SAP has completed its acquisition of Dremio, a leading data lakehouse platform, enabling customers to run analytical and AI workloads across SAP and non-SAP data sources without data movement. The deal arrives as enterprise decision-makers rank data integration as a top technology priority, and directly strengthens SAP’s Business Data Cloud and agentic AI roadmap. SAP is positioning its dominant installed base to capture a growing share of AI-driven analytics spend.
What is Covered in this Article
- Enterprise demand for data integration and AI analytics
- SAP’s completed acquisition of Dremio and its capabilities
- SAP’s market position in ERP and supply chain software
- Agentic AI acceleration and Business Data Cloud strategy
- Enterprise software market growth trajectory
The News: SAP has finalized its acquisition of Dremio, a leading data lakehouse platform. The integration allows SAP customers to access both SAP and non-SAP data for analytical and AI workloads without requiring data movement or conversion. SAP positions the deal as delivering improved cost efficiency for enterprise analytics, while also accelerating its agentic AI initiatives and strengthening its Business Data Cloud offerings. The acquisition extends SAP’s data infrastructure capabilities at a moment when enterprises are actively consolidating their analytics and AI stacks around unified platforms.
SAP’s Dremio Acquisition Provides Agentic AI Data Foundation
Analyst Take: SAP’s Dremio acquisition is a direct response to a well-documented enterprise requirement. Enterprise decision-makers rank data integration and application management as the second-highest technology priority overall, with 26.8% placing it first and over 51% ranking it in their top two [3]. Predictive and analytics AI also ranks highly, with 23.3% of respondents naming it their top priority. SAP is filling a gap its customers have been signaling for years. The move is strategically coherent and operationally timely.
Enterprise Demand Creates a Clear Market Mandate
The Futurum Group Enterprise Software Decision Maker Survey (1H 2026, n=830) leaves little ambiguity about where enterprise priorities sit. Data integration and application management is ranked the number-one technology priority by 26.8% of respondents, second only to generative AI at 32.8%. This reflects a durable structural need as enterprises manage increasingly fragmented data estates. Agentic AI compounds the urgency: those workloads are only as effective as the data infrastructure beneath them. Notably, 33.8% of enterprises plan to deploy agentic AI in supply chain operations within the next 18 months, a domain where SAP already holds a 28.4% market share. SAP’s Dremio acquisition addresses both data integration and AI analytics demand simultaneously.
Dremio Closes the Integration Gap and Strengthens the Budget Conversation
The practical value of the Dremio acquisition centers on eliminating data movement. By enabling analytical and AI workloads to run directly across SAP and non-SAP data sources without conversion, SAP removes a friction point that has historically forced enterprises to build costly, complex ETL pipelines. This matters both commercially and technically. Among enterprise buyers, 55.2% cite improved integration capabilities as a factor that would increase their confidence in allocating more software budget. SAP is directly addressing the criteria buyers use to justify spend. The addition of cost efficiency benefits reinforces the business case for existing SAP customers considering expanded platform adoption.
Market Position Amplifies the Opportunity
SAP enters this next phase from a position of structural advantage. The company holds 33.9% of the ERP market ($16B in 2025 revenue) and 28.4% of the supply chain software market ($5B in 2025 revenue). That installed base represents a substantial distribution channel for Dremio’s data lakehouse capabilities. Customers already running core business processes on SAP are natural candidates for unified analytics and AI workloads. The broader market context reinforces the opportunity: the enterprise software market is projected to grow 11.6% year-over-year in 2026 under Futurum’s base-case scenario, reaching $424B. SAP’s strengthened Business Data Cloud and accelerated agentic AI roadmap position it to capture share in the fastest-growing segments of that expansion.
Read the full announcement on SAP’s website.
What to Watch
- Adoption rates of Dremio-enabled workloads among existing SAP ERP and supply chain customers
- SAP’s pace of agentic AI feature releases built on the combined Business Data Cloud and Dremio infrastructure
- Competitive response from Oracle, Microsoft, and Salesforce as unified data lakehouse capabilities become a standard enterprise expectation
- Whether improved integration capabilities translate into measurable budget expansion among SAP’s customer base
- Enterprise agentic AI deployment in supply chain, where 33.8% of respondents plan activity in the next 18 months
Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process: This content has been generated with the support of artificial intelligence technologies. Due to the fast pace of content creation and the continuous evolution of data and information, The Futurum Group and its analysts strive to ensure the accuracy and factual integrity of the information presented. However, the opinions and interpretations expressed in this content reflect those of the individual author/analyst. The Futurum Group makes no guarantees regarding the completeness, accuracy, or reliability of any information contained herein. Readers are encouraged to verify facts independently and consult relevant sources for further clarification.
Disclosure: Futurum is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum as a whole.
Read the full Futurum Group Disclosure.
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Author Information
Keith Kirkpatrick is VP & Research Director, Enterprise Software & Digital Workflows for The Futurum Group. Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
