The 10th Annual A&D Innovation Days has come and gone, and one message is clear: As cloud technology advances, threat landscapes evolve—and U.S.-based agencies need a delivery model that supports their unique cloud security controls. Without compliance to industry-specific regulations, such as International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Aerospace & Defense (A&D) agencies could face civil fines and reputational damage. The A&D industry operates in highly regulated and complex environments where they must:
✅ Digitally transform operations and embrace new technologies with constrained budgets
✅ Stay on the leading edge of product development while battling supply chain disruptions
✅ Adhere to industry-specific cloud regulations, and beyond, to conduct business with public sector partners
To achieve business goals and adhere to government-imposed regulations, A&D agencies need a dynamic cloud partner. That’s where SAP and SAP NS2 come in. When SAP NS2 was founded, it was inspired by the need to have a proxy company, independent from SAP, that could offer highly regulated U.S. agencies a secure pathway to the cloud.
At this year’s 10th Annual A&D Innovation Days, SAP NS2 was thrilled to share our curated SAP Cloud delivery model that addresses the security, innovation, and control needs across the A&D industry.
This three-day event was jam packed with learnings from decision-makers and influencers within aerospace, defense, and Department of Defense organizations. So, what did SAP NS2 take away from this dynamic event?
Business goals can be complex, your relationship with your cloud service provider doesn’t have to be
With over 10 years of experience across the A&D industry, SAP knows that achieving strategic business goals doesn’t happen overnight—especially when you juggle an ever-evolving landscape.
At SAP Innovation Days, customers across the A&D landscape reaffirmed how SAP Cloud addresses their unique business challenges. SAP solutions can transform legacy systems into modern IT infrastructure. They can help A&D agencies adopt innovative, integrated ERP software to reimagine business processes.
But how does security come into play? How can offerings, such as RISE with SAP, be tailored to the A&D sector? By taking this comprehensive transformation journey powered and secured by SAP NS2.
Our Chief Customer Officer, Rich Zaremba, hosted a roundtable to share how RISE with SAP, a bundled cloud offering, helps A&D customers transform their business with a streamlined path to sunset on-premises systems. SAP NS2 delivers this comprehensive offering within an ITAR-compliant cloud environment to address U.S. regulatory requirements.
In today’s landscape, where A&D agencies are facing demands to become more agile and adaptable, we know it’s imperative to adopt an offering that can keep up with market changes while addressing regulatory pressure. RISE with SAP helps tackle mission-critical supply chains, national security issues, and geopolitical challenges—all while safeguarding investments and providing flexibility.
Build a framework to support long-lasting change
Balancing supply chain demands, production backlogs, and budget constraints is a common challenge across the A&D industry. To overcome this, we heard A&D experts share key words such as plan, integrate, and unify. It isn’t an easy feat to achieve unity, especially when meeting varied customer demands across mixed landscapes.
These unique A&D programs can cause challenges when adopting cloud solutions. A critical factor when choosing the right cloud solution is adopting a framework that supports continued innovation. It should allow your business programs to continuously adopt the latest and greatest with ease.
Our CCO highlighted the “build once, deploy twice” strategy at SAP NS2. This duplication strategy, which is built into our delivery model, can maximize your investments and support your high-side programs. You can begin adopting and refining your cloud portfolio based on programs that require significant investments upfront to drive growth and revenue. As business develops, environment-specific configurations allow subsidiaries to adopt the same innovation for low-side programs without compromising security. This model means you never rebuild from scratch and save costs with automation techniques.
Whether you’re developing satellites for space exploration or building upon your sustainability initiatives, the same innovations can be applied across your enterprise. Starting your cloud strategy with this core build ensures every aspect of your mission is addressed with consistency.
Procurement transformation is possible with the right cloud provider
A&D agencies and industry experts had candid conversation surrounding the lessons they’ve learned—the successes and the challenges they’ve faced as our world has digitally transformed. One process that has evolved overtime with digitalization is procurement. What was once a manual process has become a strategic, data-driven process that relies on technology for success.
During a roundtable with IBM Federal, our Senior Director for Intelligent Spend and Business Network, Pranay Shah, highlighted how SAP NS2 has developed a procurement deployment model designed to address the distinctive needs of the A&D community.
Pranay and IBM panelists shared how SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass deployed by SAP NS2 can satisfy industry-specific requirements with key factors such as multi-factor authentication, operations isolated within the U.S., and support provided solely by U.S. persons. With SAP NS2’s compliance to FedRAMP, IBM was able to adopt SAP innovations that transformed their federal business’ manual processes to an innovative procurement platform that supported supplier onboarding, indirect materials, and contingent labor.
As we look back on the 2025 SAP A&D Innovation Days, we’re grateful for the lessons we learned, the conversations we had, and connections we made. If you missed the event, we hope we’ll see you there in 2026.
