SAP, Microsoft Advance Joint Data Fabric to Unlock Greater Enterprise AI Value

SAP and Microsoft have expanded their long-running partnership with a new integration that allows SAP customers to bring trusted, semantically rich SAP data directly into Microsoft Fabric without copying or replicating it. The capability, delivered through SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for Microsoft Fabric, creates a more unified data foundation for analytics and AI by enabling SAP and Microsoft environments to work together in real time.

For SAP professionals navigating rapidly evolving AI strategies, this development represents a meaningful shift in how SAP data can be governed, accessed, and operationalized across the enterprise.

New Unified Data Foundation

The announcement positions SAP BDC Connect as a mechanism for secure, large-scale access to SAP data products while enabling Microsoft Fabric data sets to flow back into SAP environments. This removes the need for data duplication and simplifies how organizations blend SAP and non-SAP data. With SAP data available inside Microsoft OneLake, it becomes immediately usable across Microsoft Fabric’s data engineering and warehousing tools, Power BI, and Microsoft AI Foundry. And because OneLake is embedded in Microsoft 365, everyday tools such as Excel and Teams also become gateways to governed SAP data.

The integration also provides a semantically rich foundation that supports natural language interactions through Copilot in Power BI, along with the development of intelligent applications using Fabric data agents, Copilot Studio, and AI Foundry. The companies highlight opportunities for multi-agent collaboration, where Microsoft 365 Copilot and SAP’s Joule draw on the same enterprise data backbone to guide business users. Together, these capabilities aim to reduce friction when accessing and operationalizing SAP data, enabling faster insights and more advanced AI-driven outcomes.

What this Means for SAPinsiders

The introduction of zero-copy data sharing marks a change in how SAP data can be accessed and leveraged for analytics and AI. Instead of exporting and replicating data into external tools—a process that traditionally introduces latency, cost, and governance risk—SAP data can now be accessed in its governed form while remaining anchored to SAP’s data models. This reduces hardships for SAP teams who have long balanced the need for secure, compliant data management with growing business pressure for faster insights.

The interoperability between SAP BDC and Microsoft Fabric expands how SAP data can be leveraged in broader enterprise analytics workflows. By making SAP data instantly consumable in Microsoft Fabric’s engineering, warehousing, and Power BI layers, SAPinsiders gain more flexibility to blend operational and analytical workloads without building custom pipelines. For organizations running complex SAP environments, this may accelerate scenarios such as predictive planning, business process intelligence, and multi-system automation.

These new capabilities raise the bar for data governance, requiring more consistency and control. SAP leaders will need to ensure that semantic definitions, access controls, lineage, and overall governance frameworks keep pace with the expanded reach of SAP data inside Microsoft 365 tools. As business users interact with SAP-governed information through Excel, Teams, or AI copilots, consistency and stewardship become as critical as integration performance.