SAP enters Sapphire on the heels of a surprisingly strong Q1 2026 earnings report; a welcome reversal following January’s disappointing full-year 2025 results, which fell short of analyst expectations and sent the stock plummeting. The Q1 rebound gives SAP a confident platform heading into Orlando, but SAP still has meaningful work ahead to instill long-term confidence in their strategic direction and ability to continue momentum with both the investment community and their customers.

SAP will leverage Sapphire 2026 to showcase their existing capabilities and roadmap, but customers will be listening closely to see whether the event delivers real answers or just another year of bold promises that outpace reality.

The most important challenge SAP must confront is the maturity of their AI offerings and the gap between their AI ambitions and the outcomes customers can actually achieve today. This is not just an industry observation; it is a gap that SAP’s own CTO Philipp Herzog has publicly recognized.

This challenge, coupled with SAP’s new API policy, quietly published just weeks before the event, will undoubtedly shape much of the conversation at Sapphire, and customers should understand both before walking through the doors in Orlando.

In this blog, we break down the impact of SAP’s Q1 results for customers, industry concerns related to SAP’s new API policy, and what to expect from SAP at Sapphire 2026 and how to prepare for it appropriately.

SAP’s Q1 2026 Earnings: Strong Numbers with Strings Attached

When SAP reported its full-year 2025 results in January, the market reaction was immediate and severe. Softer-than-expected cloud backlog performance and a 2026 outlook that failed to reassure investors about long-term growth durability sent the stock to its largest single-day drop in roughly five years. The results raised real questions about whether SAP’s cloud transition was losing momentum at exactly the wrong moment and put significant pressure on the company heading into 2026.

Against that backdrop, SAP’s Q1 2026 results undoubtedly came as a genuine relief for Christian Klein and his executive team. The numbers were strong across the board: cloud revenue grew 27% at constant currencies, backlog grew, margins improved, and SAP reaffirmed its targets for the full year. Customers should not read Q1 as a clean rebound, however. Three things warrant close attention:

1. SAP acknowledged that some of Q1’s cloud strength was driven by timing-related factors that are unlikely to repeat and has already signaled that cloud revenue growth will slow in Q2 as a result.
2. SAP’s full-year guidance comes with a significant caveat. It assumes a near-term de-escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. SAP has been direct that the conflict has already impacted its pipeline and order entry, and if conditions do not improve, the company’s ability to hit its targets for the year is at risk.
3. North America once again lagged behind APJ and EMEA in cloud revenue growth, a trend worth watching given the significance of the North American market to SAP’s long-term trajectory.

What do SAP’s Q1 2026 earnings mean for SAP customers?

While Q1 set a positive tone for the year, the underlying caveats are real, and SAP will need to demonstrate consistency throughout 2026. North American customers should recognize that SAP has added commercial pressure to close deals and secure cloud backlog in a region that has underperformed. Expect urgency in commercial conversations at Sapphire and beyond. Come prepared with a clear understanding of your inflection points and timeline, because SAP’s timeline is not necessarily yours.

SAP’s API Policy Update: A Quiet Announcement with Major Implications

Just weeks before Sapphire, SAP published an updated API policy that has already generated significant market backlash. To net it out, use of internal, private, or undocumented APIs is no longer permitted unless explicitly authorized by SAP, external AI agents interacting with SAP must go through SAP-approved architecture, and large-scale data extraction is prohibited unless done through SAP-endorsed mechanisms.

This is particularly concerning for organizations that have spent significant time, money, and effort customizing and integrating their SAP environment as it puts existing investments directly at risk. It is equally troubling for customers who have been building or planning an AI strategy that relies on third-party AI tools and agents interacting with SAP data, as this policy puts those plans directly at risk as well. The downstream consequences can include architecture and data strategy changes while creating unplanned budget implications. We are also seeing this play out in real time as SAP is already increasing pricing proposals in ways that account for this policy change without full transparency behind the uplifts.

The timing of this policy update is not a coincidence as it directly supports SAP’s strategic growth objective to drive more revenue for Business Data Cloud. By restricting how SAP data flows to third-party platforms and making alternative integration approaches non-compliant, SAP is effectively positioning BDC as the only compliant path forward, reinforcing its best-of-suite strategy and making it significantly harder for customers to selectively integrate best-of-breed alternatives.

What does SAP’s API policy update mean for SAP customers?

SAP has effectively dropped a grenade in the room and walked away, leaving customers with significant open questions around architecture, compliance, and budget. On the Q1 earnings call, CEO Christian Klein reassured investors and customers, stating that SAP wants to provide an open platform, that third-party AI agents should be able to interact with SAP, and that customers’ data is their own and SAP has no intention of charging them to access it. The written policy tells a more restrictive story, and solidifies the case that customers should go by what is written, not what is said on stage.

Do not let SAP frame this policy update purely as a security and governance story. At Sapphire, hold them accountable to provide specific answers around this policy so that you can understand what this means for your existing environment, your broader roadmap and architecture strategy, and potential impacts to your budget.

What SAP Will Focus on at Sapphire 2026 and How to Prepare

SAP will use Sapphire to advance a tightly connected narrative across four areas that sit at the center of its growth strategy: Business AI, Business Data Cloud (BDC), Cloud ERP and RISE, and its evolving services and support model. Each area is designed to reinforce the others, and not coincidentally, SAP’s sales objectives. The demos will be compelling and the announcements will be bold, but customers should come prepared to engage critically on the following products and services:

1. Business AI

If there is one thing you can count on at Sapphire, it is that AI will dominate virtually every conversation, session, and keynote from the moment the doors open. Every product announcement will have an AI angle, every customer story will have an AI outcome, and every partner booth will have an AI pitch. You will probably be tired of hearing about it before you make it to lunch on day one.

SAP will position the advancements they have made, their current AI capabilities, and their evolving roadmap as the centerpiece of their Sapphire narrative. They will bring out AI partners that have supported their journey and early adopter customer case studies to validate their progress. To understand what SAP is likely to emphasize, it helps to look at what they told investors in January. SAP highlighted three strategic AI-specific growth pillars that will almost certainly anchor the Sapphire conversation:

• Joule – reducing manual interaction with SAP systems and delivering more automated recommendations and insights across core business processes
• AI agents embedded into core workflows – building AI agents that can handle tasks across workflows and communicate with each other to run business operations more intelligently
• Industry-specific AI capabilities – expanding AI use cases to improve specialized capabilities across sectors like retail, manufacturing, and healthcare

How can SAP customers prepare for AI-driven conversations ahead of Sapphire 2026?

Be cautious about taking SAP’s AI adoption numbers at face value; much of what gets reported has been driven by forcing adoption, leaving customers with capabilities they did not ask for and may not be using.

The numbers will look compelling on a slide, but they do not tell the whole story. Sapphire is also the moment for SAP to demonstrate meaningful progress against each of these three pillars in a way that drives real business outcomes today, not just potential capabilities on the roadmap. Hold SAP accountable to what they have acknowledged they have yet to prove: AI outcomes that are specific, measurable, and relevant to your business.

2. Business Data Cloud

While AI will be the headliner at Sapphire, Business Data Cloud will not be far behind. SAP has made aggressive claims about BDC including how it is next in line as a sales driver after RISE, and how it is practically the only way to ensure effective AI by overcoming data silos and unifying SAP and non-SAP data. Expect that message to be front and center in Orlando, with a full ecosystem of partners and customer stories assembled to reinforce it.

What customers should not lose sight of is that SAP’s new API policy has effectively made BDC the compliant path for integrating SAP data with external platforms. SAP has effectively redrawn the boundaries of what is permissible, and BDC sits squarely within them.

How can SAP customers use Sapphire to understand BDC?

BDC conversations at Sapphire will not happen in isolation; be prepared for SAP to tightly connect them with AI, Cloud ERP and RISE, and SAP’s broader suite strategy. For many organizations, BDC will overlap with existing investments in platforms they have already paid for and built around. Resolving that overlap will not be free.

Customers should leverage Sapphire to investigate what BDC means for their existing architecture and how it aligns to their future data strategy. Like AI, SAP’s BDC pricing is consumption-based and has the potential to escalate quickly if not properly planned and managed. Do not let a compelling Sapphire presentation fast-track a decision that deserves careful architecture and commercial consideration.

3. Cloud ERP and RISE

Cloud ERP and RISE may no longer be the shiny new toy it once was, but do not expect SAP to be quiet on this front at Sapphire. SAP will continue to position Cloud ERP and RISE as the necessary foundation for AI-enabled transformation, with messaging around the importance of clean core and the urgency of accelerating customer roadmaps.

SAP has evolved Cloud ERP and RISE a great deal since its inception, including changes to commercial models, product packaging, and service offerings. But with those changes comes an increased amount of decision complexity that customers must evaluate.

• New SAP customer – SAP will likely steer you toward a public cloud construct, particularly if you are a mid-sized organization.
• ECC customer – options exist beyond 2027 including extended maintenance and RISE timelines.
• S/4HANA on-premises customer – expect strong pressure to move to RISE.
• RISE early adopter – treat renewal as a strategic reset, not an extension.

4. Services and Support

The recent restructuring of SAP’s services and support portfolio reflects its intent to deepen its role in transformation programs.

SAP is expanding its influence and revenue opportunity across the full migration lifecycle at exactly the moment customers are most vulnerable. Do not take SAP’s restructured services and expanded role at face value. Scrutinize what SAP is offering, what accountability comes with it, and how it interacts with your existing SI and managed services relationships.

Challenge SAP to Deliver on “The Beginning of Better”

SAP has dubbed this year’s Sapphire “the beginning of better,” which does not exactly inspire confidence. Customers should hold SAP accountable to demonstrating what “better” actually looks like in practice.

Use Sapphire to demand specifics on:

• AI maturity
• The new API policy
• Your ERP profile
• SAP’s expanding role in services

SAP wants you to leave Sapphire inspired. Your goal should be to leave informed.