ASUG Tech Connect 2025: What This Year’s Conversations Reveal About AI, Cloud ERP, and Data Governance
ASUG Tech Connect 2025 brought together nearly a thousand attendees, mostly customers, creating one of the most technically mature discussion environments in years. The event highlighted growing urgency around AI adoption, Cloud ERP readiness, sap data governance, and the shift toward unified archiving-plus-migration strategies.
Why does this matter?
Because SAP customers are no longer exploring concepts, they are actively preparing transformation roadmaps where data quality, AI-readiness, and secure cloud operations directly influence program success.
Key Takeaways
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ASUG Tech Connect 2025 saw unusually deep technical engagement, driven by a strong customer majority seeking clarity on AI and cloud roadmaps.
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AI and Joule dominated conversations, creating both excitement and anxiety as teams adjust to rapid capability rollouts.
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Data quality is now treated as a business-led discipline, not an IT burden, leading organisations to seek structured governance and workflow tools.
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Unified archiving, selective migration, and governance models gained traction, as customers look to eliminate fragmented ownership and post-migration issues.
Why was ASUG Tech Connect 2025 more impactful than previous years?
Attendees described this year as one of the most productive editions because the ratio of customers to partners was unusually high. A customer-led audience meant:
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more serious questions,
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more technical deep dives,
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and more readiness to evaluate real solutions.
Many exhibitors reported three to four in-depth product discussions per day, including detailed evaluations of governance, migration workflows, and AI-supported tools.
This reflects a broader industry shift: customers are preparing for mandatory transformation timelines, especially those moving from ECC toward S/4HANA Cloud.
What did attendees find lacking in the event experience?
Several participants expected a more integrated event layout where:
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SAP sessions,
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vendor demonstrations, and
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topic-specific learning tracks
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Why does this matter?
Because organisations evaluating Cloud ERP, AI agents, or selective migration need clarity on how SAP’s roadmap connects to partner technologies. A more unified layout would help them understand the end-to-end journey, not just individual components.
Why did AI dominate discussions at ASUG Tech Connect 2025?
AI drove the most questions—and the most concerns. Many attendees joked that “AI is becoming shorthand for anxiety,” reflecting the discomfort about rapid changes.
Key concerns included:
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Will AI simplify or complicate SAP processes?
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How fast will SAP Joule evolve?
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Which tasks will AI automate for business and technical teams?
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How must governance and security adapt?
SAP’s core message was consistent:
AI will be delivered faster, more securely, and more consistently from the cloud.
This aligned heavily with SAP’s push toward S/4HANA Cloud ERP, signalling that on-premise systems will increasingly lose feature parity—especially in AI capabilities and security updates.
Are organizations still treating data quality as an IT problem?
The answer heard repeatedly was no.
Data quality has always been a business problem, but the business never had the workflow structure to own it.
Attendees agreed that traditional migrations failed because:
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business teams weren’t validating their own data,
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IT validated without domain context,
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errors surfaced late,
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and no audit trail existed.
Modern platforms such as DataVapte bridge this gap by giving businesses structured validation workflows, governance controls, dashboards, exception routing, and post-load reconciliation.
This aligns with the industry shift toward business-led data governance during migration and during BAU operations post-go-live.
What message around archiving + migration resonated most with customers?
The strongest reaction came from the unified message:
Delete what is never needed. Archive what may be needed. Migrate what is definitely needed. Ensure nothing valuable is lost.
For customers, this solved a long-standing issue:
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archiving teams blamed migration teams,
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migration teams blamed archiving,
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and both struggled to explain gaps to the business.
The integrated approach—combining selective migration, compliant archiving, and governed workflows—created a single accountable flow. Many customers described it as finally eliminating “two throats to choke” and replacing them with “one hand to shake.”
Platforms like DataVapte support this direction by ensuring data is validated, governed, reconciled, and visible across all stages.
What specific pain point in S/4HANA migration did the event highlight most clearly?
The biggest pain point attendees recognised was time wasted on validation by the wrong people.
Customers reported that:
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IT teams were doing business validations,
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critical data owners weren’t involved,
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approvals were missing,
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visibility was fragmented,
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and errors slipped through until late stages.
This created delays, compliance risks, and post-migration defects.
Workflow-driven solutions like DataVapte resonated strongly because they allow:
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the right business users to validate the right fields,
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approvals to be logged,
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dashboards to show real-time status,
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and final reconciliation to confirm what actually loaded into HANA.
This directly touched the core challenge: validation speed and accuracy determine migration success.
Conclusion
ASUG Tech Connect 2025 showed a community preparing for AI-enabled, cloud-driven transformation—yet still seeking clarity, governance, and accountability. Customers want fewer tools, cleaner workflows, and unified approaches across archiving, migration, and validation.
As SAP accelerates Joule, cloud ERP, and AI agents, organisations must strengthen their data foundations and eliminate fragmented models. Leaders who invest early in governance, workflows, and integrated data strategies will be best positioned to maximise the next decade of SAP innovation.
