The Autonomous Enterprise is moving from vision to reality. Organisations are embedding AI in business processes, automating decisions and exploring increasingly autonomous operations. Yet, as innovation accelerates, tolerance for disruption is disappearing.
For many organisations, SAP is the operational foundation beneath AI initiatives, digital services and core business processes. As SAP landscapes evolve through S/4HANA, cloud adoption and SAP Cloud ERP, CIOs face a practical challenge: how can they enable
innovation while keeping the core secure, resilient and continuously available?
In the Autonomous Era, keeping SAP “always on” is no longer just an IT concern. It’s something the business depends on every day. In this CIONET Trailblazer, we spoke with Marnix Verberckmoes, Managing Director EMEA Regions at oXya, about what this means for SAP operations, resilience, governance and sovereignty.
As enterprises move towards the Autonomous Enterprise, what does “always on” mean today, and what new pressures do AI and autonomous processes put on the SAP core?
Traditionally, “always on” meant an availability percentage in an SLA and a disaster-recovery plan. The system was available if people could log on.
That is no longer sufficient. The SAP core is increasingly consumed by integrations, AI agents and automated decision chains. They only tolerate minimal or no maintenance windows, work around slow performance or call the service desk. Always on means continuous availability of data, interfaces and processing capacity; at speed and around the clock.
Integrity matters as much as availability. The real risk is not always system failure, but rather autonomous processes making incorrect decisions based on inaccurate data. Demand is less predictable, incidents have a wider blast radius, and planned unavailability is shrinking towards zero.
High availability, rolling maintenance and automated failover are already well established. The harder part is operational discipline: knowing what depends on the core and rehearsing failure rather than simply documenting it.
Many organisations are modernising their SAP landscapes through S/4HANA, cloud and SAP Cloud ERP (formerly known as RISE with SAP). Where do the greatest operational risks sit?
An example: If a critical SAP system becomes unavailable at 3 a.m., is it immediately clear who is leading the response and taking ownership? If this is not clear, the model is not ready.
Another risk is the loss of operational knowledge during a multi-year transition. The people who understand the behaviour of the landscape are often exactly the people needed to keep it stable.
That is why organisations should treat an SAP migration as more than a technology project. It’s also a business continuity initiative. Rehearse cutovers and settle the responsibility model before contracts are signed.
When a mission-critical SAP system goes down, what should CIOs think about beyond simply aiming for “zero downtime”?
“Zero downtime” is an ambitious goal, but resilience is really measured by how well you recover when the unexpected happens. CIOs should know how quickly they can restore services, how much data they can afford to lose, if any, and, most importantly, whether those assumptions have actually been tested in realistic conditions.
Most serious SAP incidents announce themselves in advance: through capacity trends, failing jobs or security notes left unapplied. The shift is from monitoring availability to monitoring health, seeing what is likely to break before it does.
Automation removes routine, error-prone tasks such as patching, system copies and housekeeping. But predictive operations are not about replacing expertise with tooling. The tooling surfaces the signal; someone who knows the landscape still needs to interpret it.
With SAP environments spread across on-premises, private cloud, public cloud and managed services, how can CIOs retain control while meeting sovereignty requirements?
Hybrid SAP landscapes mainly fail on governance. CIOs need a single operating model across platforms: consistent standards, monitoring, change processes and incident management. They also need a consolidated view of the estate, plus an accurate, living map of systems, interfaces and dependencies. You cannot control what you have not mapped.
Sovereignty is in fact about four practical questions: where does the data reside; which jurisdictions can access it; who can administer the systems; and whether there is a credible, tested exit path.
Organisations can benefit from the cloud while still maintaining control over their SAP environment. That only works when operating models, responsibilities and long-term flexibility are built into the strategy from the very beginning.
What role should the SAP core play in an Autonomous Enterprise?
Calling SAP simply a system of record undersells what is happening.
You can't build ambitious AI initiatives on an unstable foundation. Every autonomous process relies on the quality, availability and reliability of the SAP core. Which makes it crucial for your growth ambitions with AI.
Looking ahead, what is the biggest misconception about running SAP in the Autonomous Era, and what should CIOs do now?
People often assume that AI and automation reduce the need for strong operations teams. The reality is that as more processes become automated, the SAP core becomes even more critical. When issues occur, they can spread more quickly, and businesses have less tolerance for disruption than ever before. While organisations can outsource certain operational activities, accountability for business continuity always remains with the CIO.
Three priorities stand out:
The Autonomous Era becomes an opportunity when it rests on an SAP core the business trusts, rather than a stress test of one it just hopes will hold.
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