open data access layer, connecting SAP data natively with platforms such as:
- Snowflake
- Databricks
- Google Cloud
- and Microsoft Fabric
The emphasis on zero-copy data sharing is particularly important: data can be consumed and analyzed without constant replication. This reduces cost, latency, and architectural complexity.
From Etlia’s perspective, this is a welcomed and pragmatic shift. Many organizations already run hybrid data architectures, and BDC provides a way to integrate SAP data into those environments without forcing disruptive migrations or one-size-fits-all solutions.
How SAP Business Data Cloud works with Snowflake, Databricks and Microsoft?
SAP’s message at TechEd was clear: there is no single “correct” data platform. Instead, SAP is enabling a coordinated, multi-platform data strategy where each platform plays a distinct role.
Platform roles in SAP’s multi-platform data architecture
- SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC)
- Open data access layer and governance backbone, connecting SAP data with external platforms securely and consistently
- Snowflake
- Scalable analytics and data sharing platform, positioned as an SAP-certified solution extension
- Databricks
- Scalable analytics and data sharing platform including advanced analytics, machine learning, and data science workloads
- Microsoft Fabric
- Tight integration with Microsoft 365, Power BI, and the Power Platform, especially in Microsoft-centric ecosystems
This model reflects how enterprises already work in practice: SAP remains the system of record, while analytics, AI, and innovation happen across multiple specialized platforms.
Snowflake as a Strategic Extension, Not Just an Integration
One of the most notable announcements at TechEd was SAP’s positioning of Snowflake as a Solution Extension to SAP Business Data Cloud.
This is more than a technical integration or partnership label. As a solution extension, Snowflake becomes:
- Fully certified, packaged, and sold by SAP
- Supported by SAP throughout the full lifecycle
- Aligned with SAP’s roadmap and enterprise support model
Crucially, SAP Snowflake includes the full Snowflake feature set while complementing it with SAP-specific strengths, particularly in planning.
From Etlia’s point of view, this confirms something we already see in customer projects: Snowflake, Databricks, and Fabric are not competing replacements for SAP, but complementary platforms. The strategic shift from SAP is clear: value is created by choosing the right tool for the right workload and ensuring that data flows cleanly, securely, and governably between platforms.
One Data Strategy, Multiple Platforms
A key takeaway from SAP TechEd Berlin 2025 is that SAP is no longer pushing a single “correct” data platform. Instead, it is enabling a multi-platform data strategy, where:
- SAP remains the system of record for core business processes
- Snowflake excels in scalable analytics and data sharing
- Databricks supports advanced analytics and data science
- Microsoft Fabric fits naturally into Microsoft-centric ecosystems
For customers, the challenge is no longer choosing one platform over another. The real challenge is designing an architecture where these platforms work together, with clear ownership, strong governance, and measurable business value.
Data as the Foundation for Enterprise AI
AI discussions at TechEd consistently came back to one point: AI only works if the data foundation is solid.
SAP’s introduction of SAP-RPT-1, an AI foundation model for structured business data, reflects this mindset. Rather than focusing on language alone, SAP is investing in models that understand tables, relationships, and enterprise semantics, the kind of data that actually runs businesses.
With Model Context Protocol (MCP), SAP is also addressing a growing need: enabling Large Language Models to access business data in a governed, contextual way. This opens the door to AI use cases that go beyond chatbots and into real decision support, analytics, and automation.
From Etlia’s perspective, this reinforces a critical message to customers: AI success is not about tools, but about data readiness. Clean models, shared semantics, and well-designed data architectures matter more than the choice of any single AI platform.
What This Means in Practice
SAP TechEd Berlin 2025 showed a SAP that is more open, more realistic, and more aligned with how enterprises actually operate today.
SAP Business Data Cloud, deeper partnerships with Snowflake, Databricks and Microsoft Fabric and native support for multi-platform architectures all point in the same direction.
For organizations, the question is no longer whether SAP data will live alongside Snowflake, Databricks, or Fabric, but how well those environments are integrated.
And that is where the work for Etlia begins.
– Juuso Maijala, CEO
Etlia is a data consultancy specializing in SAP, Snowflake, Databricks, and Microsoft Fabric architectures for enterprise environments.
Etlia works with organizations designing SAP-centric data architectures where SAP Business Data Cloud acts as the governance and access layer, while analytics, AI, and business intelligence are delivered across multiple best-of-breed platforms.
