SAP and OpenText’s visionary partnership, forged in 1992, may be one of the longest-lasting and deepest relationships in enterprise software. Today, the partnership is helping enterprise customers build solid foundations for innovation and well-governed AI.
This is according to Estelle de Beer, Chief Partner Officer for MEA South at SAP, a Diamond Influence Partner of the upcoming OpenText Summit Africa 2026 in Johannesburg.
De Beer says: “Back in the early 90s, everything was about structured data – that’s SAP’s heritage and the backbone of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) that companies run their businesses on. But even back then, we had the foresight to recognise that large amounts of data weren’t governed and controlled by SAP systems. This unstructured data included e-mails, contracts and drawings that were very relevant to business transactions.
“Remarkably, we saw the importance of connecting structured and unstructured data from a business perspective, knowing that this contextual information would add richness to transactional data,” she says. “Our partnership with OpenText was a natural joining of forces, combining SAP’s ERP with OpenText’s secure information and content management. From the start, we put OpenText in our solution extensions, with OpenText probably the flagship. Over time, we have built something few can duplicate: a fully autonomous system that captures integrated data across portfolios.”
De Beer says there is a general recognition that many companies have a lot of records that aren't governed and accessible. “When you pick up an invoice, for example, how do you know which transaction it relates to, what the broader picture is and what the lead-up to the transaction was? Connecting all of this information to the SAP system gives a full contextual view of the transaction and all related e-mails and contracts.”
The partnership delivers measurable business value. A report by IDC entitled: ‘The Business Value of SAP ECM Solutions by OpenText’ found a 351% three-year ROI with just 13 months to payback, a 37% improvement in accounts payable team efficiencies, and significant improvements in time to make vendor payments and complete document migrations.
The partnership is so successful that OpenText has won SAP’s highest recognition – its Pinnacle award – 21 times.
Naeem Muhammad, ISV Partner Business Manager for MEA Region at SAP, notes that the OpenText solution extensions are treated as important SAP solutions. “OpenText SKUs are available in the SAP price list, and SAP offers end-to-end OpenText customer support, contracts and SLAs. We treat them like SAP products. We also find our Global Strategic Service Partners, such as leading consulting firms, work very well with SAP and OpenText in what we describe as ‘the power of three’."
De Beer adds: “When software companies partner, it’s often a hands-off relationship, but this is very much hands on. We have trained people who sell, manage and support OpenText, and customers sign one contract with us.”
Ongoing innovation
Importantly, the partners collaborate closely in helping customers move into the future, De Beer and Muhammad say.
“When customers move from legacy SAP to later versions, and transformational projects, it is not always clear to customers how to bring the contracts and unstructured data along. OpenText supports transformational projects, helping with archiving and migration,” De Beer says. “After migration, the partnership really comes into its own, giving customers connected systems and a foundation to build on.”
As AI adoption increases, streamlining access to both structured and unstructured data is important for enterprises, Muhammad says: “AI is only as good as the data it has access to, so with SAP and OpenText, it is all combined. Our SAP Autonomous Enterprise can access the entire pool of data to take it to the next level. The structured and unstructured data together gives us the right base to build innovation and AI on.”
De Beer adds: “Both SAP and OpenText have our own AI journeys, but our roadmaps are very connected and they augment each other. At SAP, we have embedded AI into our flagship Autonomous Enterprise solution, with AI agents in every process. This is where governance becomes important, because humans still need to be in control. With OpenText, we jointly decide where human interventions happen and how governance is applied.”
The partnership benefits SAP, OpenText, its partners and their customers, De Beer says. “With OpenText, we have a more complete, richer platform we can offer customers, that extends seamlessly because of the roadmaps we built together. For partners, it means more opportunities and a broader solutions set to take to customers. And the customer gets a very complete and governed view of all business information, with security and the same rules applied across the information chain. It's a win-win for everyone,” she concludes.
The OpenText Summit Africa 2026 will be held on Thursday, 3 September at The Canvas in Riversands, Johannesburg. SAP’s sales and partner teams will be on site and available to discuss with customers and partners, and showcase how the SAP-OpenText partnership benefits enterprises.
Register for this event here: https://events.opentext.com/en-za-otsummit-africa-2026.
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