Accord­ing to a recent ASUG sur­vey, ​“Unlock­ing Cloud Val­ue and the Grow­ing Role of AI in SAP Land­scapes”, con­duct­ed in part­ner­ship with Microsoft and Intel, cloud and AI are becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar in the SAP-user community.

ASUG research reveals that cloud land­scapes are increas­ing­ly wide­spread in terms of adop­tion — but still far from uni­form when it comes to exe­cu­tion. While most orga­ni­za­tions have moved some or all of their SAP work­loads to the cloud, the ways they deploy them and the val­ue they extract can vary widely. 

The survey’s find­ings point to sev­er­al key themes that illus­trate how SAP cus­tomers are approach­ing cloud and AI, and where they are see­ing both progress and challenges. 

1. Cloud Adop­tion Is Near­ly Universal 

Almost all respon­dents are already using cloud ser­vices (85%) or plan to (11%). Of those who are plan­ning to adopt, 82% expect to do so with­in the next two years, leav­ing only a small minor­i­ty with no plans. 

Hybrid envi­ron­ments are most com­mon at 54%, fol­lowed by mixed pri­vate-pub­lic at 25%, pri­vate at 14%, and pub­lic at 7%. This spread reflects a need for flex­i­bil­i­ty, inte­gra­tion, and vis­i­bil­i­ty across SAP landscapes. 

The top dri­ver for mov­ing to the cloud is SAP S/4HANA migra­tion (56%). Oth­er pri­or­i­ties include access to advanced tech­nolo­gies such as AI, machine learn­ing, and big data (46%), cost reduc­tion (45%), scal­a­bil­i­ty (42%), appli­ca­tion inno­va­tion (36%), improved secu­ri­ty and com­pli­ance (32%), reduce work need­ed from IT staff (32%), and per­for­mance opti­miza­tion (30%).

2. RISE with SAP Accel­er­ates Modernization 

SAP’s Cloud ERP, espe­cial­ly S/4HANA Cloud, Pri­vate Edi­tion, has become cen­tral to many mod­ern­iza­tion strate­gies. Deliv­ered through RISE with SAP, these offer­ings help speed imple­men­ta­tions and reduce complexity. 

Among orga­ni­za­tions not yet live on S/4HANA, half expect RISE to short­en time­lines, while 18% see no impact and 32% are unfa­mil­iar with it, indi­cat­ing an edu­ca­tion gap. 

Top rea­sons for adopt­ing RISE include SAP-man­aged infra­struc­ture and upgrades (54%), bun­dled ser­vices such as BTP, AI, and automa­tion (38%), trans­for­ma­tion and process opti­miza­tion sup­port (36%), and infra­struc­ture fac­tors such as proces­sor choice and HANA per­for­mance, and com­pli­ance and security. 

3. Func­tion, Expe­ri­ence, and Invest­ment Shape Cloud Strategies 

Cloud pri­or­i­ties vary by func­tion: ERP and ware­house man­age­ment often stay in pri­vate envi­ron­ments for greater con­trol and com­pli­ance, while cus­tomer-fac­ing oper­a­tions favor pub­lic cloud for scal­a­bil­i­ty and adaptability. 

Hybrid approach­es appeal to those who want the flex­i­bil­i­ty of pub­lic cloud with­out giv­ing up the secu­ri­ty pro­file of pri­vate, and adop­tion is expect­ed to expand. Even so, pri­vate cloud remains the go-to for mis­sion-crit­i­cal workloads. 

Expe­ri­ence also influ­ences strat­e­gy. Ear­ly adopters often moved just a few work­loads that promised quick wins. New­er entrants are more like­ly to plan com­pre­hen­sive migra­tions from the out­set. Orga­ni­za­tions with years of cloud use behind them may inten­tion­al­ly keep cer­tain sys­tems on-premis­es, mak­ing hybrid setups a long-term choice rather than a tem­po­rary stage. 

Over half of respon­dents spend more than $1 mil­lion annu­al­ly on cloud. The high­est spenders are typ­i­cal­ly large enter­pris­es with rev­enues above $10 bil­lion, and they are also more like­ly to run diverse envi­ron­ments blend­ing pub­lic and pri­vate resources. 

4. Ben­e­fits Are Real, but Gaps Remain 

Orga­ni­za­tions report­ed clear gains from cloud adop­tion: reduced work­load for IT teams (39%), increased scal­a­bil­i­ty (34%), and stronger data secu­ri­ty (33%). These close­ly match the fac­tors that drove adoption. 

Not all expec­ta­tions were met. Cost sav­ings were antic­i­pat­ed by 54% but achieved by 31%. Speed to deliv­ery showed a sim­i­lar gap, 53% ver­sus 29%. Oth­er short­falls includ­ed bet­ter inte­gra­tion with oth­er sys­tems and align­ment with strate­gic busi­ness direction. 

The sur­vey shows that select­ing the right cloud provider mat­ters great­ly, with Azure cus­tomers more like­ly than users of oth­er providers to achieve their antic­i­pat­ed ben­e­fits. These find­ings illus­trate that a strong part­ner can boost con­fi­dence and effi­cien­cy in real­iz­ing the ben­e­fits of the cloud. 

Even so, the results revealed that inter­nal readi­ness remains the lead­ing fac­tor in address­ing chal­lenges and achiev­ing last­ing impact. 

5. Inter­nal Capa­bil­i­ties Are Crit­i­cal to Success 

The most com­mon chal­lenges orig­i­nate inside orga­ni­za­tions. Thir­ty-three per­cent cit­ed lim­it­ed in-house cloud exper­tise, 26% point­ed to com­plex data migra­tion, and 28% report­ed unex­pect­ed costs. 

These issues occur across all providers and bud­gets, show­ing that tech­nol­o­gy alone does not ensure suc­cess. Build­ing skills across teams and ded­i­cat­ing suf­fi­cient resources to migra­tion work are essen­tial for real­iz­ing long-term value. 

6. AI Adop­tion Is Ear­ly but Advancing 

Thir­ty-two per­cent of respon­dents are ful­ly invest­ed or plan­ning to expand AI with­in one to three years, 52% are in ear­ly explo­ration, and 2% have no plans to adopt. 

Pub­lic AI ser­vices such as Microsoft Copi­lot, Ope­nAI, Google AI, or AWS Bedrock are the most com­mon tools in use today, report­ed by 47% of par­tic­i­pants. Adop­tion of SAP-native AI capa­bil­i­ties is expect­ed to rise sharply, with 53% plan­ning to use embed­ded AI fea­tures in SAP appli­ca­tions and 43% prepar­ing to imple­ment SAP BTP AI Foundation. 

7. AI Pri­or­i­ties Are Con­sis­tent Across Matu­ri­ty Levels 

Automa­tion (61%) and AI-pow­ered ana­lyt­ics (59%) lead cur­rent use cas­es. Oth­ers include con­ver­sa­tion­al AI, doc­u­ment pro­cess­ing, AI-enhanced finan­cial fore­cast­ing and plan­ning, AI-assist­ed code gen­er­a­tion and sys­tem con­fig­u­ra­tion, sup­ply chain opti­miza­tion, pre­dic­tive main­te­nance, risk mon­i­tor­ing, and per­son­al­ized cus­tomer experiences. 

Matu­ri­ty influ­ences sec­ondary pri­or­i­ties. Orga­ni­za­tions still plan­ning imple­men­ta­tion often focus on doc­u­ment pro­cess­ing (62%), while those expand­ing exist­ing pro­grams pri­or­i­tize AI-assist­ed code gen­er­a­tion and sys­tem con­fig­u­ra­tion (51%). Many take a phased approach, explor­ing capa­bil­i­ties in some areas while scal­ing others. 

The Bot­tom Line 

The sur­vey shows that cloud is now the foun­da­tion of most SAP tech­nol­o­gy strate­gies, while AI is start­ing to play a larg­er role in deliv­er­ing busi­ness val­ue. Orga­ni­za­tions that align tech­nol­o­gy invest­ments with tar­get­ed skills devel­op­ment, strong gov­er­nance, and a clear strat­e­gy will be bet­ter posi­tioned to close the gap between expec­ta­tions and results, and to cap­i­tal­ize on AI’s grow­ing poten­tial in enter­prise transformation.