Sonja Liénard, Head of ABAP Platform at SAP, talks about the further development of the SAP programming language ABAP and the SAP ABAP Platform and explains what the innovations announced at SAP Sapphire 2026 mean for customers.

In our first conversation you explained what ABAP is and what the future looks like and why Agentic AI will change the market. Let's pick up there and go deeper. How does ABAP interact with other development technologies in today's SAP landscapes?

Sonja Liénard: ABAP has been around for over 40 years and has continued to evolve. With the era of Agentic AI, we are now reaching the next level of evolution. The modern version of the language is ABAP Cloud, developed from the outset according to the guiding principles of openness and comprehensive support of business logic.

We have stable, clearly defined APIs, i.e. interfaces to the outside world, and offer a complete environment with Open Data Protocol services (OData), modern front ends and an integration layer. This allows modern web applications to be developed. There are also SAP BTP extensions (SAP Business Technology Platform) and an external system such as the SAP Integration Suite, which are linked to this.

We currently use Eclipse as our development environment. From Q2 2026, ABAP development will also be possible in Visual Studio Code, which is a milestone. The community asked for it very loudly and opened our doors. Visual Studio Code is on the rise and is currently the preferred IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for many developers. Many AI extensions on the market are optimized for this first.

We have rebuilt the architecture and are pursuing an Open IDE strategy in which we can also offer other IDEs for ABAP developments. By opening up, we now have a rich ecosystem of third-party providers that we can use for AI, such as GitHub Copilot or Amazon Q.

Additionally, we released an ABAP MCP Server (Model Context Protocol) that enables ABAP developers to benefit from the entire AI tooling and ecosystem. This is a big and important step and a powerful example of the interoperability you mentioned. We continue to have the strength of ABAP business logic. In this way, we combine the open IDE strategy with a high speed of innovation.

Important building block: ABAP MCP Server

You mentioned ABAP MCP Server. What is that exactly?

Sonja Liénard: MCP stands for Model Context Protocol and is an open standard so that AI agents can interact with external tools and systems in a structured manner. It is a universal language that Agentic AI agents use to ask questions, trigger actions, or retrieve results.

The ABAP MCP Server provides ABAP development capabilities via this protocol. Any agent that supports MCP can interact with ABAP code and our ABAP systems in an intelligent, agent-controlled manner. It is a new mouthpiece through which we make our ABAP-specific capabilities available to the outside world.

The ABAP MCP Server is an important building block for everything that has to do with Agentic AI and an important technical basis for our new Custom Code Management Agent for SAP S/4HANA transformation. The ABAP MCP server for Eclipse will be available from Q2 2026.

“Provided with everything we stand for as SAP”

What risks does the use of AI in SAP Enterprise systems pose and how do you counter them?

Sonja Liénard: The entire AI market is incredibly dynamic, fast-moving and shaped by different interests. We therefore have to carefully examine which solutions are durable, robust and trustworthy enough to run the world's business processes on. We want our solutions to continue to be secure, compliant and have everything we stand for as SAP.

We must put our core mission at the center of all decisions. The ABAP Platform means that large enterprise business can run on it. Our customers and partners trust this. AI solutions on the market qualify not because they can be used to build fast-moving solutions, but above all when they support our core capabilities. That's why it helps to take a step back, look at the bigger picture and make sustainable decisions, but also remain open to adjusting decisions that have already been made if the market changes too much.

A second point is code correctness. AI can generate plausible-seeming code that is subtly flawed. As a countermeasure, we rely on human verification (“human in the loop”) in combination with testing. We also use agents to check and validate the quality of the generated code.

Another risk is the loss of business logic during transformation. We want to support our customers in migrating their old solutions into new solutions. For this we develop custom code management agents. The first will be released in June. It is crucial that the business logic of our customers and partners is retained during the transformation. After all, security and data protection are central issues. AI models always need context to be effective. In an enterprise environment, this context can include sensitive business data. That's why we proceed very carefully: ABAP AI services only operate within established SAP compliance and trust frameworks. Customers always remain in control of what is shared and what is not.

News from SAP Sapphire 2026

Let's talk about the recent SAP Sapphire in Orlando. What news was there from your area?

Sonja Liénard: SAP Sapphire 2026 is also a very important conference for ABAP AI. In Q2 2026 we will publish the first release of the development environment for Visual Studio Code, initially in the ABAP Cloud Scope including Fiori app development and with integration of GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q as AI solutions. Another goal is to support Classic ABAP development in Visual Studio Code, with additional ABAP object types to follow later in the year. Also from Q2 2026, the ABAP MCP Server for Eclipse and Visual Studio Code will be generally available in order to be able to connect third-party solutions, in particular AI-specific third-party tools, to the ABAP system.

We will also deliver the first Custom Code Migration Agent in Q2 2026. The feedback is promising. This allows us to significantly automate and speed up code migration. The entire communication between old migration tools and new agents will take place via an engagement layer. Our overall migration strategy presented at SAP Sapphire includes seven different agent families across all phases of a migration project, from planning to execution.

AI tools have often been difficult to access for smaller customers or those with older system versions. What is changing here?

Sonja Liénard: The entry barrier will be significantly lower. We are moving from user-per-month billing to a consumption-based model. Billing is based on actual usage, based on so-called “AI units” with individual prices. This makes it easier to use our AI solutions. Customers can better plan how much money they want to spend on AI solutions.

In addition, from Q2 2026 we will be introducing a side-by-side service in which all AI solutions can be used regardless of the respective release. The availability of ABAP AI will be expanded to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition for all releases from 2021. This means we can support the majority of our customers with AI capabilities even with older releases.

Agentic AI is the new guiding theme

How do ABAP and AI agents fit into SAP’s longer-term product vision?

Sonja Liénard: Of course, we follow the overarching SAP strategy. At Sapphire we saw that Agentic AI is the new key theme. In the past you had Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service. Now Agentic AI solutions are being added.

I like to describe our vision using three concentric circles: At the center is the ABAP Cloud as a modern clean-core version of our language for long-term stability. The second circle is the ABAP AI layer: developer tools for code explanation, code generation and ghost texting.

The outer circle consists of AI agents, a network of specialized agents for complex and multi-stage tasks such as transformation, migration and quality validation. But they also take on development tasks and significantly reduce the effort. This frees up time for business logic and architecture decisions, but also for checking quality. The circles coexist and reinforce each other. The basic orientation of the platform and the core of the solutions remain stable. Agents and AI skills complement this in the best possible way.

What milestones should customers and partners pay attention to in the next few months?

Sonja Liénard: There are four central things. The development environment for Visual Studio Code and the MCP server will be available in Q2 2026. This enables the development of AI agents in an open IDE ecosystem. The first agent for the custom code migration strategy and the expansion of ABAP AI to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition for releases from 2021 will also follow in Q2 2026. A second agent for the clean core transformation is planned for Q3 2026. And over the course of 2026, we will continue to develop multi-agent orchestration and add more agents to the portfolio.

ABAP and developers remain a strong team

Is there anything else you would like to tell readers?

Sonja Liénard: You should see development as an opportunity. It's about further development and collaboration. ABAP and developers remain a strong team. Even AI doesn't change anything. ABAP has successfully reinvented itself again and again. AI is just the next chapter, taking over routines and creating freedom for what creates value: business understanding, architectural decisions, high quality, and security and compliance requirements.

Customers and developers can trust that SAP will reliably put AI into practice: with a clear roadmap and high quality, security and compliance standards that are crucial for enterprise systems. We work closely with the community and our customers and partners. This is a central success factor.

The interview is the second part of a series about ABAP and the use and interaction with artificial intelligence.