Germany’s Zeiss Group, a key supplier to the global semiconductor industry, overhauled plans to move to a new cloud-based SAP SE software service after costs swelled to more than €200 million over several years.

The precision optics maker will now use a so-called brownfield approach, which means moving its existing software systems to the cloud, in order to save money, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

External consultancies are leading the transition, the people said. The initial attempts to build a new system from the ground up were more complicated than expected, they added.

The decision offers a window into the complexity and expense of cloud transformations, a process that will drive SAP’s growth through the end of the decade. Starting in 2020, SAP CEO Christian Klein has pushed customers to move from locally hosted enterprise software to a subscription-based online service, which is more lucrative for the company and currently accounts for more than 60% of revenue.

SAP is Europe’s largest software company and sells products to manage finances, supply chains and other core business functions. More than 90% of the Fortune 500 use its solutions. Moving to the cloud can be a complex process and many customers still haven’t completed the transition, even as SAP plans to end regular support for its legacy on-premise solutions by the end of next year.

Cloud migration projects often involve external partners such as Accenture, EY or PricewaterhouseCoopers and take years and millions of dollars to complete. Moving sensitive business data is a delicate operation and can cause critical disruptions if done poorly.

US medical tech company Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc sued Deloitte last year over a botched implementation of SAP’s cloud platform. The complaint alleges the process “was a disaster” and the result “was an overly customised software system riddled with defects and functionality gaps.” Zimmer paid US$94 million in fees, 36% more than Deloitte had represented, according to the complaint.

Deloitte is fighting Zimmer Biomet’s “meritless claim”, according to a company spokesperson. A spokesperson for Zimmer Biomet declined to comment.

Zeiss began planning its path to the cloud six years ago and has now reconfigured the migration of its enterprise resource planning, or ERP, software “to achieve faster progress”, a spokeswoman for the company said in a statement. She declined to comment on the investment or the project’s timeline.

A spokesperson for SAP declined to comment on customers’ projects.

Zeiss is the exclusive supplier of optics used in ASML Holding NV’s most sophisticated lithography machines, which make advanced semiconductors, including for Nvidia Corp. Based in the German city of Oberkochen, Zeiss is expanding its operations to meet booming demand from chipmakers, the head of its semiconductor division, Frank Rohmund, told Bloomberg last month.

Zeiss initially planned a greenfield approach, which would have meant building the company’s core IT functions from scratch in the cloud, according to the people. Such projects seek to get rid of needlessly complex legacy processes and streamline systems.

The company has now pivoted to a brownfield approach that will preserve many existing data systems, according to the Zeiss spokeswoman.

The cost of moving to the cloud is highly variable, according to Byron Ford, a consultant at the Berkeley Partnership who works on SAP migrations. Greenfield projects generally cost at least 20% more than brownfield ones but can be twice as expensive, depending on factors such as which geographies are moving, the number of systems involved and the client’s own resources, he said.

A greenfield migration of several systems in a single country might cost £35 million to £40 million and a global project twice that or more, Ford added.

The European Commission is collecting information on how US technology giant Oracle licenses its software for cloud use.

A person familiar with the matter told Reuters EU antitrust regulators were seeking information from third parties about Oracle’s licensing practices.

However, the information-gathering exercise does not mean the company is formally under investigation. Regulators could use the evidence to build a case, or decide to take no further action if they find no wrongdoing.

The Commission has taken a similar approach towards German software company SAP, which agreed concessions in July to address concerns over its licensing practices.

The Commission has been cautious about confirming the details of its work on Oracle. A spokesperson said the regulator would continue to monitor potential anti-competitive practices and abusive conduct in the cloud sector, but stressed that there was currently no formal investigation into any company.

Oracle has faced complaints about its licensing and software audit practices for years, including from European customers.

Such disputes have generally been resolved through commercial agreements rather than antitrust proceedings.

Cloud computing has changed the nature of those concerns. Licensing conditions that make it significantly more expensive to run Oracle software on a rival cloud could influence a customer’s choice of vendor.

Similarly, contracts that are difficult to terminate could make it harder for businesses to switch providers.

As enterprises accelerate investments in AI, many are discovering that the hardest part of adoption is no longer experimenting with large language models but turning them into trusted systems capable of running critical business operations. They are also baffled about what return on investments (ROI) will AI deliver.

According to Manik Narayan Saha, Managing Director for SAP Labs, East Asia, that may no longer be the right question. Speaking at the ATxSummit, Saha argued that traditional ROI models struggle to capture the impact of AI because the technology is fundamentally changing how work is performed rather than simply making existing processes faster.

Instead of relying solely on conventional financial metrics, organisations should focus on the broader business value AI creates through productivity gains, faster decision-making and new ways of operating, he added.

Saha said traditional ROI models assume that technology simply improves existing processes. AI, however, is changing how those processes are designed and executed in the first place, making it increasingly difficult to compare performance against historical benchmarks.

“As organisations redesign workflows around AI, the baseline itself changes. You’re no longer measuring incremental improvements to the same process but measuring entirely new ways of working,” Saha said.

He added that enterprises should therefore look beyond conventional financial metrics and instead assess how AI contributes to faster decision-making, greater productivity, improved customer experiences and new business capabilities.

Enterprises are facing two simultaneous challenges with AI: The risks associated with it are evolving faster than governance frameworks, while the business benefits are often difficult to measure.

This is one of the key findings of The Value of AI, a study commissioned by SAP from Oxford Economics. Now in its second year, the study surveyed 2,600 executives from 13 countries worldwide.

SEIDOR has launched the Report: SAP ERP Modernisation 2026, a study revealing that 94% of companies using SAP plan to modernise their ERP in the coming years.

However, only 15% aspire to a strategic transformation capable of redesigning processes around data and artificial intelligence.

The report is based on interviews with 360 CIOs from companies with more than 100 million euros in revenue across nine countries in Europe and the Americas.

It points to a significant gap between ambition and execution: many companies are modernising SAP in search of innovation, analytics, data and AI, but most projects are still focused on technology migration, operational continuity and platform change.

Javier Navarro, Global SAP Leader at SEIDOR, explained that most companies using SAP already understand that they need to modernise their ERP.

“The difference will lie in whether that modernisation remains a technology evolution or is used to simplify the system, organise information and redesign processes with AI,” said Navarro.

“The risk is not failing to migrate; the risk is migrating and continuing to operate in the same way.”

The European Commission is ending an antitrust investigation into SAP after the company made numerous concessions worldwide regarding maintenance and support services for on-premises versions of its ERP solution. The Commission began its investigation in September 2025, concerned that SAP forces customers to buy its services for longer, and for more licenses, than they need.

In accepting SAP’s commitments, the Commission makes them binding on the company. SAP could still face fines if it fails to make good on its concessions over the next ten years. SAP’s promises include:

New data from SAP Concur has apparently confirmed employees are still ignoring company policies, with three in four UK business travellers using (or would use) unapproved AI tools.

Data from the company’s Global Business Travel Survey shows that, while organisations are investing heavily in AI, they’re not giving workers access to the right tools.

As a result, employees are opting to use other, more suitable alternatives and often prefer publicly available chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini.

Two in five (43%) said they use unapproved tools because they prefer different options to what they’re provided, but one-third (32%) say their organisation doesn’t even offer any AI tools to support planning or booking travel, forcing them to look elsewhere.

The data shows that remote workers (81%) are more likely to use shadow AI than office-based employees (71%), as are younger workers like Gen Z (79%) and Millennials (76%) compared with Gen X (62%) and Boomers (49%).

As for what employees are looking for when it comes to AI supporting their travel needs, the biggest use case is planning itineraries (37%). Tracking expenses (30%), assessing travel risks (26%), making changes to their trip (24%) and completing expense reports (21%) are also common use cases for the productivity-boosting technology.

But business leaders already know the scale of the problem – 100% of CFOs are concerned about shadow AI in business travel, the report found.

“Leaders must educate workers on the risks and provide T&E tools that deliver the desired level of AI support,” EMEA VP for Concur Travel Paul Dear noted.

Looking ahead, the fix must come from organisations – workers clearly aren’t too keen on having to navigate to third-party tools, and are doing it out of necessity. More than a third actually want their AI tools integrated into their productivity software (38%), communications platforms (36%) and CRM systems (32%).