We are at the beginning of a new technological era. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has entered the public consciousness on a broad scale and Business AI by SAP has the potential to revolutionize the way enterprises operate and solve their technology challenges with SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).
Generative AI provides us with a whole new toolbox that opens so many opportunities to simplify and improve our work lives. At SAP Sapphire, we announced several use cases that we are working on. When using and applying AI in a business context, we make sure it is relevant, reliable, and responsible.
SAP BTP acts as the enabler for SAP and partner applications to leverage generative AI capabilities in an SAP context. Generative AI capabilities in SAP BTP will improve the developer experience, how integrations are done, the process automation space, analytics and holistic planning activities, as well as simplify administrative tasks.
Let me demonstrate with three use cases how AI capabilities in SAP BTP will help build applications faster, outline a reference architecture to bind applications to the most appropriate large language model (LLM), and apply the reference architecture to a concrete example – an app that helps you keep an eye on your own CO2 footprint.
Building Enterprise Applications Faster
Building enterprise-ready applications can take time and requires many very skilled professionals. Even experienced developers need to consult documentation and websites like Stack Overflow to help them with their daily tasks. In our SAP Labs, we are working on making developers’ lives easier.
For example, we are utilizing the power of generative AI to automatically generate an SAP BTP application based on our cloud application programming (CAP) model. This means that in the future, developers will be able to describe an application’s capabilities, and SAP Business AI will create a proposal for the actual application. An SAP BTP application developer can simply insert a prompt into the command-line tool and create a CAP application, and then continue to refine it.
This will enable applications, such as extensions for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, to be built in hours instead of weeks or months. Not only will developers be faster and even more productive in their work, but organizations will be able to respond to business needs with rapid innovation.
Enabling Large Language Model Choice
SAP BTP applications can leverage any LLM or similarly powerful tools available as a service from one of the hyperscale providers or open source models.
We are enabling SAP BTP application developers to choose the most appropriate LLM for their use case. We published a reference architecture that enables developers to bind their SAP BTP application to OpenAI’s GPT or any other LLM.
This means developers can build applications with our CAP model on SAP BTP to blend LLMs with SAP S/4HANA and other SAP solutions. Access to LLMs such as GPT models will be offered through SAP’s AI Core, which provides key benefits, including context validation and portability between LLMs.
With this architecture, developers can benefit from the co-engineering work we have done with hyperscalers on SAP Single-Sign On and Private Link, helping ensure that data is secured within the network backbone and does not exit to the public internet.
With SAP Business AI, we apply powerful tools and services in a responsible way, in a context that makes the use cases highly relevant for our customers’ businesses and ensures reliable outcomes.
Using the Power of AI for Good
The old saying holds true: you cannot manage what you cannot measure. This is especially true for sustainability. But with AI, we have a new lever to support sustainability efforts.
Using the reference architecture, we built a sample app on SAP BTP based on a customer co-innovation project with an enterprise from the finance industry. It helps bank customers better understand how consumption habits are driving their carbon footprint, become more climate conscious, and adapt their behavior accordingly.
How does it work? The app matches spending behavior based on purchase data from banking customers with the corresponding carbon emission information from our sustainability partner Connect Earth. The app, which was built using SAP’s CAP model, blends customers’ banking data with Connect Earth data and then calls out to Microsoft Azure OpenAI services via SAP’s AI Core on SAP BTP to summarize and recommend actions for improvement.
This is an example of how the reference architecture for Microsoft Azure OpenAI services mentioned before can be implemented through the sample code shared on GitHub.
These are just three out of many of the ways SAP is using generative AI to make a difference for professional developers and our customers and users alike.
It is an amazing time to be alive, and SAP is ready to take enterprise software into the generative AI age and to support our customers in this transformation as a strong partner.
Juergen Mueller is CTO and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE.
This content was originally published on LinkedIn: