The SAP ALM Summit EMEA 2025 took place from October 21 to 23, 2025, at the Darmstadtium in Darmstadt. The summit is the most important annual meeting of the European ALM community. Under the motto “Empower Your Transformation – with AI and Cloud ALM,” SAP customers, partners, and experts discussed the future of Application Lifecycle Management in an increasingly cloud-based and AI-driven world. What topics and insights are shaping the European ALM community? Representing adesso, I attended the summit and can say: Two topics clearly dominated.
Focus on Integrated Toolchain and SAP Joule
The SAP ALM Summit EMEA was clearly dominated by two central themes. On the one hand, everything revolved around the realization of an end-to-end integrated toolchain that seamlessly links strategy, implementation, and operations. On the other hand, the practical, real-world application of generative AI came into focus, with SAP Joule playing a key role as an integral part of the lifecycle in the Cloud ALM environment.
Integrated Toolchain as a Foundation
Numerous sessions on the summit agenda demonstrated that the classic understanding of ALM as an isolated project tool belongs to the past. In the future, it’s about integration, end-to-end consistency, and transparency – from process modeling and architecture management to live operations. SAP representatives repeatedly emphasized that the combination of Cloud ALM, process and architecture tools, and automation components is no longer optional but business-critical.
Examples from the sessions:
- Scenarios in which Cloud ALM is linked with Process Mining and Signavio workflows to implement changes faster, data-driven, and traceably.
- Architecture and landscape management with SAP LeanIX is closely integrated with SAP Cloud ALM and enables an end-to-end view of applications, processes, and technical dependencies.
- Monitoring & Operations directly from Cloud ALM, complemented by test automation and quality management – all in a cohesive chain.
This “One Integrated Toolchain” ensures that information and workflows are no longer siloed, but are interconnected end-to-end – from the business blueprint to stable operations.
Clean Core and Landscape Simplification
The Clean Core concept was a consistent leitmotif of the event. Only with a near-standard SAP core landscape and clearly defined extension points (e.g., via SAP BTP) can innovations, upgrades, and cloud adoption be efficiently implemented.
The toolchain supports this philosophy: With standardized processes, clear architectures, and integrated tools, complexity is significantly reduced. The result: lower technical debt, shorter release cycles, and higher change resilience – all central success factors in the cloud era.
AI with SAP Joule: From Vision to Application
Another focus of the summit was the use of artificial intelligence. What was considered a concept in recent years is a reality in 2025: With SAP Joule, generative AI is directly integrated into Cloud ALM and changes how teams interact with systems.
Concrete use cases presented at the summit:
- Automated classification of change requests or incidents based on historical data.
- Prioritization and recommendation of test cases through machine learning models based on usage and risk profiles.
- Conversational Interfaces: Joule enables interaction via natural language – for example, “Show me all critical deployments in the last month”.
- Proactive support in operations: Joule detects anomalies in system behavior, provides early warnings, and suggests courses of action.
Thus, AI is not understood as an add-on, but as an integrated component of lifecycle management.
Joule acts as a co-pilot that understands context, recognizes patterns, and specifically supports teams, both in projects and in daily operations.
Transition from Classic Solution Manager to Cloud ALM & Operations
Many sessions at the ALM Summit were dedicated to the migration from the on-premise tool SAP Solution Manager to the modern, cloud-based platform. The focus was less on a “tool change” and more on a transformation process. Cloud ALM is not the successor, but the evolution: It elevates ALM to a new, cloud-centric level. Standardized, integrated, and AI-supported.
Conclusion: The SAP ALM Summit 2025
The SAP ALM Summit EMEA 2025 at the Darmstadtium in Darmstadt impressively demonstrated: The evolution of SAP Cloud ALM is far more than a product update. It marks the beginning of a new era in Application Lifecycle Management. The future of Application Lifecycle Management is intelligent, integrated, and cloud-based. With Cloud ALM as the control center, the One Integrated Toolchain as the backbone, and SAP Joule as the AI engine, companies are facing a new era of digital efficiency. In short: Those who start actively shaping Cloud ALM with an integrated toolchain and AI support today are laying the groundwork for tomorrow and securing a real competitive advantage.
You gain transparency and control over processes, projects, and operations in all phases. AI-supported assistance functions allow you to shorten response times, identify risks earlier, and make more informed decisions. A clean architecture and an integrated tool landscape create agility and accelerate innovations. Operations become more efficient: Cloud ALM takes over monitoring and optimization – end-to-end. With SAP Joule, context-based recommendations and natural language interaction become part of daily ALM.
At adesso business consulting, we support you in actively shaping this future – from ALM maturity analysis and toolchain roadmap to pilot projects with Cloud ALM and Joule. Contact us. We will accompany you on your journey into the AI-supported ALM future.
