SAP NOW AI Tour Ostrava 2026: Mibcon as Gold Partner Presented SAP Enterprise Portal to SAP Build Work Zone Migration Project

On 15 and 16 September 2026, the Czech and Slovak SAP community met at Trojhalí Karolina in Ostrava for the SAP NOW AI Tour conference. As a Gold Partner of the conference, Mibcon had more than a booth at Trojhalí. We also had our own topic in the Expert Zone: moving to a modern portal. What did the event bring?

SAP’s New Vision: From AI Assistant to Autonomous Enterprise

The headline news at the conference was the new generation of Joule. SAP no longer presents it as a smart AI assistant at the edge of the screen. It is now meant to be the central workspace.

But one word mattered even more than Joule itself, and it came up in every thematic track: autonomous. Autonomous Finance and Spend. Autonomous Human Capital Management. Autonomous Supply Chain Management. SAP isn’t adding AI to individual modules as a feature. It’s building its whole portfolio on the idea that AI agents will gradually take over routine decision-making. Underneath sits a unified AI infrastructure: the SAP Business AI Platform, Cloud ERP with AI at its core, and SAP Business Data Cloud as the data foundation.

The same message ran through every talk, whether the topic was Cloud ERP migration, manufacturing digitalization or cost management: the move to autonomous operations doesn’t start with algorithms. It starts with standardized processes and clean data. In other words, without standardization, you’re just automating chaos. What matters is data quality, process discipline and how ready the organization is for change.

Mibcon in the Expert Zone: Moving to the Portal of the Future with SAP Build Work Zone

At first glance, our topic looked less futuristic than AI agents. In fact, it deals with the same question, just one level down. Daniel Vališ, head of the SAP BTP department at Mibcon, spent thirty minutes on how organizations running SAP Enterprise Portal should respond to its approaching end of support.

In 2027, mainstream maintenance ends for SAP Business Suite 7, including the relevant versions of SAP ERP 6.0 (ECC) and SAP NetWeaver 7.5. SAP Enterprise Portal is no exception. That means no more security patches, no guarantees and a growing operational risk. More and more companies are preparing to migrate, and with every week that passes, one saying rings truer: “Whoever doesn’t start planning now will be migrating under pressure.” So what did Daniel cover in his presentation?

A migration isn’t just a technology swap. It’s a chance to review legacy solutions, decide what’s worth modernizing and get rid of what nobody uses anymore. SAP Build Work Zone replaces SAP Enterprise Portal as the central entry point for employees, and SAP Task Center replaces the Universal Worklist as a single place for all approval tasks. Employees also get a mobile app and can work from anywhere, not just from behind the corporate VPN.

Daniel also dispelled a common worry: the portal migration doesn’t have to wait for an S/4HANA conversion. Work Zone and Task Center run on both ECC (R/3) and S/4HANA. A new ERP makes the path easier, but it isn’t a prerequisite.

Case Study: The Transformation Project at ABB

After the theory came the numbers from the project at ABB, which is moving from SAP Enterprise Portal to SAP Build Work Zone. Here are the most interesting ones:

• 3 months: how long the analysis phase took
• 80+: the number of applications we reviewed and assessed
• 100+: the number of workflow types moving to SAP Task Center
• 100%: the share of Universal Worklist tasks successfully moved to Task Center
• 5 + 1: the number of applications that got a major Fiori redesign

Behind these figures is a proven methodology built on three pillars: AS-IS Discovery, Migration Decisions, and a TO-BE Draft with implementation. Dan pointed out that success depended less on the technology than on the customer’s open infrastructure, their willingness to adopt the new Fiori UI/UX, and a cloud mindset: accepting that you’ll lose some things from the on-premise world and gain others, with more to come in the future.

Our Vision: The Portal as the Gateway to the Era of AI Agents

This is where the conference’s two themes meet. If Joule is to be the central workspace and AI agents are to take over routine decisions, there has to be a layer for them to connect to:

• a single user identity across systems,
• a modern interface, and
• approval tasks in one place, not scattered across dozens of applications.

That isn’t a side effect of the portal migration. It’s exactly what the migration delivers. By consolidating 100+ workflow types into SAP Task Center at ABB and building identity on SAP Cloud Identity Services, we don’t just solve the 2027 end of support. We build the foundation that makes an AI agent useful. Without it, the agent would have nothing to work with.

That’s why we don’t see moving off an aging portal as technical debt to clear. We see it as the first investment in the autonomous enterprise.

Key Takeways

Whether the goal is an AI agent, a modern portal or an autonomous enterprise, the first step is always the same: know what you have, and decide what’s worth taking with you.

If the approaching end of support for one of your SAP systems worries you, get in touch. We’d be happy to talk through your options, with no obligation. You can find more about our SAP BTP services and migration from SAP Enterprise Portal here.

Thank you to SAP for the invitation, and to everyone who stopped by our Expert Zone for the thought-provoking questions!