India, Oct. 17 -- SAP marked the end of an era last week as CEO Bill McDermott announced his retirement from the company, and SAP named two new co-CEOs to lead it in a time where cloud and artificial intelligence are table stakes.

"This marks a generational shift both in terms of leadership and, as I see it, technology," said Doug Henschen, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research. "McDermott guided SAP into the cloud era heavily through acquisitions. With more recent SAP Cloud and Data Intelligence moves, the company seems to be more holistically embracing and focused on delivering cloud-based and data-driven applications that the next generation of SAP customers will demand."

During McDermott's 10 years as CEO he...