This year’s SAP SapphireNow event was a star-studded affair — the giants of IT gathered to look into the future of SAP and its partners. Fortunately, the result was not the clash of egos one might expect, but rather a fusing of plans and visions for transforming the enterprise. 

Anil Saboo, VP of business development at SAP SE, said, “We are going deeper than we’ve ever gone with these partnerships with IBM.” He told John Furrier (@furrier), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, that whereas in the past the company had “siloed” partnerships with IBM, it isnow pulling it all together for a “CEO-level discussion.”

He joked with Furrier about the nominal partnering you see sometimes in IT (AKA “Barney partnerships”) and promised that this is different.

Changing your working life

With the ink still drying on SAP’s deal with Apple, folks are already speculating about what the companies will accomplish together. IBM is a mutual partner of both, and Fred Balboni, GM of Partnerships and Alliances at IBM, spoke about the team’s ambitions.

“Apple realized that they were changing consumers’ lives, and then they woke up and they said, ‘Actually, many people spend a large part of their waking day at work. So if I can change a consumer’s life, I can also change an enterprise employee’s life,'” said Balboni.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of SAP Sapphire 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE