SAP AI Community Introduction

Exploring this.  Here just an intro and link.  ...   Intriguing.  Met with them in the 90s to discuss what they were doing in this and related analytic areas.   We were a SAP shop them. 

Welcome to the SAP AI Community

Start building an intelligent enterprise by embedding enterprise AI capabilities with machine learning software from SAP into your applications and scenarios. See how you can benefit from built-in AI for your core business processes — connecting finance, supply chain, procurement, sales and marketing, human resources, and IT.

Ask your questions and follow us on our journey to make the intelligent enterprise a reality.

Dr. Feiyu Xu, Global Head of AI, SAP SE

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SAP Sapphire 2023: Built-In, Relevant, Responsible Business AI

It has never been a more exciting time for artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI and large learning models (LLM) are dominating headlines and making AI a part of every business conversation. However, turning AI technology advancement into business impact remains a challenge for many companies as they lack in-house expertise. That is what we solve at SAP with our unique approach to AI.

Explore 15 new business AI capabilities announced at SAP Sapphire

Read the SAP Sapphire News Guide:

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SAP and Microsoft Collaborate on Joint Generative AI Offerings to Help Customers Address the Talent Gap

Together, SAP and Microsoft are using the latest in enterprise-ready generative AI innovations to help customers conquer the talent gap. SAP SuccessFactors solutions integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot in Viva Learning will bring the power of AI to people leaders, helping them recruit and develop their teams.

Read the news:

Explore the use cases  ... 

SAP is now into AI as well, Using IBM Tools

https://news.sap.com/2023/05/ibm-watson-artificial-intelligence-in-sap-solutions/

https://community.sap.com/topics/machine-learning

SAP to Embed IBM Watson Artificial Intelligence into SAP Solutions

And linking with Watson 

Press Release by SAP News, May 2, 2023

WALLDORF and ARMONK — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that IBM Watson technology will be embedded into SAP solutions to provide new AI-driven insights and automation to help accelerate innovation and create more efficient and effective user experiences across the SAP application portfolio.

SAP will use IBM Watson capabilities to power its digital assistant in SAP Start, which provides a unified entry point for cloud solutions from SAP. With SAP Start, users can search for, launch and interactively engage with apps provided in cloud solutions from SAP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud. New AI capabilities in SAP Start will be designed to help users boost productivity with both natural language capabilities and predictive insights using IBM Watson AI solutions built on IBM’s trust and transparency and data privacy principles.

“This milestone collaboration with IBM aims to provide SAP customers a better user experience, faster decision-making and greater insights to help transform their business processes,” said Christian Klein, CEO and Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. “Working together to incorporate additional AI, machine learning and other intelligent technologies into SAP solutions can lead to better business outcomes for our joint customers. Today’s news, along with the recent news of our expanded use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, is a prime example of how the rich, 50-year partnership between our companies continues to grow stronger and move the industry forward.”

New digital assistant capabilities in SAP Start will be extended across SAP solutions to help answer diverse questions for managers and employees. By automating and speeding up common tasks, the capabilities are designed to help unlock employee productivity to focus on more strategic work. SAP Start will allow customers to benefit from intelligence at the point of decision-making with the ability to use AI and machine learning to extract information from a variety of data sources and answer user questions across lines of business. Today, IBM technology currently available in the TripIt mobile app from SAP Concur is helping nearly 13 million users easily access AI-derived weather insights to make more sustainable travel choices before and during their trips.

IBM delivers market-leading AI capabilities with Watson products deployed by more than 100 million users across 20 industries. In addition, SAP and IBM Consulting are currently supporting customers with 25 joint intelligent industry solutions that use IBM Watson capabilities underpinned by SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). These industry solutions help customers across industries such as retail, manufacturing and utilities accelerate their business transformation and use data to make more informed decisions.

“IBM and SAP are joining forces to give businesses new and exciting ways to harness the transformative power of AI and use it as a source of competitive advantage,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “With this announcement, we are infusing IBM Watson’s powerful, enterprise-grade AI capabilities into SAP’s leading ERP platform to help businesses reimagine customer experiences, boost productivity and fuel growth.”

In addition to natively embedding IBM Watson AI capabilities into SAP solutions, SAP and IBM are collaborating on generative AI and large language models aimed to deliver consistent continuous learning and automation based on SAP’s mission-critical application suite.   ... '

Is SAP Using ChatGPT?

 Did some exploration of what companies are embedding of using  using ChatGPT and found this in a look at SAP:   Not directly it seems, but incudes machine learning.   Would seem to be an ideal application.

From ChatGPT but Note though no mention of ChatGPT

SAP Customer Experience: This suite of applications includes SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Marketing Cloud, SAP Sales Cloud, and SAP Service Cloud. It enables businesses to deliver personalized customer experiences across multiple channels.

SAP Fieldglass: SAP Fieldglass is a cloud-based platform that helps businesses manage their external workforce, including contingent labor and services procurement.

SAP Ariba Network: This is the world's largest business network, connecting buyers and suppliers across the globe and enabling seamless collaboration and commerce.

SAP HANA: SAP HANA is an in-memory database platform that provides real-time analytics and insights into business operations. It supports advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.

> >> SAP Leonardo: SAP Leonardo is a suite of intelligent technologies that includes machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and advanced analytics. It enables businesses to drive digital transformation and innovation.

SAP Cloud Platform: SAP Cloud Platform is an open, enterprise-grade cloud platform that enables businesses to build, extend, and integrate enterprise applications quickly and easily.

These are just a few more examples of SAP products. SAP offers many other solutions, including asset management, product lifecycle management, and governance, risk, and compliance management.  .... '

IBM and AWS Colaboration

 Was unaware of the depth of this, especially the connection of SAP, who we worked with extensively. 

IBM’s and AWS’ five-year anniversary shows maturing relationship   By Patrick Nelson in Siliconangle

It’s been about five years, since 2016, that IBM and Amazon Web Services Inc. started working together. Today, technologies and products such as Red Hat and SAP have become integral to AWS and its collaboration with IBM.

“I’d say the last 18 months or so we both invested significantly in the relationship expansion around the world really and joined resources and capability,” said Leo LaBranche (pictured), director of global strategic initiatives at AWS. “We knew there was an opportunity to go to market together.”.... '

Microsoft and SAP Extend Partnership

Had worked in the enterprise extensively with SAP and MS, so this is interesting.  Note in particular this opens SAP to consumer facing products like Teams, a first.

Microsoft and SAP have announced an extension of their existing partnership, one that will see Microsoft Teams integrated into SAP’s suite of products.

The two companies have sought deeper synergies in recent years, combining their respective strengths in the enterprise software sphere. Back in 2017, the duo announced plans to use and sell more of each other’s cloud services, with Microsoft committing to S/4 HANA, SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and SAP running more of its financial systems on Azure. Two years later, the companies teamed up again to “accelerate customer adoption” of S/4HANA and the SAP Cloud Platform on Microsoft Azure. ....'

Corona App Gateway for the European Commission

Continued work to privately digitize the understanding of contact tracing.

SAP, Deutsche Telekom to Build Corona App Gateway for European Commission
Reuters
Busvine. Douglas via the ACM 

The European Commission (EC) has signed a contract under which Germany's SAP and Deutsche Telekom will build a cross-border software platform to enable communication between coronavirus contact-tracing applications. The gateway's objective is to help slow Covid-19 by logging encounters between people traveling abroad and issuing push warnings should one become infected. This roaming function would be an add-on to Bluetooth-based smartphone tracker apps, which currently only operate within national borders. SAP and Deutsche Telekom, which designed Germany's Corona-Warn-App, proposed the gateway in June, when European Union countries agreed on a framework to make the apps interoperable. EC spokesperson Johannes Bahrke said it should be possible to launch a pilot gateway in three to four weeks.  ... " 

SAP to Take Qualtrics Public

Another large cloud competitor.  Previously mentioned here.  A key means of gathering customer data to drive emerging analytics?

CustomerThink:  SAP Takes Qualtrics Public

The News
On July 26, 2020, not two years after announcing the acquisition of Qualtrics, SAP announced its intent to take Qualtrics public. The timeline is yet to be communicated.

Their announcement.

What the press release basically says is that SAP’s cloud growth, including Qualtics was a ‘great success’. SAP itself wants to remain in control by keeping a majority stake in Qualtrics after the spin-off while Qualtrics founder Ryan Smith wants to be the ‘largest independent shareholder’.

SAP insists in it being fully committed to the Qualtrics XM platform as a key element of its Intelligent Enterprise strategy, but with Qualtrics being a part of the SAP ecosystem instead of being a part of SAP itself.

For your convenience the full press release is quoted here.

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced its intent to take Qualtrics public through an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States.

Qualtrics is the market leader and creator of the Experience Management (XM) category, a large, fast-growing and rapidly evolving market. SAP intends to remain the majority owner of Qualtrics. SAP’s primary objective for the IPO is to fortify Qualtrics’ ability to capture its full market potential within Experience Management. This will help to increase Qualtrics’ autonomy and enable it to expand its footprint both within SAP’s customer base and beyond.

“SAP’s acquisition of Qualtrics has been a great success and has outperformed our expectations with 2019 cloud growth in excess of 40 percent, demonstrating very strong performance in the current setup,” SAP CEO Christian Klein said. “As Ryan Smith, Zig Serafin and I worked together, we decided that an IPO would provide the greatest opportunity for Qualtrics to grow the Experience Management category, serve its customers, explore its own acquisition strategy and continue building the best talent. SAP will remain Qualtrics’ largest and most important go-to-market and research and development (R&D) partner while giving Qualtrics greater independence to broaden its base by partnering and building out the entire experience management ecosystem.”

Qualtrics, which is part of SAP’s cloud portfolio, has operated with greater autonomy than other companies SAP had previously acquired. The founder and current management team of Qualtrics will continue to operate the company.

“When we launched the Experience Management category, our goal was always to help as many organizations as possible leverage the XM Platform as a system of action,” Qualtrics Founder Ryan Smith said. “SAP is an incredible partner with unprecedented global reach, and we couldn’t be more excited about continuing the partnership. This will allow us to continue building out the XM ecosystem across a broad array of partners.”   ... '

SAP and IBM Announce New Intelligence Offerings

Next steps between SAP and IBM partnership:  Digital Transformation towards the intelligent enterprise.

In Cision: PRNewswire  https://www.prnewswire.com/

IBM and SAP Announce New Offerings to Help Companies' Journey to the Intelligent Enterprise
ARMONK, N.Y. and WALLDORF, Germany, June 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) and SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced their partnership's next evolution, with plans to develop several new offerings designed to create a more predictable journey for businesses to become data-driven intelligent enterprises. Over 400 businesses have modernized their enterprise systems and business processes through IBM and SAP's digital transformation partnership. 

SAP Rolls Towards Cloud Data Intelligence

Our enterprise was and is an SAP user, we worked with them primarily on optimization analytics applications.

HANA in the Cloud by Christmas, SAP Says,   Alex Woodie in DataNami

SAP formally revealed the planned general availability of hotly anticipated new cloud data storage products during CTO Juergen Mueller’s keynote address at TechEd conference in Barcelona Monday. Two of those new offerings — SAP HANA Cloud and SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, which are bundled under the SAP HANA Cloud Services umbrella — were announced earlier this year and are expected to ship “before Christmas,” Mueller said.

SAP HANA Cloud is a new cloud-native version of the core HANA database that is delivered as a container and can be managed on the SAP Cloud platform using the Kubernetes resource manager. According to Mueller, SAP HANA Cloud gives customers a single place to store data from a variety of sources — for analytics and transaction processing — and manage it in a variety of ways.

“SAP HANA Cloud offers one data access layer for all your data sources,” he said. “It directly connects to your data from your on-premise HANA system, your third-party systems, and even Excel, without the need for data replication in order to work with that data.”

The new cloud offering is a fully managed cloud service, and will “dramatically lower” customers’ total cost of ownership (TCO) for storing and managing petabytes worth of data, Mueller said.

“We have choices for data storage and more options for data federation, so you don’t have to move your data around anymore, so the CFO will be happy,” Mueller said. “You only pay for the memory, disk, and data lake storage that you use — paid by the hour, if you wish.”

SAP HANA Cloud includes a data tiering functions that let customers mix and match their data to different underlying storage mediums supported by HANA. It’s all about meeting the changing data storage and management needs of customers, Mueller said.  .... "

Customer Experience and AI

On upcoming talk on CX via personalized customer experience using AI:

Buying experience and customer service “changing through AI” – SAP
Liliana Petrova - in CustomerThink

How can companies create personal, one-on-one long-lasting relationships while deploying digital, automated technology that all but eliminates the human factor? Ahead of her session at TFM 2019, Payal Raina explains how businesses can use the latest marketing technologies to deliver powerful, seamless and personalised customer experiences

In 2020, customer experience (CX) will overtake price and quality as the key brand differentiator, according to a Walker Study.

Forward-thinking companies who have invested time, effort and resources into listening, understanding, and anticipating their customers’ future needs are going to be the winners of longer-term client commitment.

Today, consumers expect more from the brands they choose to follow and engage with and are demanding smarter and savvier experiences. Big businesses are using customer insight in elevating the customer experience but, marketing technology (MarTech) presents a unique challenge. How can companies create personal, one-on-one long-lasting relationships with customers while deploying digital, automated technology that all but eliminates the human factor?

The key is to deliver a fully integrated system that intersects marketing and technology to deliver the seamless experience the consumer is already expecting. .... " 

Is AI Saving SAP

Had worked with them in the enterprise, and itt had come to mind that some of what SAP did could be done with clouds and automated efficient pattern analysis.    But the article does not really make the case that SAP is in trouble, but I might be worried.

Can artificial intelligence save SAP?  By Jason Bloomberg

There are persistent signs that all is not well in the land of SAP.

The German enterprise applications leader is in the midst of laying off thousands of people. Its cloud efforts have sputtered. Its product line confuses customers. HANA, the in-memory columnar database that was supposed to save the company, has been eclipsed by newer, more cloud-friendly players.

With the throng of cloud native enterprise resource planning providers nipping at SAP’s heels, it has found itself in need of game-changing innovation – and it looks like the company has moved its chips all-in on artificial intelligence.

Whether Leonardo, SAP’s core AI offering, will save the company is still an open question. Is it one more item on a too-long list of SKUs? Can it compete with the likes of IBM’s Watson or Salesforce’s Einstein, or any other AI product named after some smart dead white guy?  .... " 

Example of Blockchain Use with SAP

An example of secure tracking using Blockchains.

Blockchain Is Better Than a Database for Tracking Tuna    In Computerworld   By Lucas Mearian

Bumble Bee Foods has partnered with enterprise software producer SAP to launch a blockchain ledger that tracks yellowfin tuna across the complete processing cycle, offering all participants and consumers real-time viewing of that information. Bumble Bee is the first company to use SAP's Cloud Platform Blockchain, deploying the tracking system in about three months, so it could store shipment data and support a tamper-proof supply chain history. Consumers also can use the platform to scan quick response (QR) codes and view data on where the tuna was caught, and its journey en route to the store. Said Bumble Bee chief information officer Tony Costa, "We're talking about best-in-class blockchain technology, [in that SAP] helped us create the interfaces, create the standards, and work with third-party partners to help define the integration."  .... '

Alexa forBusiness Blueprints.

SAP Acquires Qualtrics

Long time user of SAP in our enterprise.  Note the $8 Billion cost, seems quite steep.  I see them as a Customer Feedback Platform, see also here for comparison to other players.  In things of the complexity of SAP it is all about the customer experience, and especially as new tech is blended in.

 SAP Aquiries Qualtrics, Propel It Forward In The AOC?

By Faith Adams, Analyst,    Forrester

Yesterday, SAP announced that it is acquiring Qualtrics for a hefty $8 billion in cash.  https://www.qualtrics.com/

For SAP, this does make some sense. SAP is often perceived as being a legacy provider that struggles to play in the consumer space, and this acquisition may be able to help it make a larger data play. It may also enable SAP to close the loop when it comes to some of the VoC gaps in its C/4HANA CX suite that was announced earlier this year. But all of this is to be determined.  ... " 

SAP and Ethical Use of AI

SAP Publishes their ethics of AI:

Solve complex societal problems with artificial intelligence

SAP focuses on developing artificial intelligence (AI) to improve people’s lives by helping protect the environment and build fairer societies.

Luka Mucic
Chief Financial Officer 

“SAP considers the ethical use of data a core value. We want to create software that enables the intelligent enterprise and actually improves people’s lives. Such principles will serve as the basis to make AI a technology that augments human talent.” ... "

SAP and Supply Chain

Earlier we worked with SAP for optimizing the manufacturing supply chain.  Some elements of automatic augmentation based on predictions.

SAP introduces intelligent capabilities for digital supply chain

CHICAGO, Sept. 10, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- SAP SE (NYSE : SAP ) today announced new features to digitally optimize the supply chain and infuse it with intelligence from product design and production to delivery, operations and service. With the integration of SAP S/4HANA® to digital supply chain solutions from SAP, companies can gain new insights, make predictions and instantly adapt in an agile supply chain that extends to customers and supplier networks. The announcement was made at IMTS USA, being held Sept. 10–15 in Chicago, Illinois.

SAP's leading presence and innovation in supply chain management continues to help companies around the world embrace Industry 4.0 technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and machine learning–enabled automation. The latest solution updates enable an integrated supply chain and manufacturing environment with enhanced capabilities for production planning and scheduling, availability and fulfillment, compliance, health and safety, and production engineering and operations.

"Intelligent technologies help businesses make better sense of data, plan and predict outcomes, and optimize the entire product lifecycle including the customer experience," said Hala Zeine, president, Digital Supply Chain and Manufacturing, SAP. "SAP helps companies embrace smarter business based on data-driven insights to run supply chains with greater insight, speed and purpose."

Highlights of the new capabilities include:

Support for highly engineered products — consolidated operations including bill of materials, intelligent process planning, shop floor execution and integrated system testing. Production engineering and operations can be synchronized across manufacturing execution for complex assembly and low-volume operations, such as in aerospace and defense, which traditionally required manual processing.

3D visualization and production — providing visualization from design through production to service and maintenance, and supporting the network of digital twins. Core business processing is combined with complete product lifecycle management to support decision-making, production and maintenance operations, and 3D printing of components. .... "

SAP Pilot Tracks the SupplyChain

Note the use of open source Hyperledger.  Probably the simplest application idea in blockchain.   Mostly food companies participating, which indicates sourcing and quality assurance driven goals.

SAP pilots blockchain-based supply chain tracker
SAP has created a consortium of business partners to help it craft applications for a cloud-based blockchain platform that can track goods from creation to shipment to manufacturer as part of an automated supply chain system. 
               
By Lucas Mearian By Lucas Mearian
Senior Reporter, ComputerWorld

SAP is working with more than two dozen produce, pharmaceutical, tech and shipping companies on an automated blockchain-based supply chain tracking system that it believes will bolster visibility and ensure the authenticity of goods such as food and drugs.

The software giant is piloting its SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain with 16 farm-to-consumer produce suppliers such as Maple Leaf Foods, Johnsonville, Naturipe Farms, Tate & Lyle and Natura. It says the service enables enterprises to build and extend business applications with SAP's MultiChain blockchain service, which was built using the open-source Hyperledger Fabric platform from the Linux Foundation.  ... " 

SAP, Accenture Embed Predictive Analytics into Work Flows

Always thought this was a good idea.   And we did it, though is was not as clean an integration as it could have been.  Companies like IBM have many of the components (Ilog, BPM, Watson, Modeler ... )  but have not integrated them well enough.    Now here is SAP's attempt.  How well does this work?  It would take a real world implementation figure that out.  Do you have one?  Lets try it.   Have many old enterprise experiences with SAP, so cautious.   I see Supply Chain is one area of emphasis that is mentioned.

SAP Predictive Analytics, Application Edition, Powers Intelligent Enterprises
Press Release | March 20, 2018 by SAP News

LONDON — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced the general availability of the application edition of SAP Predictive Analytics software to help enterprises create and manage predictive machine learning models for applications that run business activities, including supply chain, finance and accounting, human capital management and customer management.

Codeveloped with Accenture, the application edition enables intelligent enterprises by embedding predictive and machine learning capabilities in their applications, putting powerful data-driven insights at the fingertips of every business user. The announcement was made at the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit being held in London, March 19–22.

“Partnering with Accenture, we are arming enterprises with the tools, such as the application edition of SAP Predictive Analytics, needed to become intelligent enterprises,” said Mike Flannagan, SAP Leonardo and Analytics senior vice president. “With the rapid pace of advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence, SAP will continue to deliver innovation that brings powerful new capabilities to our customers.”  .... " 

SAP and Blockchain

SAP's Blog talks its approach to specific applications of Blockchain.  Nicely described. " ... The blockchain technology, from a business perspective, can be seen as the next-gen collaborative business process improvement software. This would significantly lower the cost of trust between companies/organizations. Blockchain attempts to be the answer to the need for a trust system covering all online activity, through its immutable nature. .... " 

Amazon Echo and SAP HANA

A rare business oriented use of otherwise consumer oriented virtual assistants.   Examining.

Amazon Echo and the SAP HANA Cloud Platform     by Craig Cmehil

" ...For awhile now I’ve explored possibilities with the Amazon Echo and SAP HANA, and over time I’ve received a lot of requests on how to do that or how to do that. Therefore I decided to put together a little blog here to describe the “how” of some of the demos I have done and how you can do it using SAP HANA for free inside the SAP HANA Cloud Platform trial system. ... " 

SAP and Accenture Analytics

How SAP and Accenture work together to provide analytical services.   Their overview site.