As autonomous agents spread across the vendor landscape, SAP is banking on the rich stores of enterprise data that flow through its ERP software to draw customers to cloud. The analytics and AI solution announced Thursday is the latest migration enticement the company has added to its growing SaaS portfolio.

SAP made one of the most heavily promoted news announcements in recent history. But why SAP Business Data Cloud, and why now? The answer, as expected, leads us right back to AI. Here's my initial take - along with user group reactions.

The company also announced a partnership with enterprise data processing and AI company Databricks Inc. The collaboration natively embeds Databrick’s technology for data engineering, machine learning and AI workloads into SAP’s cloud solution.

In late January, SAP boosted its financial outlook for the year, fueled by AI. The stock is up 69% in the past year. Databricks, meanwhile, is privately held with a $62 billion valuation and is among the companies of greatest interest to Wall Street regarding a potential IPO.

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) has launched the SAP Business Data Cloud, consolidating data from SAP and external sources to help organizations make informed decisions and advance AI technologies.

SAP has partnered with data and AI company Databricks to launch SAP Business Data Cloud, a solution that unifies all SAP and third-party data throughout an organisation. In its statement, SAP said the solution provides the trusted data foundation for organisations to make more impactful decisions and foster reliable AI.