SAP and Enterprise Trends Podcasts from Jon Reed (@jonerp) of diginomica.com

After day one of Epicor Insights 2026, Jon Reed and usual suspect Brian Sommer hashed out what they learned in a vigorous day of keynotes, exec meetings and customer discussions. Epicor's ERP manufacturing bona fides are well known, but what is the impact of their Cognitive ERP push? Is the AI strategy differentiated? Does it line up with what customers need? An unexpected AI candor came out from the keynote stage, but how are Epicor customers faring in their own AI pursuits? Yes, it's time to dissect the "forward deployed engineers" buzzword... Did Brian managed to avoid getting through the entire podcast without bashing the Gaylord Opryland Hotel venue? You're about to find out.

In a time-honored tradition, on the Thursday morning after Sapphire 2026, Josh Greenbaum and I commandeered an abandoned session room at the Hilton to ask ourselves the burning questions: what the heck just happened? What we can take away? Where did SAP advance the conversation, or come up short? Given I have issued multiple podcast from the event, I issued another challenge: let's not repeat prior podcast topics as much as possible. Also, in the context of SAP's new "autonomous enterprise" all-in messaging, the clear/awkward question must be asked: has Greenbaum, one of the most vociferous agentic AI critics in the SAP ecosystem, especially in terms of ROI, changed his stance? And: what did we learn from all of our interactions with SAP execs and customers? And yes: the API data controversy is addressed here. We had an hour of hot topics to work through, and didn't even get to them all. But, a few timestamps:
4:15 - AI and "Toolchain" advancements redux
16:43 - the API controversy breakdown - what we learned at Sapphire
26:00 - has Josh's stance on agentic AI changed?
38:00 - the autonomous enterprise framing
49:00 - SAP Connect, the business case challenge, and final hot seat questions
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At the tail end of SAP Sapphire Orlando, Jon Reed sat down in a semi-empty location with UKISUG Chair Conor Riordan to get his reactions to SAP's news, AI strategy and how customer value is changing. Amongst the hot topics Riordan brought up were: business cases and SAP's new AI migration tools (and Joule for Consultants). How impactful is this on business cases and customer AI adoption? Will partners/SIs make the shift? Where are we with public versus private cloud ERP? We also discuss Riordan's take on SAP's recent API policy changes - and how user groups got involved. Some back-and-forth on agentic accuracy and consumption pricing kept things lively as the event wrapped up. Note: after this conversation, Jon Reed talked with SAP's Philipp Herzig, who clarified that the ability to compare private and public cloud ERP readiness does already exist, and can likely be enhanced further, re: industry readiness assessments.

On Tuesday, SAP kicked off SAP Sapphire Orlando with a important keynote to set the tone for their enterprise vision amidst AI and SaaS upheaval. So how did they do? This audio production recaps the live Watch Party we held with Jon Reed, Josh Greenbaum and Bonnie Tinder, along with a stream of savvy/snarky audience members. In this 30 minute version, you'll hear our pre-keynote expectations and what SAP needed to accomplish. Then you'll hear our post-keynote recap - the highs and the lows, and what SAP accomplished, or not. Note: you can view the entire Watch Party replay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7458204874200186881?viewAsMember=true. SAP's keynote is also available online, check the SAP Sapphire Virtual event as a starting point.

About ready for an event detox? Need a break from agentic keynote overdose? Join us for our picks and pans of the month, and perhaps a surprise guest or two, as we valiantly push to break through the noise and boil down our top road lessons. As always, Brian's infamous slide deck will be on display. Bring your savviest and snarkiest commentary...