Snowflake and SAP have announced a collaboration to integrate Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud with SAP’s Business Data Cloud, enabling joint customers to use SAP business data with Snowflake’s data processing and machine learning tools.
The integration will make Snowflake available as a solution extension within SAP Business Data Cloud. The companies said this will allow customers to analyse business data without copying it between platforms, while maintaining SAP’s data governance and controls.
As part of the partnership, Snowflake and SAP will introduce what they describe as zero-copy data sharing, which enables data to be accessed in real time where it is stored. The approach removes the need for duplicate data pipelines and reduces the operational costs involved in moving enterprise data across systems.
Christian Kleinerman, Executive Vice President of Product at Snowflake, said the combined offering is aimed at customers that want to use SAP’s business data to develop AI applications.
“By tightly integrating SAP and Snowflake, we are making it simple for enterprises to connect critical business data in SAP with AI development at scale in Snowflake,” Kleinerman said.
SAP Business Data Cloud is used by enterprises to organise and govern structured business data related to finance, procurement, supply chain planning and other core operations. Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud provides a platform for storing data, running analytics, and building applications that require large-scale data processing or real-time inference.
Irfan Khan, President and Chief Product Officer for SAP Data and Analytics, said the partnership is intended to give enterprises greater flexibility when choosing data platforms.
“Bringing Snowflake to SAP Business Data Cloud empowers our customers with openness and choice,” Khan said.
Through the integration, customers will be able to use SAP Snowflake to combine SAP and non-SAP data in one environment, develop data pipelines, and build AI models while keeping the underlying business data governed within SAP’s data framework.
The companies said customers will be able to build applications and AI systems that draw on SAP’s business context without altering how the data is stored.
In addition, the companies are preparing to release SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for Snowflake, a feature that will enable zero-copy data sharing for customers that already use Snowflake but want to access semantically structured SAP data.
This will allow Snowflake users to query SAP data models directly within Snowflake environments, without transferring data out of SAP systems.
The companies said several large organisations are already working with the joint architecture. AstraZeneca is among the early users, applying the system in data analysis across research and operational settings.
SAP Snowflake is expected to be generally available in the first quarter of 2026. SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for Snowflake is expected to be available in the first half of 2026.
