For more SAP util­i­ties insights, sign up to receive ASUG’s free The Top­ic: Util­i­ties newslet­ter, and to get involved and keep up with the lat­est, join ASUG’s Util­i­ties Com­mu­ni­ty. Con­nect with SAP teams across the util­i­ties com­mu­ni­ty as they explore AI adop­tion, clean core, data strat­e­gy, and more at SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG in San Anto­nio, Octo­ber 6 – 9, 2026.

As SAP’s SVP and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er for Ener­gy & Nat­ur­al Resources Indus­tries, Torsten Welte is respon­si­ble for trans­lat­ing SAP’s strate­gic direc­tion into action­able steps for the ener­gy sec­tor, which includes util­i­ties. A month after SAP Sap­phire 2026, Welte spoke to ASUG from Ger­many, fresh from a run of dis­cus­sions with util­i­ty CIOs at a sys­tem inte­gra­tor lead­er­ship conference. 

Those con­ver­sa­tions kept cir­cling the same gap: between what SAP announced — the autonomous enter­prise, agen­tic AI, a tool chain now built around Joule — and what a util­i­ty actu­al­ly has to do to real­ize it. On the cost side, SAP has moved aggres­sive­ly. At Sap­phire 2026, SAP intro­duced agent-led migra­tion tool­ing it says can cut ERP migra­tion effort by more than 35% — automat­ing sys­tem analy­sis, code reme­di­a­tion, con­fig­u­ra­tion, and testing. 

Welte is opti­mistic about the tech­nol­o­gy, but just as quick to say what has to come first. In the inter­view, Welte explained the lead­er­ship role of SAP as a tech­nol­o­gy part­ner for the util­i­ties indus­try, where SAP’s AI invest­ments deliv­er val­ue for util­i­ties, what CIOs should pri­or­i­tize in the near-term and long-term, and the extent to which orga­ni­za­tions can trust autonomous agents with­in crit­i­cal infrastructure. 

The fol­low­ing inter­view has been edit­ed and con­densed for length and clar­i­ty. 

Q: How should util­i­ty CIOs quan­ti­fy and pri­or­i­tize the busi­ness val­ue of SAP’s recent Sap­phire announce­ments — cost opti­miza­tion, reli­a­bil­i­ty, cus­tomer experience? 

There were many announce­ments at Sap­phire, espe­cial­ly around AI. The autonomous enter­prise was announced, along with part­ner­ships such as those with Palan­tir and the first Palan­tir ser­vice part­ner, Accen­ture. Then the data-side acqui­si­tion of Rel­tio was announced, along with indus­try AI and many AI-based tools improv­ing IT oper­a­tions. Cus­tomers can see that SAP is enter­ing the agen­tic world and becom­ing their agen­tic part­ner with a focus on value. 

What does that mean? From an oper­a­tional per­spec­tive, if I’m a CIO, what’s in it for me? Look­ing at the entire tool chain, the sup­port­ed trans­for­ma­tion­al and oper­a­tional tools all focus on cost reduc­tion and faster val­ue deliv­ery. In Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion Man­age­ment (BTM) and oth­er areas, we are infus­ing AI through­out the trans­for­ma­tion — from require­ments gath­er­ing to exe­cu­tion, con­fig­u­ra­tion, val­ue man­age­ment, test­ing, con­sult­ing with Joule, and devel­op­ment with the new Joule Stu­dio. Joule Stu­dio makes devel­op­ment eas­i­er for every­one, espe­cial­ly on the busi­ness side, so you don’t need expen­sive tech­ni­cal devel­op­ers any­more. On the cost side, we’ve done a lot. Chris­t­ian announced a sig­nif­i­cant 30% reduc­tion in imple­men­ta­tion costs with BTM and oth­er tools. This is help­ing all util­i­ty CIOs reduce cost and increase the speed to valu­able innovations. 

Anoth­er crit­i­cal piece is the agen­tic side. We announced Indus­try AI and are part­ner­ing with select­ed cus­tomers to expand our port­fo­lio in this space. We have worked and will work on agents and oth­er capa­bil­i­ties to improve crit­i­cal end-to-end process­es. One of the first ones rel­e­vant for util­i­ties and oth­er asset-inten­sive com­pa­nies aims for autonomous asset man­age­ment. This is an exam­ple of the agen­tic space where we are doing much more than before. 

Q: S/4HANA, AI, and BTP are the top focus areas for util­i­ties. What pain points is SAP hear­ing in each, and how is it responding? 

On the BTP side, the feed­back was on how to accel­er­ate devel­op­ment and get peo­ple, espe­cial­ly on the busi­ness side, to use BTP as a plat­form. Activ­i­ties around Joule Stu­dio v2, which com­bines Build and the Joule Stu­dio into one tool, make con­sum­ing BTP ser­vices eas­i­er. They are also work­ing on inte­gra­tion, and the offi­cial MCP servers were released for cus­tomers to inter­act with the SAP environment. 

On the AI side, the biggest ini­tial feed­back was how to man­age capa­bil­i­ties, what is avail­able, and how the com­mer­cial mod­el works. ECC cus­tomers asked if they can use Joule and what AI can do for them. 

Christian’s announce­ment allow­ing ECC cus­tomers who are still on the jour­ney to RISE — not fin­ished with it — to use Joule and oth­er AI capa­bil­i­ties is crit­i­cal. They can begin an AI strat­e­gy on a signed RISE con­tract with­out com­plet­ing the trans­for­ma­tion first. BTP now offers many AI capa­bil­i­ties through spe­cif­ic ser­vices. Also, many ear­ly fea­tures are now part of the base capa­bil­i­ty and do not con­sume AI units. We are expand­ing high­er-val­ue AI capabilities. 

Every meet­ing, CIOs asked, ​“What AI tools can you help me with to real­ly get into the trans­for­ma­tion quick­er, faster, and with less cost?” The announce­ments now put sig­nif­i­cant AI-infused tools into the hands of IT and the business. 

Q: The util­i­ties roadmap spans meter-to-cash, cus­tomer ser­vice, and asset man­age­ment. What’s the sin­gle most impor­tant action a util­i­ty should take in the next 12 months? 

My response echoed what many CIOs at this week’s con­fer­ence stressed. To accel­er­ate process­es and deliv­er more busi­ness val­ue, you need a sol­id foun­da­tion based on good data. If data is siloed or incon­sis­tent, AI will hal­lu­ci­nate and behave unpre­dictably. To quote Peter Hinssen, ​“There is more fic­tion writ­ten in Excel than in Word.” 

To put an iden­ti­ty lay­er across data and the enter­prise data mod­el, you need good mas­ter or trans­ac­tion­al data in a sys­tem that access­es all data pock­ets. BDC will be crit­i­cal. It may not be strict­ly nec­es­sary, but it great­ly improves effi­cien­cy by adding secu­ri­ty and fed­er­a­tion. Plus, it accel­er­ates AI. 

Anoth­er key piece is a sol­id foun­da­tion with S/4 and RISE. I believe in RISE because, as a CIO, hav­ing one part­ner pro­vid­ing process­es, oper­a­tions, and infra­struc­ture as a ser­vice with an SLA lets me oper­ate dif­fer­ent­ly with the busi­ness, espe­cial­ly with AI. I have com­mon process­es and trans­ac­tions, but exe­cu­tion can vary through the agen­tic lay­er, enabling vari­ances and hyper-cus­tomiza­tion. This is not pos­si­ble in the nor­mal ECC world due to tech­ni­cal restric­tions like sys­tem lock­ing. Plus, many of the ECC sys­tems have exten­sive mod­i­fi­ca­tions that are not known to AI. 

Q: How is SAP address­ing asset-inten­sive chal­lenges — aging infra­struc­ture and the work­force short­age, the so-called Sil­ver Tsunami? 

I love that because I’m part of the sil­ver gen­er­a­tion. The response starts with announce­ments around Dis­trib­uted Ener­gy Resources (DER). This is trans­form­ing the util­i­ties indus­try and requires much change man­age­ment and new tech­nolo­gies. There aren’t many estab­lished play­ers in this space yet, so we’re bring­ing the right play­ers togeth­er and help­ing the com­mu­ni­ty under­stand what this tech­nol­o­gy change means. 

But that change is in lock­step with orga­ni­za­tion­al changes, so under­stand­ing the cus­tomer now, not only from a bill per­spec­tive, but all the way from a con­sump­tion pat­tern to a sup­ply pat­tern, is going to be super crit­i­cal. Pro­vid­ing tar­iffs to the com­mu­ni­ty based on demand and sup­ply is going to change completely. 

End cus­tomers today only focus on — what was my meter read­ing, what was my bill, and the bill dis­putes. It now goes into a whole new set of details on your EV charg­er, solar pan­el, and so on, which the cus­tomer wants to man­age through the agent on the phone, the vir­tu­al agent, and the web­site alike. Every chan­nel you inter­act through has to work off the same data and process­es, and you have to coor­di­nate it. 

You have to inter­act with the sil­ver tsuna­mi com­mu­ni­ty all the way down to the Gen Zs that expect to just talk to the phone and get all that infor­ma­tion right there, not even talk­ing to some­body physically. 

For the aging work­force, we need to cap­ture their knowl­edge, much of which is already in sys­tem con­fig­u­ra­tions. By apply­ing AI and new inno­va­tions on top, we can har­vest doc­u­ment­ed and undoc­u­ment­ed capa­bil­i­ties. We also pro­vide train­ing through com­mu­ni­ty work, bring­ing con­tent and infor­ma­tion to con­stituen­cies like enter­prise archi­tects and user com­mu­ni­ties. There are many tools to inter­act dif­fer­ent­ly, includ­ing a new learn­ing platform. 

As a com­mu­ni­ty, we prob­a­bly need to do more. The SAP AI tools offered now should also help attract young tal­ent. The offer­ing of learn­ing plat­forms, expe­ri­ence cen­ters, and learn­ing as you go can def­i­nite­ly help address the sil­ver tsunami. 

Q: For util­i­ties still nav­i­gat­ing S/4HANA adop­tion, how is SAP evolv­ing the roadmap to reduce com­plex­i­ty, cost, and risk — and to deliv­er busi­ness out­comes, not just tech­ni­cal modernization? 

The AI-infused trans­for­ma­tion tool set is a major area. We have the busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion tool chain, includ­ing Sig­navio and LeanIX, so com­pa­nies can mea­sure cur­rent oper­a­tions. Any­time process­es change, you can mea­sure the impact. The same applies when deploy­ing agents or AI — you can use LeanIX to see the impact, how process­es improve. 

The sec­ond focus is on indus­try AI and val­ue-dri­ven domain dis­cus­sions. We are not doing AI just for technology’s sake but to cre­ate busi­ness val­ue. On the asset side, unplanned down­times have a big impact on pow­er gen­er­a­tion or on pow­er dis­tri­b­u­tion. Opti­miz­ing main­te­nance resources is crit­i­cal. Addi­tion­al focus is also on reduc­ing inven­to­ry and reduc­ing safe­ty issues. We over­lay the agen­tic lay­er on the data and process­es. This allows us, for exam­ple, to re-opti­mize exist­ing process­es based on the new para­me­ters to adapt to the new situation. 

You can see we heav­i­ly invest in prod­ucts, but we are also chang­ing how we engage cus­tomers, with for­ward-deployed engi­neer­ing to cre­ate and deploy the agen­tic lay­er. SAP no longer works in the back office with a six to twelve-month wait for new fea­tures. We devel­op capa­bil­i­ties with cus­tomers and roll them out faster, short­en­ing time to val­ue because these have been devel­oped and proven by customers. 

Q: In terms of total cost of own­er­ship, what struc­tur­al changes is SAP mak­ing to reduce the long-term cost curve across infra­struc­ture, licens­ing, and the imple­men­ta­tion of S/4 and AI-enabled archi­tec­tures for utilities? 

My hypoth­e­sis is that run­ning your own servers is going to be very expen­sive, even if some are already paid off, because of the upkeep and the cyber risk. The hard­en­ing alone is sig­nif­i­cant, and it spans every­thing from a stan­dard util­i­ty to one with nuclear capa­bil­i­ties, where you need com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent infra­struc­ture, require­ments, and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. We are invest­ing heav­i­ly in those areas where some of our com­peti­tors are not, and mak­ing sure we adhere to our SLAs and improve them over time. That results in a low­er cost for customers. 

We have also talked about the tools and the trans­for­ma­tion effort around the tool chain. There is a set of clean-core tools com­ing out that will help sig­nif­i­cant­ly from a deploy­ment and trans­for­ma­tion perspective. 

And last­ly, our indus­try AI area will move toward a dif­fer­ent com­mer­cial­iza­tion mod­el, one that is much eas­i­er and cen­tered on what val­ue means rather than pure cost. 

Q: What guardrails or ref­er­ence archi­tec­tures is SAP putting in place so cus­tomers can make durable invest­ment deci­sions rather than con­tin­u­ous­ly pivot? 

If I were a cus­tomer, I would focus on RISE in this area. I don’t have to wait through 12 to 18-month gov­er­nance cycles for new releas­es, then add anoth­er six to twelve months to pro­vide capa­bil­i­ties to the busi­ness. Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty in RISE is much stronger than in your own envi­ron­ment. We have invest­ed in data, part­ner­ships, and embed­ded AI capa­bil­i­ties, which should excite CIOs and the business. 

Just look at the Gen AI Hub: how many dif­fer­ent LLMs are in there, and how often the ver­sions change. If you had to man­age the releas­es with your own envi­ron­ment, cer­ti­fy­ing them, test­ing them, bench­mark­ing them, and onboard­ing them, that’s quite a bit of work. 

The oth­er piece is the capa­bil­i­ty of Joule, cen­tered around the knowl­edge graph. That knowl­edge graph has the entire data mod­el of SAP in it, and has the con­text of the data mod­el in it, so they can oper­ate in that envi­ron­ment, which you will under­stand. That get­ting extend­ed is the key fac­tor, how busi­ness­es can accel­er­ate their own devel­op­ment, the onboard­ing of AI capa­bil­i­ties, and scale this to a dif­fer­ent level. 

Q: As AI agents begin exe­cut­ing end-to-end process­es, how does SAP ensure util­i­ties can trust an agent to write to pro­duc­tion, and what gov­er­nance pre­vents unau­tho­rized autonomous actions on crit­i­cal infrastructure? 

We’ve dis­cussed the new API pol­i­cy, which some peo­ple got upset about, but if you real­ly look at it, it hits home exact­ly in that area. With MCP servers, you can access sys­tems, if they’re not guard­ed and gov­erned in the right way, in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent way: drag down per­for­mance, trig­ger unau­tho­rized trans­ac­tions, and per­form write-backs. 

The pol­i­cy we put in place is sig­nif­i­cant. We believe that with­out work­ing close­ly with cus­tomers here, volatil­i­ty will increase, cost­ing them much more. Hav­ing to catch and defend against cyber­se­cu­ri­ty issues means sys­tem down­time will have a greater impact. Over­all, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty is the top pri­or­i­ty at SAP. 

And last­ly, crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, espe­cial­ly reg­u­lat­ed ones with nuclear oper­a­tions, we offer capa­bil­i­ties with SAP NS2 for cus­tomers who look for a stronger, hard­er, more cyber­se­cu­ri­ty-sen­si­tive organization. 

Q: If you were a util­i­ty CIO today with an exist­ing SAP estate, what two or three moves would you pri­or­i­tize over the next 24 months? 

My view match­es what I heard from 25 CIOs at a major sys­tem inte­gra­tor lead­er­ship con­fer­ence. They all said, first, have a clean core and infra­struc­ture that allows you to scale. 

Sec­ond, ensure data is in order — not just clean, but the right amount — and pro­vide access across dif­fer­ent sys­tems of record. 

Third, which ties to inno­va­tion through AI but is even more crit­i­cal, is change man­age­ment. Pre­pare the orga­ni­za­tion for changes from an agen­tic per­spec­tive and AI adop­tion. Don’t under­es­ti­mate that some groups fear los­ing jobs to AI rather than being enriched by it. Adopt­ing AI instead of resist­ing it is cru­cial, along with a sol­id val­ue foun­da­tion dri­ving AI and innovation. 

For more SAP util­i­ties insights, sign up to receive ASUG’s free The Top­ic: Util­i­ties newslet­ter, and to get involved and keep up with the lat­est, join ASUG’s Util­i­ties Com­mu­ni­ty. Con­nect with SAP teams across the util­i­ties com­mu­ni­ty as they explore AI adop­tion, clean core, data strat­e­gy, and more at SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG in San Anto­nio, Octo­ber 6 – 9, 2026.