Apr 24, 2026
•5 minute read
Dominik Asam
SAP’s Q1 Beat Expectations, but Slower Growth Questions Still Shadow the Cloud and AI StorySAP’s Q1 2026 results beat expectations with solid revenue, profit, cloud growth, and backlog expansion, but management signaled that some gains were boosted by temporary factors and may slow ahead, while AI remains a strategic focus that is still early in adoption and will increasingly shape SAP’s future revenue model and execution priorities.
SAP Caps Strong Cloud-Focused Q1SAP announced a strong first quarter based on positive cloud momentum in its recent earnings call. The overall revenue for the quarter increased by 9% at constant currencies to €7.441 billion, with cloud and software making up the bulk at €6.358 billion. The current cloud backlog increased 25% to €11.148 billion, of which SAP S/4HANA made up €3.418 billion, an increase of 79% at constant currencies from Q1 2022. More predictable revenue now makes up 82% of all SAP revenue, a slight increase year-over-year.
SAP’s CEO Christian Klein centered his remarks on the strong demand for solutions across the company’s portfolio and focused on the launch of two game-changing solutions this quarter—GROW with SAP and SAP Datasphere. GROW with SAP helps mid-market organizations grow with agility and speed by providing rapid adoption services, and SAP Datasphere aligns SAP with other significant data warehouse vendors with a service that collects and federates SAP and non-SAP business data across the enterprise. Klein also revealed that new business-focused AI capabilities will be announced at Sapphire in May.
SAP also announced an expanded partnership with UiPath, although the SAP executives on the call mentioned the announcement in passing. The partnership makes UiPath Automation Platform available to SAP customers as an SAP-endorsed application on the SAP App Store. The goal is to complement SAP Build Process Automation and enable organizations to improve efficiency and productivity across SAP and non-SAP workloads.
For SAPinsider community members, it is important to ascertain what best fits their needs. Both SAP and non-SAP solutions are now strongly supported by SAP through partnerships like one with UiPath. While SAP claims to understand that each organization will take its own route to the cloud, organizations must take the time to prepare for and thoroughly plan their transformations so that it can be completed on their terms and in the time frame that best suits them.
Apr 24, 2023
•4 minute read
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