I recently sat down with John Young, VP of Industry Solutions at Databricks, to talk about a challenge every CIO is wrestling with:
How do you bring agility, intelligence, and innovation into SAP—without disrupting the core systems that keep the business running?

The short answer: Koantek and Databricks can supercharge your SAP data to unlock real, measurable innovation.

In our conversation, we explored three key topics that are top of mind for CIOs today:

1. Rethinking AI: Getting answers before questions are asked
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2. Reverse-engineering business processes with AI
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3. The future of enterprise AI with SAP
   
   

The SAP Dilemma: A Goldmine That’s Hard to Access

CIOs often tell me: “We’re sitting on gold in SAP, but we can’t mine it fast enough.”

SAP is mission-critical, it standardizes processes, enforces governance, and runs the business. But today’s executives want more: faster insights, AI-driven decisions, and systems that can adapt and learn.

As John put it:

“SAP is brilliant at what it was built to do—process standardization, operational control, governance. But it wasn’t designed for what CIOs are demanding today: real-time insights, AI-driven decisions, and adaptive systems. That’s where Databricks comes in.”

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Respecting the SAP Foundation

At Koantek, our customers don’t want to rip and replace SAP—they want to build on it. And that’s smart, because SAP excels in:

• Process Standardization & Data Consistency – Unified processes and reliable data at scale
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• ‍Business Process Monitoring – Real-time visibility to detect and resolve bottlenecks
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• Extensibility – APIs and adapters for rapid integration and customization
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• Cloud-Based Agility – Flexibility to pivot quickly with SAP’s cloud offerings
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• Robust Security – Encryption, access controls, and compliance baked in
  
  

The challenge?

• 80% of enterprise data sits in SAP, making AI innovation hard without moving large volumes of data
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• Master data management remains a global headache—AI could help unify and clean data across instances
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• SAP and non-SAP data must integrate seamlessly, ideally through an API-led, governed architecture

We’re not here to disrupt this foundation—we’re here to unlock it.

The Databricks Superpowers for SAP

Databricks’ Data Intelligence Platform delivers the capabilities SAP needs to evolve into an AI-powered system of the future:

• Holistic Lakehouse – Bring together structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data in one secure, performant, and cost-effective platform
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• Agentic AI – Build and deploy AI agents that can automate complex processes using both open-source and commercial AI models
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• Open & Extensible – Reduce operational costs by avoiding unnecessary pipelines and data duplication, enabling rapid iteration
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• Cloud Agnostic – Feature parity across all major hyperscalers and emerging sovereign clouds
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• Unified Governance – Unity Catalog ensures fine-grained, industry-specific security for data, models, and AI agents
  
  

With Databricks, SAP data can drive real-time, intelligent action across the enterprise.

Koantek + Databricks: Building the Future of SAP

Koantek brings deep SAP expertise, from ECC to S/4HANA, and a pragmatic approach: don’t replace what works, augment it with intelligence. Together with Databricks, we help CIOs modernize and future-proof SAP in three ways:

1. Accelerating SAP Data Activation

We help enterprises:

• Ingest and unify SAP and non-SAP data into a single lakehouse while preserving business context
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• Reduce data movement for faster, more efficient decision-making
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  Use pre-built connectors, metadata pipelines, and governance accelerators to cut time-to-value

2. Applying AI to Reverse-Engineer Business Processes

By combining Koantek’s SAP domain expertise with Databricks’ AI capabilities, we:

• Model and simulate process variants for agility
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• Identify and fix master data gaps across SAP instances
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• Deploy intelligent agents that proactively recommend optimizations, from purchase order exceptions to supply chain reroutes

3. Engineering for the Agentic Future

We’re enabling autonomous ERP capabilities, including:

• LLM-powered copilots for business users
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• Automated decision workflows in SAP
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• Closed-loop systems that learn, adapt, and act in real time

The future ERP is autonomous, and we’re building it today.

Whether you’re exploring a proof of concept or rethinking your SAP data foundation entirely, Koantek and Databricks have the strategy, tools, and execution muscle to get you there.

We’re already driving transformation in manufacturing, healthcare, CPG, and beyond, and we’d love to help you do the same.

Let’s Build Something Intelligent Together
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