Suits Blog: Beyond the Buzz: SAP TechEd 2025 Shows Agentic AI Is Here and Neptune Is Already Delivering It.
By Martin Fischer, Head of Technical Enablement, Neptune Software
Introduction: From Berlin to the Field – Agentic AI Gets Real
For the first time since 2019, SAP TechEd returned to Europe and brought around 3,000 developers, architects, and AI enthusiasts to Berlin.
The message was unmistakable. AI is now the foundation of SAP’s entire developer story.
SAP introduced its Joule agent framework, a new foundation model for relational data called RPT-1, and a long list of tools for building and managing agents. The energy was fantastic and the number of announcements was impressive. The complexity was impressive too. Many attendees and analysts felt that the keynotes jumped between too many ideas and that the narrative never fully landed. Even so, one direction became clear. Agentic AI is no longer a future concept. It is the strategy.
And with that strategy comes a new set of enterprise requirements. Governance, compliance, orchestration and lifecycle management are not optional in the world of enterprise AI. SAP put a strong focus on these needs and made clear that AI in the enterprise must be controlled and secure.
Agentic AI: From Vision to Execution
SAP’s Agent Builder in Joule Studio is designed to help developers create their own agents. The pattern is familiar. SAP provides standard agents that cover the core processes in S4HANA, Ariba, SuccessFactors and other LoB solutions. If a customer needs more, custom agents can be built on top.
SAP also announced new capabilities that will help orchestrate these agents in complex enterprise environments. Their roadmap makes one thing obvious. Without guardrails and proper governance, AI quickly becomes a compliance and security problem. SAP is now building the tooling needed to avoid that.
RPT-1 and the Rise of Enterprise-Grounded AI
SAP’s new foundation model RPT-1 marks a real shift. Instead of being trained on unstructured text like classic generative AI, it is trained on structured ERP data. Most of the data in SAP systems lives in relational tables, so this is the missing piece that many have been waiting for.
RPT-1 is designed to deliver accurate numbers, predictions and insights based on real business data. This is not about generating fluent text. It is about generating correct answers. The open-source release of RPT-1 on GitHub shows how seriously SAP is taking this direction. For many customers, this could become a key building block for high-value AI use cases.
Agent Studio, AI Foundation and the A2A Opportunity
SAP also gave a first look at Agent Studio and Agent Builder, showing how low-code tools are becoming central to the way AI is built in the SAP ecosystem.
One of the most interesting announcements was the Agent-to-Agent protocol, or A2A. It promises to let agents from different platforms communicate with each other. A2A is still a young topic in the AI world, but expectations are high. If done right, it could become the solution for integrating agents across tools and platforms.
Some of the major AI players are developing their own approaches to cross-agent communication. At this moment it looks like the A2A protocol, originally announced by Google in spring 2025, may have a chance of becoming a standard. But the space is moving fast. We need to see how the industry will align around this.
Developer Tools for ABAP Devs
In the middle of all the AI announcements, one message stood out for the ABAP community. SAP revealed a Visual Studio Code extension for ABAP development. This was met with real excitement among the more progressive ABAP developers.
With this, VS Code becomes the primary local IDE for nearly all SAP development artifacts. Business Application Studio on SAP BTP will continue to exist, but it has been a long time since SAP invested so much into a tool that runs locally. This should boost developer productivity in the long run. The only catch is the wait. The extension is planned for release in Q2 2026.
The Return of SAP’s Developer Community
SAP TechEd 2025 brought back a bit of the old SAP community spirit. It was great to see the broader international tech community come together in person again. The vibe is not exactly what it used to be, but this year felt like the first real step toward rebuilding something new.
And it continues. SAP TechEd 2026 is already scheduled for the end of October in Berlin. I am looking forward to it.
Neptune’s Role in What Comes Next
SAP’s vision is ambitious and it sets the stage for a new era of agentic, intelligent and deeply connected enterprises.
At Neptune, we share this vision. We are fully committed to an AI and agentic future in enterprise software. Our mission remains the same. Make developers more efficient and help them build enterprise applications fast and simple. And deliver real outcomes now, not years from now.
Listen to More: Coffee Corner Radio
If you want to hear more impressions from Berlin, listen to my conversation on the Coffee Corner Radio podcast.
Find it on Spotify and join the discussion on LinkedIn.
