{"id":19416,"date":"2026-04-28T03:45:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T03:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/19416\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T03:45:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T03:45:30","slug":"sap-excellent-q1-and-backlog-confound-chicken-little-doomsayers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/19416\/","title":{"rendered":"SAP Excellent Q1 and Backlog Confound Chicken Little Doomsayers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

If the SaaS industry that runs the world economy is headed for an apocalyptic hell, then how did SAP\u2019s Q1 cloud revenue manage to grow 27% to $7 billion?<\/p>\n

If the ascent of AI is triggering an inevitable Armageddon for incumbent applications vendors, then why did SAP\u2019s current cloud backlog grow 25% in Q1?<\/p>\n

If data is the essential and indispensable fuel for the Agentic Revolution, then why is SAP \u2014 keeper of a vast portion of the world\u2019s business data \u2014 being measured for a coffin?<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m fully aware I\u2019m not the brightest guy in the world, but I\u2019m increasingly puzzled by the wild disparities we\u2019re all seeing between (a) the dire forecasts of doom for the enterprise-apps business and (b) the ongoing strong performances of these allegedly don\u2019t-even-know-they\u2019re-dead-yet companies.<\/p>\n

Since the Q1 numbers SAP released late last week<\/a> offer a perfect example of this stark disconnect, let\u2019s take a quick look at a few of SAP\u2019s key results for the quarter ended March 31:<\/p>\n

Cloud revenue up 27% to $6.98 billion;<\/p>\n

Within that, Cloud ERP Suite revenue up 30% to $6.1 billion; and<\/p>\n

current cloud backlog up 25% to $25.7 billion.<\/p>\n

If those numbers are evidence of an imminent AI-engineered apocalyptic demise, then somebody please explain to me the new diagnostics of decline. Because I think most reasonable people would look at those numbers and say they\u2019re pretty darn impressive.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Community Summit North America<\/a> is the largest independent innovation, education, and training event for Microsoft business applications delivered by Expert Users, Microsoft Leaders, MVPs, and Partners. Register now<\/a> to attend Community Summit in Nashville, TN from October 11-15. <\/p>\n

During an interview with cnbc.com<\/a>, SAP CEO Christian Klein wisely chose not to accept the premise of some looming Armageddon and instead focused on both SAP\u2019s ability to meet the needs of its AI-obsessed customers and also SAP\u2019s unmatched data assets.<\/p>\n

\u201cSAP is uniquely positioned to win in Business AI, and I would definitely say that not every software company should be treated in the same way,\u201d Klein told cnbc.com.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn SAP\u2019s ERP, all the customers are storing their most mission-critical domain know-how about their business processes and their business data. And this is exactly what the AI agents<\/a> need: they need to have this context on how to run businesses in order to take actions. 90% accuracy is not enough when you are actually giving AI agents control over your payroll or your financial close or your supply chain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contrary to the investment community\u2019s fixation on forecasting doom and destruction for providers of enterprise apps, Klein said that the strong growth SAP expects for not only 2026 but also into next year will enable the company the ability to continue investing aggressively in not only its AI-centered innovation but also its people.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at our growth: the pipeline for 2026 is very healthy and we are re-investing first of all into the skills of our people,\u201d Klein told cnbc.com. \u201cIn order to apply AI at scale, every company needs to upskill the workforce and give them the skills they need.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecond, with such a pipeline like what we are having and such a roadmap on AI, we\u2019re going to double down and are re-investing all this money to innovation and really making sure that we can acclerate our growth because what our customers want is, \u2018Hey, we want to have more AI agents for our supply chain, for our finance, for our HR business, and this is what we are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Klein\u2019s not dishing out unsubstantiated fluff here \u2014 he\u2019s talking about very impressive category-leading numbers that SAP has been pumping out for the past 10-12 quarters. And since it is absolutely impossible that the Chicken Little crowd would be unaware of SAP\u2019s sustained record of outstanding growth in both revenue and pipeline, I can only conclude that the doomsayers think that SAP and other enterprise-apps providers haven\u2019t heard about agentic AI or believe that it is the future.<\/p>\n

Final Thought<\/p>\n

And that outlook was anticipated almost 200 years ago by Charles Dickens in the person of his odious character, Bumble the Beadle, whose comment about British law way back then perfectly sums up my feelings<\/a> about the nonsense the Chicken Little crowd is spewing:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the law supposes that, then the law is a ass \u2014 an idiot. If that\u2019s the eye of the law, the law\u2019s a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience \u2014 by experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the SaaS industry that runs the world economy is headed for an apocalyptic hell, then how did…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[179,7493,11032,155,4563],"class_list":{"0":"post-19416","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-agentic-ai","8":"tag-agentic-ai","9":"tag-agentic-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-cloud-wars","11":"tag-featured","12":"tag-sap"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}