DSAG Investment Report 2025: Companies invest in cloud solutions

The willingness of companies in German-speaking countries to invest in IT solutions and in SAP software is increasing. Investments in cloud solutions are on the rise in particular. This is the conclusion of the DSAG Investment Report 2025, for which the German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG) surveyed 243 companies.

SAP BTP: Cloud platform for the intelligent enterprise of tomorrow

Almost half of companies with higher SAP investments

While the overall IT budget will increase at 40% of companies this year, it will remain unchanged at 30%. 24% expect IT budgets to fall. With regard to SAP, 47% of companies report higher investments, 23% report no change and 25% report lower investments. Compared to the previous year, the proportion of companies with unchanged expenditure has decreased (2024: 32%) and the proportion of companies with smaller budgets has increased (2024: 19%). “The decrease in companies with an unchanged SAP budget and the increase in those with a decreasing budget suggests that some companies are reviewing their SAP spending,” says DSAG Chairman Jens Hungershausen, assessing the development. “Possible reasons could be delays in planned migrations, savings through consolidation of SAP systems or a general reduction in costs.”

SAP S/4HANA Cloud is catching up strongly

In addition to investments, the DSAG survey also asked about the ERP systems used in companies. Here, SAP ERP or SAP Business Suite is in the lead with 51%. However, the share has fallen by 17% compared to the previous year. While SAP S/4HANA on-premise experienced a slight decline (from 44% to 42%), both SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud (from 11% to 33%) and SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud (from 6% to 13%) were able to significantly increase their share. In terms of planned investments, SAP S/4HANA Private or Public Cloud at 68% is well ahead of SAP S/4HANA on-premise (42%) and SAP ERP (23%).

The growing importance of RISE with SAP, as determined by the DSAG Investment Report 2025, is also in line with the increasing investment in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. 45% of companies state that they are already using or planning to use RISE with SAP. A year ago, the figure was only 16%. GROW with SAP is less relevant. Here, 17% say that they use or plan to use the offering. Nevertheless, the proportion of those who do not want to use GROW with SAP has fallen from 55% to 26%.

A lot of money flows into SAP BTP

As far as SAP’s cloud solutions are concerned, SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) plays the most important role for companies. 40% of companies are planning medium or high investments in SAP BTP this year. SAP SuccessFactors with 25% and SAP Signavio with 18% follow in second and third place. Within SAP BTP, companies are primarily focusing on analytics solutions. 46% state that they are planning medium or high investments in this area, followed by integration solutions (40%) and application development or automation (36%).

AI as a key topic for the future

The companies surveyed also continue to attach great importance to the use of artificial intelligence. 68% see a high to medium relevance for their own company. As a result, 45% will also strongly or very strongly consider the topic of AI in their IT investments in 2025. For 48%, a very high or high potential benefit is associated with AI solutions. “The results show that AI is becoming a key topic for the future for companies in the DACH region,” says Jens Hungershausen.

Conclusion: Technological investments ensure competitiveness

What insights does the DSAG Investment Report 2025 provide? Companies are increasingly willing to invest in future-oriented technologies and cloud-based SAP solutions. The strong trend towards the cloud and the great importance of artificial intelligence for companies’ planned investments are particularly striking. The results of the survey are also a sign of the high pressure that companies are under to advance technologically in order to ensure their competitiveness.