New Way Now: Deutsche Telekom cuts SAP energy use 40% with Google Cloud

Executive summary: Deutsche Telekom, a global telecommunications leader, needed to modernize over 30 years of legacy systems to transition into an AI-first enterprise. By moving its entire central core SAP landscape—roughly 90 applications—to RISE with SAP on Google Cloud, the team streamlined operations and brought data into real-time visibility with Gemini models on Vertex AI.

The migration finished well ahead of schedule, driving down costs and reducing energy consumption across its SAP footprint by an impressive 40%.

Challenge: As a major telco managing mission-critical infrastructure, Deutsche Telekom carried significant legacy technical debt, including core applications that had been running for more than 30 years. To evolve into an AI-first leader, the organization needed to migrate approximately 90 central SAP applications to a modern, standardized environment. Crucially, Deutsche Telekom needed an infrastructure and application partnership that could handle rapid provisioning, lower operational maintenance overhead, and meet stringent sustainability targets without disrupting critical telecom operations.

Solution: Deutsche Telekom standardized on RISE with SAP hosted on Google Cloud’s RISE-certified hardware and application environment. Choosing Google Cloud’s highly sustainable data center in Eemshaven, Netherlands, allowed Deutsche Telekom to benefit from waterfront cooling and achieve an optimal PUE of 1.0 (compared to the legacy data center PUE of 1.57). To make mission-critical data actionable, Deutsche Telekom implemented Gemini models on Vertex AI to deliver real-time data visibility, while transferring the day-to-day burden of infrastructure and application operations to SAP and Google Cloud.

Result: With rapid demand fulfillment and swift change management from Google Cloud, Deutsche Telekom completed the migration well ahead of its original timeline, resulting in substantial cost savings. Transitioning to SAP on Google Cloud simplified, modernized, and accelerated workflows while significantly reducing operational overhead. Ultimately, Deutsche Telekom slashed its SAP landscape’s energy consumption by 40%, demonstrating that digital transformation and environmental sustainability can go hand in hand. Highlights and key takeaways from our interview with Amir Kangarlou: → "We are now in the age of moving it to an AI first leader." - Amir Kangarlou → "Every demand was provided very, very quickly... we ended up being ready way before the original timeline, which also saved us a lot of money." - Amir Kangarlou → "Gemini models on Vertex AI helped us bringing this data into visibility in real time." - Amir Kangarlou → "With Google Cloud and SAP, Deutsche Telekom has a new way to power the digital future without compromising our planet's future." - Amir Kangarlou Google Cloud products used: Google Cloud Infrastructure, RISE with SAP on Google Cloud, Vertex AI, Gemini models