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?  .... " 

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, 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.”  .... "