News Article

If you’ve been watching the SAP scene this year, you might have noticed that 2025 felt like the year SAP’s big promises started turning up in real projects. It’s been exciting, necessary, but not always smooth sailing - with plenty of unexpected plumbing issues that tested the patience of even the calmest of programme directors.

The Cloud is now a business reality

Let’s be honest, “Cloud growth” has been the soundtrack for a decade. But 2025 is the year someone actually pressed play. SAP’s cloud revenue saw a healthy jump of over 25% growth according to Q3 results. Customers seem to be putting their money where their mouth is and moving away from traditional licences to cloud subscriptions, with the promise of faster updates and flexibility that on-prem just can’t match.

However, cloud contracts and pricing models have become a bit of a puzzle box. Organisations are grappling with subscription costs that don’t always line up neatly with usage, and managing vendor relationships takes more savvy than before.

The S/4HANA Migration Crunch

With the countdown to 2027 around the corner, 2025 saw companies hit the accelerator on moving from ECC to S/4HANA. According to ASUG surveys, nearly 40% of SAP customers had either started or completed their migration by this year – a significant increase from 2024.

But many are wrestling with custom code that’s been tweaked over years, complex integrations, and a slew of business processes that can’t just be “standardised” without some pain.

You can’t rush this stuff, no matter how many steering committees you have. But the reward? A faster, sharper, more resilient digital core, with more automation, better decisions, and less waiting for reports that should have run yesterday.

AI: The New Workhorse

SAP’s Business AI has gone from “nice demo” to “why didn’t we have this five years ago?” Finance and supply chain teams in particular are seeing real productivity gains through automated cash flow forecasting, demand sensing, and anomaly spotting - things that quietly save hours without ever asking permission.

As SAP’s CTO Juergen Mueller stated at Sapphire 2025: “AI is now embedded in the workflow, not just a shiny add-on.”

But AI also brings new challenges: How do you keep data clean and your AI models honest? And who’s watching the watchmen?

Data hygiene has become a full-time job. Model governance is no longer optional - someone has to decide what happens when the AI gets a bit too confident and starts making “creative” suggestions.

Security woes and the vulnerabilities that woke us up

2025 saw some nasty security flaws hitting SAP’s NetWeaver and S/4HANA platforms. Onapsis found that over 70% of SAP systems still had known vulnerabilities due to slow patching.

It’s a stark reminder that rapid modernisation means you seriously can’t slack on security, and the headaches from these breaches ripple through finance, compliance, and reputation.

Partner choices and cost puzzles: RISE with SAP’s mixed bag of reactions

RISE with SAP promised a neat, managed cloud ERP package, but many companies have found it’s not a one-size-fits-all. Some love the simplicity; others worry about hidden costs or losing control over their bespoke systems.

One European manufacturer told me their RISE contract negotiations dragged on much longer than expected due to cost modelling, TCO assumptions, and service terms that kept shifting. A friendly reminder: don’t sign anything until you truly understand what you’re committing to - ideally before procurement stages a rebellion.

A Company’s Journey Through 2025

Take this consumer goods firm that went live with S/4HANA Cloud mid-year. They loved how their monthly financial close sped up and how AI-driven forecasting helped avoid stockouts. But behind the scenes, nearly nine months were spent fixing legacy custom code and shoring up security before feeling confident enough to scale.

Not exactly the shiny picture of progressive enterprise transformation some people imagine. But it’s real, and it’s what we need to brace for.

So, What Should You Do Tomorrow?

There’s no need to attempt a full overhaul overnight. Start with an honest assessment of your SAP environment: what’s critical, what’s legacy, what’s holding you back, and where you sit on the S/4HANA migration timeline.

Patch those known security vulnerabilities as if you’re locking the doors before going to bed at night. Then map your migration path: RISE? Clean core? Hybrid landscape? There’s no single right answer, just trade-offs that deserve proper evaluation.

Pick a small, high-impact AI use case and pilot it carefully, and treat governance and data quality as core requirements rather than optional accessories.

And finally, build a small, capable cross-functional team that understands SAP, AI, and security. Investing in this now will pay off over the next one to two years.

Closing thoughts for 2025?

Perhaps 2025 wasn’t the “press here for instant transformation” year some had hoped for, but it was the year cloud, AI, and SAP S/4HANA finally became unavoidable priorities. If you’re still sitting on the fence, now is the time to move. SAP in 2026 won’t be slowing down for anyone.