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paul_schropp
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
2,396

Virtual

Agenda

Slides

Recording Day 1 & Day 2

Dear Valued Customer,

The SAP MaxAttention Innovation Workshop focusing on ‘Accelerate Business Transformation with AI and Data’ took place virtually on May 14-15, 2024. Please find the agenda here.

The workshop gathered an unprecedented interest with over 500 registrations. It brought together SAP MaxAttention customs, industry leaders, experts, and enthusiasts to explore the latest advancements and applications of artificial intelligence within the SAP ecosystem. Almost 300 people were following the live sessions. Our SAP MaxAttention experts were kept on their toes, promptly addressing the majority of the over 100 queries customers submitted during the presentations. You can find some of the most asked questions answered in the later part of this document.

The first day of the workshop focused on SAP Business AI, highlighting the vast potential and advantages of utilizing the SAP Business AI capabilities embedded into SAP Products.

The workshop kicked off with a keynote with the topic SAP Business AI, from Strategy to Execution highlighting the different levels of the SAP Business AI Strategy, which also builds the structure for the agenda for the day.

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The following session focused on the amazing improvements in the user interaction thanks to copilots powered by Generative AI. The SAP MaxAttention experts took the attendees through the intriguing capabilities of Joule and shared future plans to integrate Joule across various SAP products. The session illustrated the practical application of Joule in SuccessFactors, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and SAP Build Code through some interesting use-cases. Finally, the SAP Experts presented Just Ask, the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) copilot designed to democratize analytics by allowing users to ask for any data using natural language.

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The third session of the day highlighted some of the many Embedded AI scenarios across the SAP Portfolio focusing on Procurement, Supply Chain and Finance. The presenters explained how embedded AI scenarios can bring significant business value without a big implementation effort.

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The subsequent two sessions took a deep dive into of the BTP AI foundation. The SAP Experts presented the BTP AI Services, followed by AI Core and the AI Launchpad, instrumental tools for training, deploying, and managing AI/ML models. They provided a detailed evaluation of the Generative AI Hub, a platform enabling the incorporation of generative AI functionality into SAP processes and applications and supporting various Large Language Models (LLMs) from influential SAP partners like Microsoft and Google.

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The second presentation on the BTP AI Foundation honed in on the AI/ML capabilities of the SAP HANA Cloud including the APL/PAL ML Libraries. A significant portion of the discussion was devoted to the brand-new HANA Cloud Vector engine, which allows to store vectors to represent and compare semantic meanings of data objects like text and speech. This functionality is key for the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) used to ground LLMs with internal data. A comprehensive demo of loading embeddings into the SAP HANA Cloud Vector Store and augmenting this content when querying a partner build LLM via an Intelligent Data Application, rounded up the session.

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Session six delved into the details of Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM), a framework that supports the extension of both SAP S/4HANA OnPrem and Cloud utilizing SAP-delivered AI scenarios as well as custom AI scenarios. The highlight of the session was a customer success story coupled with a demo, which showcased the creation of a custom ML model on HANA utilizing the embedded SAP Predictive Analytics Library (APL) and the integration into SAP S/4HANA with ISLM.

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In the final session, participants were introduced to the SAP MaxAttention service portfolio for AI, offering strategic guidance and support for organizations embarking on their AI journey. Key services like Architecture Point of View (APoV) for AI, Explore the Intelligent Enterprise and AI Strategy workshops were discussed, providing a roadmap for success in harnessing the full potential of AI.

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Day 2 focused on the critical aspect of how corporations can accelerate business transformation with Data and learn how to prepare, collect, and govern data so it is ‘fit’ for Business AI.

In the first session of the day, we discussed ensuring Data Fitness for Business AI with a focus on data quality. We covered topics such as Collection, Governance, and Quality of data and the need for a Data Fitness program to identify and resolve quality issues with the data required for AI models. We also talked about the integration of SAP and non-SAP data in a self-service modeling and AI platform using SAP Datasphere.

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In the second session, we explored the latest advancements and innovations in SAP Datasphere to optimize data strategy and act as a Unified Data Platform. We introduced the concept of Data Fabric Layer and how it facilitates AI &ML initiatives, also providing a governance layer for managing access controls, and a data orchestration layer for integrating with external data management solutions.​ A large focus of this session was the introduction of the capabilities to integrate our open partners such as Collibra, Confluent, DataRobot, Databricks and Google Cloud. A decision tree on when to leverage partner products and when to stay on the SAP platform was shared along with lessons learned from customers and reference architectures.

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In the next session, we focused on our Data Warehousing Strategy with SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Datasphere, emphasizing a co-existence strategy that leverages each platform's strengths. Additionally, we introduced SAP tools and services that can facilitate decision-making on the future platform and smooth migration of data and workloads from SAP BW/4HANA to the SAP Datasphere. 

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The fourth session was an end-to-end demo on Data Integration, persistence, federation, modeling, prediction, and consumption capabilities of SAP Datasphere including the realization of an ML scenarios. This helps to understand the strengths of SAP BW/4HANA with the innovation, openness, and self-service abilities of SAP Datasphere in a hybrid scenario, unified semantic models in SAP Datasphere that can be accessed instantly for Machine Learning using FedML. The demo was rounded up by developing a data product using the dataset prepared by scenario and sharing it on the SAP Data Marketplace for consumers.

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In the final session of day two we talked about the motivation and scope for Data and Analytics Engagements understanding trends of current data projects, and changes that need to be adopted. Importantly we focused on how MaxAttention can help its customers build an overall Business Data strategy with a comprehensive end-to-end portfolio of services to maximize value and enable data-driven insights.

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Top Questions during the Workshop

Q: Is SAP Business AI available for on-prem SAP S/4HANA customers?

A: There are embedded AI scenarios available for SAP S/4HANA OnPrem, e.g. the ones included via Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM) described in this Blog. There are also numerous possibilities to extend SAP S/4HANA OnPrem processes with Side-by-Side scenarios using BTP AI Services.
Due to the complexity and architecture requirements for AI, SAP S/4HANA Private and Public Cloud are the recommended solutions for customers wanting to take full advantage of AI. In the future the amount of AI capabilities only available for SAP S/4HANA Cloud deployments will increase.

Q: Will Joule be available for SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud customers?

A: Yes, first Joule Scenarios for SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud are planned to be released in Q3 2024

Q: Does Joule implementation require additional paid licensing?

A: There is no paid license associated with Joule itself. To gain access to Joule, all customers will need to do is to license a $0 SKU, which will trigger the provisioning of Joule.

Q: Any automation capabilities for SAP System Administration like SAP system state management, automated. Paramters etc?

A: The SAP EarlyWatch Alert has predictive scenarios for table and memory growth and recommendations. The Data Volume Management Cloud Application also has predictive scenarios on table sizes and growth. Automation, elasticity and self-healing capabilities are planned and partly available to our cloud products e.g. SAP IBP and SAP HANA Cloud.

Q: Is Joule available in SAC?

A: Just Ask is currently available in SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). Joule is also planned in SAC towards the end of the year 2024. More details in this News Article and this Video Demo

Q: Can Joule be customized for different customers? Is Joule part of only standard apps or can it be integrated with custom fiori/ui5 apps?

A: SAP focus is getting more Joule functionality delivered across our SAP products. Capabilities to enable customers and partners to develop and integrate own extension content are part of the outlook for Joule.

Q: Can LLMs be used for custom build applications in BTP

A: One key feature of the SAP Generative AI Hub in BTP is to support the easy access of different partner LLM models. It’s features can be utilized by custom build applications.

Q: Is the Vector Engine available for all SAP HANA Cloud subscribers? Does HANA Vector Engine need any additional licenses?

A: HANA Vector Engine is available as of Q1 2024 in SAP HANA Cloud. No additional licenses needed.

Q: How long will embedded BW in SAP S/4HANA be supported?

A: Embedded BW for SAP S/4HANA support will be tied to the SAP S/4HANA release/maintenance cycles and accordingly the support will be provided.

Q: Is a Data Product consumer in SAP Datasphere within the organization or outside in the Data Marketplace?
A: We support both - Any SAP Datasphere user across the globe would be able to access the data that is hosted in the Data Marketplace. If it is hosted in a private context, only users with the license key will be able to consume the data product. More information can be found in this blog.

Q: Can SAP AI Core with SAP Datasphere be used for prediction scenarios? Or do I need external ML environments?
A: SAP supports both scenarios. Either use SAP AI Core. Or use external ML compute environments without moving the data out of SAP using FedML. SAP Datasphere supports AI/ML capabilities by exposing data using FedML from external ML platforms and SAP AI Core to perform ML. A step-by-step guide can be found in this blog.

Further Information on the covered topics

Our Workshops

These sessions and workshop series focus on a specific topic and the purpose is to enable our customers to understand the product portfolio and innovative technologies of SAP in order to drive adoption and consumption. As specifically now, it is more important than ever to help companies to be successful and to respond to changing markets by transforming into intelligent enterprises in the experience economy.

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