Live at Sapphire 2025: Setting the Stage for an AI-Driven Future

Sapphire Orlando 2025 is off to a powerful start, opening with yesterday’s SAP Partner Summit and a series of compelling announcements focused on a data-first, AI-ready future. Our data experts at Syniti, part of Capgemini, are also here, with our ears to the ground for the latest wave of innovations to help customers reach that vision, faster. Here’s just some of what we heard on Day 1 of Sapphire in Orlando: 

AI is Only as Strong as the Data that Powers It 

As Rainer Zinow, SVP of SAP Midmarket Product Management at SAP, put it, “AI is not the future. It’s now.” AI empowers organizations with context-aware, actionable insights that simplify decision-making. But the key messages throughout the Summit weren't about AI as a feature, but a catalyst to real business transformation.  

Christian Klein, CEO at SAP, didn’t mince words when he said: “AI is nothing when you don't have your data in order”.  It's a profound truth that echoes what we’ve seen at Syniti: AI’s power is only as good as the quality and readiness of the underlying data. That’s right – AI readiness depends on data readiness. Without well-managed data, AI is effectively useless. 

 An AI-first world doesn’t isn’t about bolting-on as many AI features as possible, but ensuring a solid, connected data foundation ready to drive action. 

Key Points on Data at the SAP Partner Summit 

This year’s theme at Sapphire, 'Your best. Made real', couldn’t be more fitting. With increasing emphasis on AI, customers are looking to navigate change. Changing landscapes, changes business needs, and a changing future. As exciting as AI is, it’s also disrupted the way businesses have traditionally gone about transformation and data management. It’s in the heartbeat heard throughout the event floor – customers are actively seeking the right path forward to get them to an AI-first future: 

1. End-to-End Context Is Critical
   As Muhammad Alam, Executive Board member of SAP SE, Product & Engineering, emphasized, successful AI relies on end-to-end business context — something impossible without breaking down legacy data silos. We’ve seen it for ourselves at Syniti: customers need context-rich, connected data to drive insights and unlock real value from AI. This means laying the foundation with seamless end-to-end business processes, real-time analytics, and simplified system architecture. 
   
   
2. Unified Landscapes & a Harmonized Data Model
   To help eliminate these fragmented landscapes, SAP emphasizes the need for a harmonized data model to ensure more consistent data across the business. This harmonized landscape preserves semantic context, enabling richer, more actionable AI insights, efficient operations and more informed decision-making. And as the powerhouse to the Business Data Cloud, customers can access clean, structured data right out-of-the-box.
   
   
3. Shift from Best-of-Breed to Best-of-Suite
   SAP is calling out traditional "best-of-breed" strategies that merely cobble together disparate tools that don’t talk to each other. Instead, they're recommending a “best-of-suite" approach: a set of fully integrated applications built to streamline business processes, data consistency, and overall infrastructure. By combining unified and harmonized data with unifying with business processes, businesses can easily access actionable AI without further complicating their data landscape. 
     
4. Reusable Insights for Scalable Growth
   New opportunities to build AI-powered applications on a solid, scalable data foundation, shifts the focus from custom data wrangling to intellectual property and reusable processes. This enables faster innovation, easier maintenance, and ongoing innovation long after the initial transformation project ends.  

Driving Transformation with SAP’s Integrated Toolchain 

One of the more exciting announcements at Sapphire is the SAP integrated toolchain for RISE with SAP. Reinforcing the principle that transformations should be standardized, measurable, and repeatable, SAP is recommending the best-in-class SAP and SAP Solution Extension tools vital to getting there. And as SAP’s data partner of choice, Syniti is embedded into the core of this toolset to help connect quality data to every tool, system, and phase of transformation. By delivering the high-quality data needed for analysis, testing, and execution of cloud transformations, we’re taking our place in the toolchain to accelerate time-to-value in standardized, efficient deployments. 

Future-Ready Data for a Future-Ready Business 

Day 1 at Sapphire Orlando reinforces what Syniti has long stood for: data is the true enabler of transformation. SAP’s focus on harmonized data, embedded AI, and cloud migration paths lays a solid foundation for the future for partners and customers alike. 

Through enhanced extensibility and innovation, we can better serve customers in their journey to the cloud. It deepens our ability to innovate faster and help businesses manage complexity in an increasingly AI-first world.  

The future is about intelligent, connected, business-ready data — and we’re excited to leverage these innovations to help our customers unlock value faster and with greater confidence. 

Stay tuned for more from Syniti in our Live from Sapphire series on ofur blog. You can also visit us on LinkedIn for more play-by-play insights throughout the event.  

At the event in Orlando? Drop by our booth at #402 to meet some of our data experts face-to-face and catch a live demo.