Building SAP AI Agents: Joule Studio SAP-managed and customer-managed BTP explained

Architecture snapshot: 2 November 2026

When planning an SAP agent, three decisions shape the architecture:

• Where will the agent run?
• How will it reach business systems?
• Who will be allowed to use it?

SAP supports both SAP-managed agent development and customer-managed agent deployments. These approaches can coexist, connected through governed interfaces.

Availability still matters: SAP's latest announcements describe a phased rollout of Joule Studio capabilities, and some reference architectures include components that are not yet generally available in every environment. SAP TechEd 2026 innovation guide.

1. What does "managed" mean?

SAP-managed means SAP provisions and operates the underlying Joule environment. Customers activate services and configure their landscape through SAP for Me, while retaining responsibility for business configuration, data access and authorizations. The runtime is a Kyma environment, and customers are not charged for additional infrastructure.

Customer-managed agents run in an environment controlled by the customer, for example their own SAP BTP subaccount. The customer owns the agent application's deployment and operational lifecycle. The agent is usually deployed in Cloud Foundry or Kyma for better scaling and management, and the customer pays for the additional resources.

Joule Work is delivered through SAP-managed provisioning. The earlier customer-managed Joule model remains supported, but it does not provide the same Joule Work experience. An independently hosted agent can nevertheless integrate with Joule through supported A2A integration. Joule Work architecture, customer-managed agent architecture.

2. SAP-managed: build with the new Joule Studio

The new Joule Studio, often referred to as "Joule Studio 2.0", supports Intent-Based Development. The process starts with a business outcome and progresses through requirements, specifications, implementation, testing and deployment.

There are two documented development paths:

• Browser-based low-code development: describe the requirement and refine the generated solution within Joule Studio.
• Pro-code development: use the Joule Studio CLI with a supported coding agent (Claude, Codex, etc.) and your preferred development environment.

Both paths target the SAP-managed runtime. Pro-code development therefore does not automatically mean customer-managed hosting.

Supported assets include SAP agents, SAP standard agent extensions to SAP-delivered agents and MCP servers. Deployed agents register automatically with Joule via Agent Gateway. Joule Studio reference architecture.

3. Customer-managed: bring your own agent

Customers can also build a pro-code agent and deploy it into their own SAP BTP subaccount. This approach is relevant when the customer needs control over the agent's framework, application architecture, dependencies or operational lifecycle.

SAP documents this as the Bring Your Own Agent (BYOA) pattern, connecting the independently deployed agent to Joule through A2A (also externally).

The customer must implement and configure the supported integration, including the agent endpoint, identity, authorization and onboarding. Deploying an application into BTP alone does not make it discoverable or usable from Joule, and it still requires registration in Agent Gateway. Customer-managed pro-code reference architecture.

The conceptual interaction is:

Joule → Agent Gateway → A2A → customer-managed agent

The remote agent performs its task and returns the result to Joule. MCP can provide the agent's standardized interface to tools and backend capabilities. SAP's interoperability guidance.

4. External clients calling SAP agents

SAP announced general availability of inbound A2A interoperability in October 2026. Supported external clients can discover and invoke SAP agents through Agent Gateway. This includes supported SAP-delivered agents and custom agents built with Joule Studio.

The discovery flow distinguishes:

• ARD: discovers available agent resources.
• AgentCards: describe capabilities and invocation details.
• A2A: carries the agent interaction.

Discovery grants no invocation rights. Administrators onboard external consumers and configure identity, trust and an access-control list through SAP-managed formations. October 2026 Agent Gateway announcement.

For example, an appropriately integrated external agent on Google Vertex AI could delegate an SAP business task to a supported Joule agent.

How can agents be reached externally?

1. SAP documents an externally reachable Agent Gateway endpoint on an SAP-managed domain.
2. Customers can also use SAP Integration Suite A2A connectivity as an integration layer that delegates calls to Agent Gateway while adding capabilities such as traffic policies, transformations and enterprise integration patterns.

5. Connecting SAP S/4HANA, legacy SAP and non-SAP systems

Standard Joule application integration and custom tool integration serve different purposes. A supported SAP-managed formation establishes a delivered integration with an SAP solution. Custom integrations expose additional business capabilities through governed interfaces.

SAP Integration Suite's MCP Gateway can expose APIs, integration flows and other capabilities as MCP tools via the Integration Cell runtime, and can also connect into Joule Work (invoke an MCP server from Joule Work desktop). SAP explicitly describes this approach for extending agents with third-party and legacy SAP systems. SAP's MCP Gateway announcement.

This creates two architectural options:

SAP-managed agent → standard discovered APIs translated into MCP → backend connected system

Joule → customer-managed agent through A2A → governed MCP tools → backend system

Consequently, an on-premise backend does not, by itself, require a customer-managed agent. The choice depends on supported connectivity, available APIs, authentication and the control required over the agent.

MCP Gateway supports governance; it does not automatically establish compliance. API usage rights, backend authorizations and business controls still apply. SAP positions its governed MCP exposure in alignment with the SAP API Policy. Integration Suite architecture guidance.

6. SAP Knowledge Graph and MCP: discovery versus execution

SAP Knowledge Graph helps Joule Studio identify relevant SAP capabilities and APIs during development. For example, an intent such as "investigate supplier delivery risk" can be mapped to business objects, APIs and suitable MCP capabilities. Joule Studio can generate MCP servers around supported SAP REST or OData APIs. Joule Studio architecture.

SAP's documented agent model accesses SAP systems through MCP tools via Agent Gateway. Agents still make tool calls; those business-system calls pass through governed interfaces. The precise statement is therefore:

SAP-system access follows the governed MCP and Agent Gateway path.

A blanket statement that agents cannot make tool calls would be misleading. Joule Studio agent documentation.

A formation also does not automatically expose every API or create every required connection. API availability, system configuration and authorization remain prerequisites. SAP's demonstrated development flow includes API/MCP fit-gap analysis, MCP generation and separate authorization configuration. SAP's Joule Studio development demonstration.

7. Is Joule Studio classic retired?

Joule Studio, classic edition, gave customers a way to extend Joule with capabilities specific to their business using SAP Build, including agents and tools such as MCP servers and grounding.

Its rollout was incremental:

• Mid-2025: the skill builder became available for custom, rule-based Joule capabilities.
• December 2025: the agent builder added custom agents for more complex scenarios.

SAP's current guidance recommends the new Joule Studio for new use cases and allows existing classic scenarios to continue, with migration at the customer's pace. SAP development guidance.

What changes after December 2026?

SAP states that Joule Studio, classic edition's promotional generative AI support at design time continues through 31 December 2026. SAP describes the subsequent change as removal of that design-time support, while existing built artifacts remain intact. This announcement should not be presented as retirement of the entire classic product or a blanket shutdown of deployed agents.

Appendix: the building blocks

SAP Agent Gateway. The platform's runtime integration and enforcement layer for governed agent and tool interactions. Platform architecture.

SAP Integration Suite MCP Gateway. Exposes enterprise capabilities as governed MCP tools. Availability depends on the Integration Suite service plan; current documentation places MCP server artifacts on the Integration Cell runtime. MCP server deployment documentation.

Joule Studio (IBD). The development environment for creating and extending agents and other intent-driven solutions through browser and CLI workflows. Product documentation.

Joule Work (desktop, mobile and web). The user engagement layer for working with Joule assistants and agents, deep thinking and connectors. Joule Work architecture.

SAP Autonomous Suite. SAP's portfolio of domain-oriented autonomous capabilities across areas such as finance, spend, supply chain, HR and customer experience. SAP portfolio overview.

SAP AI Agent Hub. The SAP LeanIX-based inventory and governance environment for SAP, custom and third-party agents, with associated models and MCP resources. Agent Hub architecture.

SAP Business AI Platform. The broader foundation connecting AI development, business context, integration, runtime and governance. Platform architecture.

Joule Studio managed runtime. The SAP-operated execution environment for deployed solutions, including custom agents and MCP servers. It supports scaling and operational controls while customers configure the business behavior and permitted access. Managed runtime overview.

SAP Signavio: agent mining and process improvement

SAP Signavio brings process intelligence to agent execution. Agent mining analyzes execution traces to understand how agents participate in business processes, whether their behavior follows the intended process and where bottlenecks or deviations occur.

Its role is to connect agent activity to business outcomes: is the agent improving the process, and where should it change? SAP Business AI Platform architecture.

SAP LeanIX and SAP AI Agent Hub: architecture context and AI governance

SAP LeanIX provides the enterprise architecture context around agents: the applications, business capabilities, processes and organizational responsibilities they relate to.

SAP AI Agent Hub builds on this foundation to inventory and govern agents, models and MCP servers. Agent records can capture ownership, risk classification and approval status, supporting decisions about which agents are suitable for enterprise use.

Its role is to answer: what agents do we have, who owns them, and what are they allowed to support? SAP LeanIX and AI governance overview.

SAP Cloud ALM: operational observability and evaluation visibility

SAP Cloud ALM receives telemetry from SAP-managed agents and provides dashboards for operational monitoring, including session volumes, performance trends, evaluation rates and error investigation.

It complements the evaluations used to test and assess agents in Joule Studio. Evaluation checks whether an agent behaves correctly and delivers useful results; observability helps teams understand what happens during actual execution.

Its role is to answer: is the agent operating reliably, and what evidence explains a failure or decline in quality? SAP's agent monitoring architecture.