SAP aims to unify data for AI, analytics with new Business Data Cloud

Getting ready for agentic wars?

Analysts also said that SAP’s strategy to champion BDC as the foundational data layer is another step towards getting ready for the agentic wars — a phase where rival vendors such as Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft, Workday, and ServiceNow, among others will try to get a majority share of enterprises’ expenditure.

“Enterprises are already using multiple products across their businesses. If an enterprise uses both Salesforce and SAP across different departments, the real question is which agentic offering are they going to choose: Agentforce or Joule? That’s what vendors are preparing for,” IDC’s Parker explained.

As for competition in other domains, SAP executives said the company is not planning to compete with other data platform providers such as Snowflake or any of the hyperscalers. Rather, they said that they want to help enterprises unlock the value of their data by providing a unified data layer and tooling on top to unearth insights.