#98: SAP BDC, APIs, Boring Magic

In this issue:

• AI+SAP: It’s Getting Hot in Here

• In Memoriam: Build Apps

• The Land of Business Data Confusion

• Boring Magic

• Put the “P” in “AI”

• Innovation?

It was clearly an oopsie on the organizer’s side not to invite The Nerdletter correspondents to cover The SAP Intelligence Event in Amsterdam on March 9–11. (No hard feelings. For now.) Thankfully, Tobias Hofmann shared a detailed report on his blog.

Right off the bat, his observations match what Paul has already been pointing out: your next “AI+SAP” call will probably not be coming from inside the house. Microsoft, Google, and AWS all showed up at the event with solutions nipping at SAP’s AI heels.

[Ed: I’m something of a psychic. -Paul]

By starting with AI features available only to top-shelf cloud customers, SAP has left a back door open, which will no doubt invite competition to its broader customer base. There is no public data on how many SAP customers running systems that fit the requirements for SAP’s AI tool access, but my guesstimate is it’s a minority. I’m sure SAP is aware of this situation and is planning some kind of move to be announced at Sapphire. Will that move embrace the wider customer base or double down on consciously leaving behind the luddites? Place your bets now, we’ll find out in May.

Tobias points out that SAP is at risk of being relegated to the status of “an expensive system of record.” I think there is actually nothing wrong with that - providing it’s the most awesome system of record on the market. However, SAP’s history of “tech ADD” and obsession with having a branded solution for everything (look up ‘SAP Jam’) has led it astray before. They have managed to recover and steer the ship so far, but we’re living in turbulent times, when a wrong turn could have pretty dire consequences. And MSFT, GOOG, and AMZ sharks are already circling the waters. JP

SAP Build Apps, formerly known as AppGyver, had an abrupt ending a couple weeks ago. Not only was its end announced, but unless you have an active contract, the end arrived. The announcement was the same day as the pulling of the plug.

It feels kind of like a rug-pull…but I don’t think anyone was actually standing on the rug. There were no survivors of the plane crash because nobody was on board. The exercise is left to the reader to choose a third metaphor.

One commenter on the post said this, which got me thinking: “for the last few years all we hear is SAP Build Apps is a must learn for IT.” My brother or sister in SAP-land: if the vendor is telling you one of their products is a must learn, rest assured that you can invest your learning time elsewhere. I can guarantee you that the “learning” will be useless path-walking to remember how to click on a menu.

Here’s a simple barometer. If the vendor’s tutorial for their product leaves you knowing which buttons to push to upload a .yml file but you still have no idea what the bloody hell a .yml file is, you’re in the wrong tutorial. Come away with understanding and you’ll have gained yourself a skill. Come away with rote memorization and you won’t have much to offer. Skills are infinitely composable and malleable - pile them into your brain at every opportunity. PM

When SAP announced Business Data Cloud (BDC) a year ago, it was positioned as a solution that “unifies” and “harmonizes,” while also setting the stage for unleashing more, better AI agents. This was clearly music to SAP customers’ ears. In a typical enterprise, data is spread across a hundred different systems, each with its own IDs and formats, with business partner interfaces adding even more chaos. Who wouldn’t want a tool to unify and harmonize that?

But the latest intel from the German SAP user group (DSAG) hints that not everything is rainbows and butterflies. The foundation has been laid out; however, “the SAP BDC regulations, instructions, and tools are still completely inconsistent and imprecise.”

DSAG doesn’t mince words and has gone as far as calling BDC “Business Data Complexity.” “The consolidated data universe desired by existing SAP customers appears to be more of a multiverse.” Yikes.

Meanwhile, SAP is plowing ahead: a recent announcement of the Reltio acquisition falls in line with the data unification message. I sincerely hope BDC will live up to its unification promise eventually. But DSAG usually points the finger where it needs to be pointed, and I’d recommend looking in that direction. JP

My friend Alex Jones (not that one) is launching a company in the go-to-market space, FastForward. He’s been posting more about the usefulness of AI lately, and one of his recent posts struck me. Money quote: “How can someone possibly not know what Claude is in 2026?” Bro, I hear you. To those of us swimming in the ocean of AI, it does feel weird to think that most people out there are on dry land.

I think part of the issue is that, for most people, the impact just isn’t clear from seeing a screenshot of a chat window. How do I use that?

The dots connected a bit for me when I saw this post about this year’s Hasso Plattner Founder’s Award recipients: the Document AI team. To me, document AI feels like ancient history in AI. You could do things with those even before the COVID pandemic! How could that possibly be impactful?

But I have seen a document AI solution light up the eyes of folks who are stuck in the middle of ugly processes. It isn’t always that an AI solution has to reinvent quantum whatever to be impressive. So many times, it’s just plucking numbers out of a messy PDF and shoving them into whatever finance process needs them. The everything box with a blinking cursor in a prompt field that you don’t know how to fill out isn’t magic to everyone.

So, fellow nerds, if you find yourself needing to explain why AI is the best thing since sliced bread - show an AR processing specialist (is that a thing?) a tool that pulls the right details from a godawful nightmare of an email attachment. Watch them weep for joy. PM

Wikipedia explains API (application programming interface) as “a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software.” In the SAP world, an API could be a function module, a global class, or - more recently - a web API (e.g., created using the ABAP RAP model).

APIs are largely invisible to users and operate based on a promise: when you provide specific data (parameters), they just do their job and then come back with a result. This is exactly the concept on which the famous SAP BAPIs (Business APIs) are based.

This promise and “service to other pieces of software” are what make APIs so advantageous. A reliable API can sit at the center of many activities. For example, in SAP, the same API could support a Fiori app, a third-party interface, and robotic automation process. No wonder API-centric architecture is experiencing a full renaissance right now.

A recent Software Heroes blog post highlights another important aspect: AI usage. “AI doesn’t run without automation. And automation doesn’t run without APIs.” The magical AI agents we keep hearing and writing about need APIs to do their job. There is simply no way around it.

Funny enough, this isn’t a new strategy. If you tell any experienced ABAP developer they need to “do more APIs,” they will probably roll their eyes (“thanks for the tip!”). It’s SAP - not external ABAP developers - that needs to deliver APIs for standard functionality. At the same time, there is nothing stopping SAP customers from adopting an “API-first” strategy for their custom development to better welcome our AI Agent overlords. JP

I think I do some version of this story every year around the SAP Innovation Awards time. It’s just so funny to me that I can’t not bring it up again. Look at the Accenture Joule finalist case. They have a chance at an award for…buying SAP licenses for Joule, which aren’t even active yet?

By this logic, my college owes me an innovation award for my theatre degree. PM

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