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SAP TechEd 2024 kicked off virtually, bringing you a lot of new exciting technology updates. In this highlights blog post, I have compiled a quick summary of the announcements and updates shared by Michael Ameling, Chief Product Officer, SAP Business Technology Platform, to help you navigate everything that is new around SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).
BTP General:
Let’s start with some of the general updates on SAP BTP.
First and foremost, SAP is expanding BTP Coverage in the next years via eight SAP-managed data centers.
I am sure, you are all aware of SAP Discovery Center is the central place to go for businesses looking to adopt SAP’s cloud solutions efficiently with the help of multiple mission-based learnings. These missions are structured guides that walk users through specific use cases and help users achieve business goals using BTP services.
SAP now announced for the SAP Discovery Center the option to deploy some of the missions with a Quick-Account-Setup, helping users to get the exact technical BTP set-up as per the mission at the click of a button. Check out the quick demo below for more insights.
Quick Account Set-up
For expert technical users, who would like to customize these missions, you will get the ready Terraform based automation scripts, which are behind QAS, publicly available here - https://github.com/SAP-samples/btp-terraform-samples/tree/main/released/discovery_center
Application Development and Automation:
As an SAP Cloud ERP customer, it’s paramount to follow a “Clean Core” strategy to be able to receive new innovations from SAP quickly. SAP is strengthening its SAP Build portfolio to support you when building extensions, ensuring your system stays consistent, maintainable, and upgradeable.
SAP Build unifies the entire development and extension capabilities and will now also include ABAP Cloud. With that, SAP Build becomes THE extension solution for all your needs.
By bringing ABAP cloud capabilities into SAP Build, you will also be able to create and maintain ABAP Cloud projects directly from the SAP Build lobby. Watch this short demo to see SAP Build lobby in action.
SAP Build in Action
For SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, SAP announced the SAP Build Extensibility Wizard which helps both, key users and developers create both on-stack and side-by-side extensions in an embedded experience.
Watch this short demo to get some insights.
Custom Field creation via Joule in SAP S/4HANA
Data and Analytics:
I am sure you remember one of SAP’s biggest announcements from SAP TechEd 2023, which was the SAP HANA Cloud Vector Engine.
Since last year, SAP has made HANA Cloud Vector Engine a thousand times faster. Now SAP is adding a native in-database vectorization with its own SAP-specific text embedding model, which simplifies the creation of vector embeddings significantly.
Now SAP announced SAP Knowledge graph and SAP HANA Cloud Knowledge graph engine, which allows customers to build business and intelligent data applications like never before.
By combining the vector engine and the knowledge graph engine, you can harness the power of structured and unstructured data together.
For example, in areas like Supply Chain Management, the Knowledge Graph Engine can help you identify suppliers based on their carbon footprint. But the real value is:
You can now factor-in any criteria that might impact your supplier selection. These could be geopolitical risks or weather conditions. The Knowledge Graph engine can give you a holistic view across existing data silos.
Both, the vector engine as well as the knowledge graph engine, are fully integrated with other existing HANA Cloud multi-model data processing capabilities.
Stay tuned to learn more as both SAP Knowledge graph and SAP HANA Cloud Knowledge graph engine will be available in Q1 2025
SAP is making it easier for everyone to create intelligent data applications by introducing Generative AI toolkit for SAP HANA Cloud which is available via SAP Build. It allows anyone to perform common data analysis steps and handle complex machine learning operations within SAP Build code also with the help of our AI co-pilot Joule. GenAI Toolkit for SAP HANA Cloud will be available from Q1 2025.
Check out this demo to see it in action
SAP HANA Cloud Generative AI Toolkit in Action
SAP also announced new data lake capabilities for SAP Datasphere, which allows any organization to implement business data fabric in a simple, cost-efficient and scalable manner. The new data lake capabilities are available from Q4 2024.
And: SAP is making the integration of analytics easier for you.
With the introduction of new CDS annotations, you can now use the SAP Cloud Application Programming (CAP) model to directly embed advanced analytics into your transactional applications on BTP.
SAP also introduced SAP Analytics Cloud compass. With that, you can model complex risk scenarios through the Monte Carlo simulation method. The business user friendly interface allows you to perform real-time analysis without prior setup or knowledge.
With technology continuously evolving, SAP has also brought SAP Analytics Cloud to Apple Vision Pro. See some impressions here:
SAP Analytics Cloud in Apple Vision Pro
Integration:
SAP Integration Suite offers hundreds of connectors, thousands of pre-built integrations and embedded AI to support ALL your integration scenarios.
Early this year, SAP announced the Generative AI-based Integration Flow generation. Now, to complement that, SAP previewed the new AI capability which allows customers to optimize their running Integration Suite custom scripts in areas like memory.
Using the “Inspect” feature of SAP Integration Suite, administrators can identify the need for optimization and generate proposals including entire groovy script without writing a single line of code. See how it works in this short demo:
SAP Integration Suite AI-Script Optimization
This feature will be available as part of the SAP Integration Suite, premium edition, in H1 2025.
SAP also announced the introduction of new Integration adapters for Anaplan, Coupa, HubSpot, NetSuite ERP, Snowflake and many more already available from Q4 2024.
And to support more mid-sized customers, SAP announced the introduction of a new license for SAP SuccessFactors and SAP GROW customers: The SAP integration Suite, starter edition, available from Q4 2024.
Artificial Intelligence:
No technology keynote is complete today without talking about AI. So, here we go.
SAP is integrating AI into your everyday work through the AI Foundation on SAP Business Technology Platform.
Customers can leverage the broadest selection of foundational models from top providers all in one place through the Generative AI Hub with the benefit of one unified legal and commercial framework.
While Joule is getting integrated into multiple SAP solutions, we are making Joule even more flexible and customizable with the introduction of Joule studio in SAP Build.
Joule studio allows partners and customers to create and deploy custom Joule skills.
And that’s not all: Joule also goes agentic. With an in-built agentic capability, Joule can now solve complex business problems for you through planning, self-reflection, logical reasoning and collaboration. Learn more about it here:
Joule goes Agentic
Joule now brings ABAP developer capabilities inside of ABAP in Eclipse, based on SAP’s own ABAP Large Language Model (LLM). ABAP LLM has been trained on over 250 million lines of code from SAP S/4HANA Cloud. It’s available now for selected customers and partners in an early adopter version and will be generally available in Q1 2025.
While Joule is just only one year old, SAP will already have infused 80% of the most used workflows in Joule by the end of this year. SAP also announced Joule for mobile to support you while you are on the move, which will be available in SAP Start during Q4 2024 and in other applications early next year.
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While this is only a summary of the key technology highlights, I would encourage you to watch the full keynote here: https://www.sap.com/events/teched/virtual.html
And to learn more about all the new innovations and product updates, check out our TechEd News Guide:
https://www.sap.com/events/teched/news-guide.html
Have fun at SAP TechEd 2024!
