SAP Community - SAP TechEd

GenAI Mail Insights - Leveraging the generative AI hub in SAP AI Core to improve customer support

2023-11-15T07:52:06+01:00

Hey folks! 🙋‍♂️👋

Another AI blog post, right? Nope, not this time – let's finally stop talking and start walking! 🎬💥 We've got some real goodies to share with you, whether you're an SAP customer, SAP partner, or just one of those strange but adorable enthusiasts like me, who can't get enough of SAP. 🤓💼

At TechEd 2023, SAP dropped some major news on the Artificial Intelligence front, including our new friend Joule, the SAP HANA Cloud Vector Engine, and the star of today's show, the generative AI hub in SAP AI Core, wrapped up in a real-world use-case. 🚀💡

Too busy to read but still want the essential bits? 🏃‍♀️💨
Take a quick peek at our SAP-samples repository and Generative AI reference architecture🕵️‍♂️
Make sure you catch the brand-new openSAP course, "Generative AI at SAP"✏️

With our fresh-off-the-press reference architecture guidance for Generative AI scenarios, you'll be more than ready to kickstart your own AI journey on SAP BTP. 🚀📚 Whether you're building extensions, standalone solutions, or selling your own SaaS apps on SAP BTP, you can count on the generative AI hub for infusing your architecture with AI superpower. 🏗️💼👍

And it doesn't stop there! You'll also get to leverage best practices like a great SAPUI5 app, a robust SAP HANA Cloud back-end, a single and multitenant CAP application, and an API for your SaaS customers using the SAP Service Broker Framework. This sample scenario has got it all, folks!🌟💪🎉 Great news - our sample is available for the SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime and the the SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry Runtime!

Generative AI reference architecture for multitenant SAP BTP applications

This blog post is gonna shine a spotlight 🕵️‍♂️ on how customer and partner apps on SAP BTP can take advantage of SAP’s freshest service offering – the new generative AI hub as part of SAP AI Core. 🎉 This is all about helping you to add some serious AI capabilities to your single- and multitenant solutions.

If you're looking to deep dive into building multitenant applications on SAP BTP, head over to our SAP-samples GitHub repo "Develop a multitenant Software as a Service application in SAP BTP using CAP" that'll steer you through the whole process. 🔍

To make things a bit easier and to lay down some solid groundwork for all you developers 🧑‍💻 diving headfirst into the SAP AI space, we're gonna show off a few neat AI features. These are part of a new SAP-samples GitHub repository all built around a make-believe travel agency 🔮 we're calling ThorTours. 🌍✈️

And here's the fun part: we're gonna make ThorTours' customer support processes even better using Generative AI by reducing customer response efforts for faster handling of incoming requests and at the same time boosting the quality for higher consistency in support through reproducible responses. 🤖🚀 So hold on to your hats and let's dive in! 🏊‍♀️👩‍💻

Customer Service app before the introduction of GenAI Mail Insights

Our GenAI Mail Insights sample solution is the new best friend of all ThorTours 🏝️⛱️customer support employees 🙌. It's all about giving you top-notch mail insights and automation in a comprehensive, (multitenant) SAP BTP solution enhanced with a bunch of cool AI features 🤖. How does it do it? It uses Large Language Models (LLMs) via the generative AI hub in SAP AI Core to analyze incoming mails, offering categorization, sentiment analysis 📊, urgency assessment, and even extracts key facts to add a personalized touch 🎁.

What's the cherry on top? 🍒 It's the super innovative feature of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) using mail embeddings. This helps in figuring out how similar requests and infuses those confirmed responses as additional context to reduce hallucinations 👻, ensuring you always get consistent service quality 💯. It doesn't stop there, it also summarizes and translates simple mail enquiries for But wait, there's more!

Our sample setup boosts automation by generating potential answers for customer inquiries, enhancing response accuracy and speed like a boss 💪. And the best part? It's not just for the travel industry – it's adaptable for various scenarios using custom schemas. So, whatever your need, we've got you covered! 😎

Customer Service app after the introduction of GenAI Mail Insights

Why does this matter, you ask? 🤔 Well, companies are often struggle with customer support headaches, everything from reading through long mails manually 📧 to language hurdles 🌍 and a lack of automation 🤖. What our demo solution brings to the table is quicker, more personalized, and consistent customer service 👥, savings on cost 💸, flexibility, and an edge over the competition 💼. And we're not stopping there! In upcoming releases, we're even thinking about an integration with SAP Cloud Solutions such as SAP Concur or a Microsoft Exchange Online Inbox. This could supercharge operations and give a boost to data-driven decision-making 📈.

Alright, enough talking for now – let's roll up our sleeves and dive into some of the techie highlights you can uncover in our SAP-samples repository 🗂️. Ready to kick off with the first steps of processing new mail enquiries? This will lead us straight into our first challenge and the GenAI spotlight of our use-case 🎯. First things first, we're going to see how our solution, built on SAP BTP, actually links up to the Large Language Models using the generative AI hub capabilities – the latest and greatest service offering as part of SAP AI Core announced at TechEd 2023 🔥.

If you've had a go at existing LLMs like Azure OpenAI, you'll find the setup pretty familiar. 🧐 When an app needs to hook up with a Large Language Model (we're talking Azure OpenAI in our scenario), it links up with the generative AI hub and dials up the URL or what we often call the inference endpoint of a tenant-specific deployment. 🖥️🔗 Each tenant in a multitenant setup gets their own dedicated so-called SAP AI Core resource group onboarded, which is awesome because it offers the flexibility for individual model deployments and upcoming metering features. 📊🚀

Tenant specific SAP AI Core Resource Groups and LLM Deployments
(Preview Version - subject to change - check latest openSAP course)

When it comes to our sample scenario, we're sending payloads to the Inference URL for Chat Completion and creating Embeddings. This process is a piece of cake 🍰 because it's just like the Azure OpenAI API specification, which means requests and custom modifications are a breeze 🌬️. Just a heads up though, this is still an early-bird 🐦 release of the generative AI hub, and we might simplify the integration even more in the future. Why, you ask? Well, it's all thanks to the rising popularity of contributions to Open-Source resources like LangChain. 🚀🔥

To learn more about the generative AI hub (incl. the latest preview) and how SAP is leveraging Generative AI, please check out the latest openSAP course Generative AI at SAP.

For the time being, we've got some handy sample wrappers 🎁 that make connecting to the generative AI hub deployments super easy. They take care of handling multitenancy and can be swiftly adapted for other Large Language models available. Plus, these wrappers ensure compatibility with available LangChain features once the LLM object is instantiated. This allows you as a developer 🎩💡 to keep their eyes on the prize - the actual business process!

Calling the Chat Completion inference URL of a tenant-specific Deployment
(Implementation subject to change)

So, we've got a customer that's just a big block of text, right? 😕 Our goal is to wrangle that into some useful info we can store it away in our database. 📚 We're using the brainpower of a Large Language Model, LangChain and custom schemas (courtesy of the npm zod package) to make this happen. It's all about having a flexible and hands-on setup with the Large Language Model. 🧠💬

We're using custom schemas and auto-generated format instructions (that's some prompt engineering magic right there! 🔮) to get a nice and structured JSON result. 📄 This we can process further and easily store in our SAP HANA Cloud Database using our beloved CAP framework making that task a child’s play. ☁️💾

The parsing features of LangChain and the custom schema package features are like two peas in a pod 🌱 They make sure that the LLM response fits into a properly typed object without any further type conversion hustle. 🛡️ Pretty cool!? Sounds almost too good to be true! 😲🎉 Using these kind of custom schema definitions will allow you to adapt the solution to any other kind of support scenario, by simply updating the respective schema details!

Using a custom schema (zod + LangChain) for a programmatic LLM interaction

Apart from extracting a summary, insights and relevant key-facts from a new customer enquiry, we've also made life easier by automating the drafting of reliable response proposals for new mails. 📩 This brings us to our second reveal, a cool mix of Large Language Models (LLM) magic and the capabilities of what's known as Retrieval Augmented Generation . 🎩✨Also check the following blog post to learn more.

The concept is as straightforward as it is genius – we use an LLM to create a new response for a customer enquiry, but here's the twist: we add in some extra context from previously answered similar mails. 🔄

While this might sound like a lot of effort, a very simple implementation is as easy as pie. 🥧 All you need is access to generative AI hub that is generating so-called embeddings for incoming mails and a suitable vector store to hold these embeddings. 🗄️ Embeddings are vector representations of versatile input formats (e.g., text, images, videos) in a high-dimensional space, capturing semantic relationships for natural language processing tasks 🤖. The SAP HANA Cloud Vector Engine will also support this requirement soon!

Once you've got these two features ready to go, you only need a few lines of custom code to spot similar mails in real time and inject the previous answer as additional context. All part of the regular prompt engineering process. 🚀

Leveraging the power of Retrieval Augmented Generation

Last but not least, let us try to handle the language barrier! As you all know, many of our fabulous SAP customers and partners are global rockstars 🌍🤘. This means dealing with international customers and team members from various countries. So, getting reliable translations is super crucial, right? 👏🔍

Our advice for top-notch translations in the SAP universe hasn't shifted a bit. The SAP Translation Hub is our go-to recommendation for translating texts and documents in productive SAP scenarios. (Need a refresher? Click here!) 📚💡

Only for our simple and non-productive demo scenario, we're mixing things up a bit and using Large Language Model capabilities - just for the sake of demonstration, mind you 😉. The LLM translates incoming customer demands into the user's preferred language. And it doesn't stop there! When you reply to those queries in your comfy working language, guess what? The recipient gets your response plus an automated translation whipped up by the Large Language Model. Another interesting use-case for using Generative AI 🖥️🔗, showing you about the endless possibilities this new technology has to offer.

Explore further exciting use-cases and scenarios for Generative AI

Hungry for more knowledge? 🧐 Get the ball rolling by diving into our Generative AI Reference Architecture 🏗️ and exploring our SAP-samples GitHub repository or related Discovery Center mission. 🚀 Once the generative AI hub in SAP AI Core goes public by end of , you'll be able to navigate our step-by-step guide 🗺️ to deploy our sample solution to your own SAP BTP account. 🤓

The generative AI hub as part of SAP AI Core is generally available since Q4/2023 and the planned availability for the SAP HANA Cloud Vector Engine is scheduled for the Q1/2024 release (see Road Map Explorer). Please check the available SAP-samples GitHub repository to learn more!

Big virtual high-five 🙌 to all the team members who played a part in putting together this sample use-case for TechEd 2023, including kay_, Iyad Al Hafez, Adi Pleyer, Julian Schambeck, anirban.majumdar, and the entire SAP AI Core team around z1133666 and Andreas Roth. 🎉👏

Further links

openSAP Course GenerativeAI at SAP

Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning

SAP AI Core

SAP AI Launchpad

SAP AI Business Services

SAP AI Ethics

Document Information Extraction (SAP AI Business Services)

Data Attribute Recommendation (SAP AI Business Services)

Personalized Recommendation (SAP AI Business Services)

TechEd 2023 - Latest Innovations in SAP Master Data Governance

2023-11-15T17:04:43+01:00

(The session recording is linked as a video below.)

At TechEd in Bangalore, I gave a lecture together with my colleague Andreas Seifried. We explained the various deployment options of SAP Master Data Governance (SAP MDG) on SAP S/4HANA and on SAP BTP. We highlighted which role these solutions can play in your organization and how they can help you to manage and store master data efficiently across your landscape.

Most importantly, we gave some insight into the latest innovations in SAP MDG, including new integration options for SAP MDG, cloud edition that allow additional scenarios, federation with SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA as the core data owner, the new optional cloud-ready mode in SAP MDG, as well as increased automation by leveraging external reference data from data providers and others. We also gave demos showing some recent innovations we delivered with the latest SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA release in October 2023.

If you weren’t able to attend the session, or in case you tried but you were one of the many people who couldn’t get into the room because it was full and the door had been closed, first of all: apologies for that. Secondly, I’ve created a video for anyone interested to watch:

Session Recording - please click to view

Federation

One of the innovations we highlighted in the session is the new option to use SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 2023 as the core data owner or as one of the application data owners in a federated MDG landscape.

Federation with SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA as CDO

It provides the benefits of a federated master data management, supporting an enterprise-wide approach to master data management that allows for a decentral management of data where it is best understood – in the context of decentral applications, whilst still providing all the advantages of a centralized approach to master data management. In our session, we discussed how to set up federated MDG in your system landscape.

New Integration Option in the Cloud

We also talked about a new integration option for our SaaS solution on the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP): SAP MDG, cloud edition. In addition to the first option (a REST-based integration via the SAP Master Data Integration service on SAP BTP), we released a second option earlier this year (a message-based integration using the SOAP protocol). Both options can be used in parallel. For example, companies who have systems that are not connected to SAP Master Data Integration yet can easily integrate these systems with SAP MDG, cloud edition using SOA.

SOAP as new integration option for SAP MDG, cloud edition

This broadened option for integration allows you to leverage SAP MDG, cloud edition in additional scenarios. For example, you can deploy the solution in a landscape where creation or change of business partner data happen in several systems in your landscape. As soon as these systems send SOAP messages with these changes to SAP MDG, cloud edition, MDG can detect duplicates across the landscape, merge the core data of these duplicates, and create a key mapping between the duplicates in a highly automated fashion. Only if the system needs a human to decide, it triggers a workflow item to ask a human to approve a potential match group, or to fix an error that was found during validation.

Cloud-Ready Mode in MDG

Another innovation we highlighted is cloud-ready mode in SAP MDG, which is a new option to configure and extend processes and applications in MDG. Cloud-ready mode leverages the latest architecture with Restful ABAP Programming and ABAP Cloud.

Cloud-ready mode in SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 2023

We discussed how to enable the new mode in SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 2023 and what consequences this has for your MDG implementation.

The classic (Web-Dynpro based) central governance, the change request processing, can be used as before, and everything based on the consolidation and mass processing framework will be switched to the new, modern architecture. This provides a completely Fiori-based user experience across all processes including single processing, mass processing, consolidation, and data quality management.

We also demonstrated cloud-ready mode in action, showing the benefits of automation in a mass process with derivations and breakouts into single-object processing by the user.

Demo: cloud-ready mode in SAP MDG (see the session recording to view the demo)

Data Provider Integration

An additional innovation we covered was about leveraging trusted external reference data to remove the need for people to search for this data, key in that data, and maybe even to involve more people and effort to correct data that was typed in incorrectly.

After offering this capability in SAP MDG, cloud edition earlier this year, we now also provide it in SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 2023. You can look up the data from the data provider Corporate Data Quality in Switzerland and use the reference data to create or enrich business partners in SAP MDG.

Data provider integration in SAP MDG on SAP S/4HANA 2023

We also demoed the new capability by creating a new business partner from scratch and by enriching an existing business partner record within a cloud-ready mode process.

Demo: data provider integration in SAP MDG (see the session recording to view the demo)

After the demo, we explained that we intend to provide more automation in MDG in the future by providing data provider integration in mass processes and by including more data providers, like Dunn & Bradstreet, and to also allow companies to use their own data providers of choice and connect them to MDG processes.

Many More Innovations Provided and Even More to Come

Obviously, one session at TechEd is much too short to discuss all recent innovations in SAP MDG in detail. That is why we brought one more slide to at least briefly outline a few more examples of recent innovations.

As you know, SAP MDG is a key enabler that helps companies to get ready for their future business transformations. Accordingly, during the session, we put all recent innovations into the context of our roadmap for SAP MDG that follows our main themes of automation, and federation to enable our customers’ digital transformation and their path to the cloud.

For a detailed overview of our planned innovations, visit SAP MDG in the SAP Roadmap Explorer.

Innovations Highlights from SAP Business Technology Platform - TechEd 2023

2023-11-15T17:56:08+01:00

I can just repeat what I´ve already mentioned in my last blog post: What an amazing TechEd 2023! GenAI was of course one the hottest topics. But in this blog post I want to focus on the most important announcements of SAP BTP at TechEd 2023 (also non-AI related) and in addition to innovation highlights coming up in the future. Excited? Then I hope you will enjoy reading on.

SAP Build Code

Last year at TechEd we announced SAP Build, our new brand for (back then) our low-code/ no-code offering for development and automation. With already 10k customers, this addition to SAP BTP has been quite successfull. This year, at TechEd 2023, we have taken another step to strenghten the value of SAP Build further with the announcement of new our pro-code offering - SAP Build Code. SAP Build Code is optimized for Java and JavaScript development that follows the SAP cloud application programming model (CAP) and it brings lots of new capabilities in SAP BTP together in order to help you develop, code, test, integrate, and operate your SAP BTP based solutions. Of course, we also integrate generative AI capabilities and have Joule on board to help with generating applications (code generation is not only part of our plans for CAP development, but we also intend to accelerate ABAP developement with GenAI capabilities). SAP Build Code will initially be available to selected customers and partners and is planned to become generally available in Q1 2024.

SAP HANA Cloud vector database capabilites

SAP HANA Cloud will natively store and search vector embeddings, which are numerical representations of objects, along with business data as part of its industry-leading multi-model processing capabilities to power intelligent data applications. With these vector capabilities, SAP HANA Cloud will enable Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), facilitating the combination of LLMs with private business data. These applications learn and adapt to new information, enabling automated decision-making and empowering developers to be the architects of the future. These innovations are planned to be available in Q1 2024.

Just Ask

One of my favorite highlights is Just Ask. Can´t wait to see it live. With this AI-powered queries for analytics in natural language you can retrieve and present data stored in SAP Analytics Cloud data models via natural language queries. The user simply types the question in natural language into the search field and receives the required insights. The systems generates charts that show the data you asked for, so you can easily understand the data.

SAP Datasphere semantic onboarding

Earlier this year, SAP launched SAP Datasphere, a business data fabric built on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) that enables every data professional to deliver seamless and scalable access to mission-critical business data. As of TechEd 2023, we are ready for the next step and we will deliver semantic onboarding in SAP Datasphere. This new capability will help organizations delivering meaningful data to every data consumer with business context and logic interaction. A key benefit is the ability to import entities where you can bring in business context from underlying source systems and make re-use of semantical definitions and associations. Starting your data projects from scratch is a thing of the past. The release is planned for Q4 2023.

SAP Integration Suite Edge Integration Cell

We are also concentrating on our flagship - SAP Integration Suite. So we also have highlights in this are: The Edge Integration Cell is now generally available. It provides a local deployment option on SAP Integration Suite and the cloud based environment can be deployed on Cloud based infrastructures or on your private landscape. Check out the blog post of piyush.gakhar to read about the previous announcement and learn more on Edge Integration Cell.

Generative AI Hub

Already today, the AI Foundation enables developers to quickly integrate AI into their applications. Later this quarter, the AI Foundation will include a generative AI hub in SAP AI Core, giving developers instant access to a broad range of large language models (LLMs) from our partners like Azure OpenAI and Falcon-400. With this access, developers can orchestrate multiple models. The hub also provides tooling for prompt engineering, experimentation, and other capabilities to accelerate the development of generative AI applications. The generative AI hub will also connect to SAP HANA Cloud vector database.

SAP BTP Cockpit

[Labs preview] Onboarding to SAP BTP and setting-up your SAP BTP landscape will become much more easier in the future. Our generative AI-based assistant, Joule, will be integrated into the SAP BTP cockpit and will help to automate cumbersome tasks like onboarding of users, creating SAP BTP subaccounts and managing service subscriptions and entitlements.

SAP BTP Guidance Framework

Finally, if you want to know your best way develop extensions and applications on SAP BTP, I can only recommend the new SAP BTP Guidance Framework, your compass for architecting, implementing, and operating solutions on SAP BTP. Our new Developer´s Guide for SAP BTP is one new resource within the SAP BTP guidance framework which will help you how to implement business applications on SAP BTP using ABAP Cloud and SAP Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP).

You did not make it in person or virtually? No worries, you still have the chance to watch the replays and especially the Executive Keynote of Juergen Mueller. Also take the opportunity to exchange with experts in our SAP TechEd group or in our SAP BTP community.

Interested in more innovation highlights coming up? Then take a look at our Road Map Explorer. We do have more than 1000 innovation highlights in there for SAP BTP 2023 and already 400 coming up for 2024.

Unveiling the Latest Features of SAP Master Data Governance (MDG) from SAP TechEd 2023

2023-11-16T21:46:43+01:00

The SAP TechEd 2023 conference has once again shone like a star in innovation and one of the stars in this year's event is the much-anticipated update to SAP Master Data Governance (MDG). As organizations continue to grapple with the ever-growing complexity of managing master data, SAP MDG emerges as a powerful solution, offering a range of new features designed to enhance data governance, streamline processes, and ultimately drive business success.

Let's dive into some of the groundbreaking features unveiled at SAP TechEd 2023 that promise to upraise SAP MDG to new heights.

Enhanced User Experience with SAP Fiori 4.0 Integration:
SAP MDG now seamlessly integrates with SAP Fiori 4.0, the latest version of SAP's user experience design.

This integration brings a fresh, modern look and feel to the MDG interface, making it more intuitive and Userfriendly. With Fiori 4.0, users can enjoy a consistent and personalized experience across devices, promising a smooth and more efficient master data management process.

Advanced Data Quality Management:
Data quality is a critical aspect of master data governance. SAP MDG has introduced advanced data quality management features powered by SAP Information Steward. This integration enables users to perform detailed data profiling, cleansing, and monitoring directly within the MDG environment.

The result is a much more clean and more accurate master data that serves as a reliable foundation for business decisions.

Machine Learning-Powered Data Matching and Deduplication:
Leveraging the power of machine learning, SAP MDG now offers intelligent data matching and deduplication capabilities.

The system can automatically identify and merge duplicate records, reducing the risk of errors and
ensuring a single, accurate version of master data. This not only improves data quality but also enhances the overall efficiency of data maintenance processes.

Real-time Integration with SAP S/4HANA:
In a move towards real-time data governance, SAP MDG now features easy integration with SAP S/4HANA.

This integration enables Businesses to manage master data changes in real time, ensuring that critical business processes are always synchronizing with the latest and most accurate data. The real-time synchronization enhances agility and responsiveness across the enterprise.

Blockchain Integration for Enhanced Data Traceability:
Recognizing the increasing importance of data traceability and transparency, SAP MDG has incorporated blockchain technology into its framework.

This allows organizations to create a fixed record of Master data changes, providing an auditable trail that enhances data governance and compliance. The Blockchain integration adds another layer of security and trust to the master data management process.

Conclusion:
Some of the latest features of SAP MDG showcased a promise towards innovation and addressing the constant evolving needs of businesses in an enriching data-driven world. From enhanced user experiences to advanced data quality management and real-time integration, these features are designed to help organizations on their track to effective master data governance.

Business continues to recognize the critical role of master data in their operations and SAP MDG stands out as a detailed solution that exceeds current requirements and also anticipates future challenges. The combination of cutting-edge technologies, clear integrations, and a user-centric approach positions SAP MDG as a key player in the landscape of master data management.

Enterprise Automation rocked SAP TechEd 2023

2023-11-17T18:30:11+01:00

Wow, what an amazing event. SAP TechEd 2023 has been great. Because of you! The interactions with you, our customers and partners, onsite in our sessions, at the booths, in direct conversations or in the chat during the virtual sessions are the highlight for me every year. Let's have a short recap how my favourite topic, Enterprise Automation, was presented and also where you can find the materials.

Enterprise Automation at the executive keynote

Thousands of people joined onsite in Bangalore and even more virtually. For both groups the event started with the executive keynote by Juergen Mueller, Chief Technology Officer, Member of the Executive Board, SAP SE. And also there the story of Enterprise Automation started, providing some cool new features, especially in the area of generative AI. It was also thrilling to listen to the stories by our customers SDW, Hitachi and Mahindra & Mahindra. Just watch the replay:

Besides, I recommend to watch the replays of these Enterprise Automation sessions and even do the hands-on exercise covering SAP Build end-to-end:

Advance Your Process Transformation with Enterprise Automation - AD101v - provides a comprehensive overview, including a demo of some of the new features

Accelerate Your Process Automation Journey - AD106v starting with SAP Task Center and how to access multiple systems from one access point, followed by a demo leveraging pre-built content packages for SAP Build Process Automation

Learn How Avaya Drives Innovations in Its Business Processes - AD113v - the customer stories are always the best, also in this case

Create Apps, Processes, and Workspaces with SAP Build Solutions - AD180v - experience SAP Build end-to-end, every exercise can be done in your trial environment

You will find a complete overview of all the Enterprise Automation sessions in my former blog: Two Days with focus on Enterprise Automation @SAP TechEd 2023

In addition, please read the blog post by my colleague Jesse (jesse09) on more details on the latest released features: What’s New with SAP Build Process Automation: November 2023

The virtual hands-on session

Here some impressions from these two days, where Enterprise Automation rocked the stages:

Strategy session with Bhagat Nainani, Senior Vice President, Product Development, Business Technology Platform

Crowded demo booth

Thomas Volmering, Chief Product Manager, SAP Build Process Automation showing the new features

Full house for the Enterprise Automation lecture

The lecture around the generative AI news

And with this, a big THANK YOU goes out to you, for being our guests at the event and the team and colleagues who worked so hard on developing the new features, creating the session content and presenting Enterprise Automation to you.

You rock!

A few members of our team onsite

5 years already? An interesting journey in Process Automation at SAP

2023-11-20T08:38:46+01:00

November 19, 2018 is a date I will remember forever.

Indeed, that exact day SAP was announcing the acquisition of Contextor, a small French software vendor specialized in Robotic Process Automation, aka RPA.

I was Chief Marketing Officer for Contextor since January 2017, and as I had never worked for a company as a big as SAP in the past, To be honest, I was a bit cautious during the first weeks of our integration process, but all of the new colleagues I met were very kind, and SAP as an employer looked good. So, end of 2018 was the beginning of my personal journey at SAP, and I have to say that it has been greatly interesting, because I’ve seen from the very inside the evolution of SAP strategy in the Process Automation space. I’ve been part of this move, working hand in hand with amazing colleagues and managers, and I can measure how relevant we at SAP are now in Process Automation.

This is why I would like to tell you here the main steps of this journey from both a personal and SAP-related perspective.

Nov. 2018 – Nov. 2021 – SAP Intelligent RPA

End of 2018, SAP acquired Contextor to accelerate its entry into the Robotic Process Automation market: indeed, an internal team in the SAP Leonardo unit had already developed the core of a cloud-based RPA solution, and Contextor was bringing ready-to-use technical components, such as the desktop studio and many connectors to third party non-SAP software.

We worked very hard for 6 months to integrate all of these components in an hybrid cloud-based solution, and also to prepare all of the marketing and communication assets we needed to support the product launch. Finally at SAP Sapphire 2019 in Orlando we successfully launched SAP Intelligent RPA. That was my very first time at SAP Sapphire, and I’ve been amazed by how big this event was!

We spent 3 very busy days at our booth, answering questions and making demos for many customers interested in SAP’s new RPA solution. In particular, I remember that Apple’s CIO came to our booth. We did a demo for him, he looked very interested and right after he asked: "you showed me a demo on a Windows desktop, but do you have a Mac version?"... We were so sorry to explain him that we were only supporting Windows for the Agent running the automations and the visuel Studio to create them… But finally we will soon have a macOS version, so Apple could start leveraging RPA capabilities from SAP, now part of SAP Build Process Automation as you will see a bit further…

Intelligent RPA to automate tasks and processes in various areas, sharing with us a lot of success stories. We also had a lot of meetings with customers from different industries and regions of the world, and also with partners, and many of them told us: “We want a unique and simple tool covering all of the process automation space, from simple task automation to end-to-end corporate process design, operation and monitoring”. All together, we agreed that Business Process Management and Robotic Process Automation were in fact 2 sides of the same Automation coin.

We presented that vision at SAP TechEd 2019 in Las Vegas, and we got very positive feedbacks from customers and partners. Many of our hands-on sessions for SAP Intelligent RPA were overbooked and had to be done 2 our 3 times each, and I’ve been very positively surprised to measure such a positive response from the ecosystem of SAP developers.

That’s why we decided to move forward in that direction, even if the software industry and analysts were seeing RPA and BPM as 2 different categories…

Dec. 2021 – Nov. 2022 – SAP Process Automation

Again, we worked in a joint team to integrate SAP Intelligent RPA for the RPA part, SAP Workflow Management for the BPM part and some low-code capabilities inherited from SAP Ruum, and at TechEd 2021 we launched SAP Process Automation. The purpose of this solution was clearly to support our customers in their Hyperautomation journey with a low-code solution covering the entire process & task automation spectrum.

Earlier in 2021, SAP acquired AppGyver, a Finnish startup who was a pioneer in no-code development. And guess what? We had new ideas on how to move forward together in the low-code/no-code space, to offer our customer a broader solution to develop new applications, automate their processes and, cherry on the cake, create business sites. So again, we got back to work to integrate AppGyver, SAP Process Automation and SAP Work Zone to create a broader and seamless low-code solution for our customers…

Dec. 2022 – now – SAP Build Process Automation (with Enterprise Automation)

TechEd 2022: Drum rolls… SAP Build is out!

In a few words, SAP Build brings a unified low-code solution portfolio which enables empowers, no matter the skill level. SAP Build is designed to support users of every skill level including those with little or no formal coding experience. The three core components are:

SAP Build Apps, enabling the creation of enterprise-grade apps with drag-and-drop simplicity

SAP Build Process Automation, to automate processes and tasks visually

SAP Build Work Zone, to design business sites using a visual editor and pre-built templates

The SAP Build unified lobby simplifies access to SAP Build Apps, SAP Build Process Automation and SAP Build Work Zone, provides advanced lifecycle management and monitoring capabilities. Sharing of reusable application artifacts such as UX components, workflows, automations, data models and business logic facilitates creation of compossible and sophisticated applications.

It was a great step forward, of course. But if we consider the whole range of expectations of our customers regarding Process Automation, we see that they are even broader than what SAP Build Process Automation alone can provide. In particular, our customers need to clearly understand what the bottlenecks or flaws in processes are, and to precisely evaluate the positive impact of fixing these issues, if possible with automation.

That’s why in December 2022, we took part in Intelligent Automation Summit, an event gathering more than 200 experts in the field of process mining and process automation.

Gero Decker, founder of Signavio, and Sebastian Schrötel presented SAP’s end-to-end offering from process mining to process automation:

We got a lot of insightful discussions with business process experts working in many industries that have nurtured our strategic vision for even better process automation at SAP. We showcased the capabilities our customers may need for collaboration around business processes, with modelling of processes and journeys, analysis, and mining, and also governance and automated execution. Considering the interest we raised with such offering, we decided to go further. That’s why we have launched our Enterprise Automation initiative. What is it exactly?

In order to truly achieve greater efficiency, our customers need to better understand how their business processes are executed today, where they’re still inefficient, and to find out how they can be improved.
This is where SAP Signavio comes to play, providing powerful, integrated platform that helps you quickly realign your organization and bring changes to life at an accelerated rate. Once this is understood, our customers then have to implement efficiency gains through seamless integration of diverse capabilities available in complex IT landscapes. This is where not only SAP Build Process Automation but also SAP Integration Suite play a key role. And all of this is seamlessly leverages AI to automatically help and suggest what’s relevant to do, with a vast library of pre-built content – available through the SAP Business Accelerator Hub and also natively in SAP Build – to simplify automating SAP and non-SAP components in our customers IT landscape.

Enterprise Automation has been unveiled during SAP Sapphire 2023 keynote by Julia White, our Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer:

This approach immediately aroused great interest among our customers and partners:

And recently at SAP TechEd 2023 we put focus on Enterprise Automation with a broad line-up of sessions, including a strategy talk with Bhagat Nainani - Senior Vice President, Product Development, Business Technology Platform – as well as a roadmap session, hands-on workshops, customers stories, lectures…

What’s next?

From an SAP BTP perspective, as we’ve seen, we started 5️⃣ years ago with a simple RPA product and we gradually improved our offering to better fulfill the needs of our customers: we offer now a unique and comprehensive AI-powered solution for discovering process inefficiencies, integrating applications, and automating processes across heterogeneous enterprise environments. This move won’t stop, as a lot of new improvements are on the way, and with no surprise especially around Artificial Intelligence… stay tuned!

From my personal perspective, I’ve been very lucky to be part of this process automation journey, and I’m happy to continue supporting this strategy as a product manager in the SAP Build team, with a focus on creating content and feeding social channels to foster awareness and accelerate adoption of Process Automation within SAP customers. I’ve already done more than half of my SAP journey: indeed, as I’m now 60 years old, I have only 4 more years to work before my retirement, and I’ve chosen to gradually reduce my working time I'm now working only 3 days a week, Monday-Wednesday, to have more time to enjoy activities with my family and friends. But even if I’m working less, I’m still very enthusiastic to be part of SAP in the BTP area!

PS: I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all the kind colleagues I’ve worked with so far, and there are too many so I can't name them all. For me, SAP really stands for Super Awesome People. Special thanks to @sebastian_schroetel, @DianaRoesner and Csaba Korenyi who have been my direct managers so far and helped me navigating and moving forward in SAP organization with a great deal of understanding. 🙏🏻

SAP Community Series – Introducing our SAP DemoJam Finalists 2023

2023-11-22T13:41:07.829000+01:00

The SAP Community team bring to you the six finalist team demos for SAP DemoJam 2023! We are delighted to share the innovation with all of you, but especially to those of you who could not attend SAP TechEd Bangalore in person. Let’s recreate some of the amazing moments we had with these courageous and entrepreneurial finalists when on-stage as they now showcase their ideas once more for SAP Community. Six teams, six minutes each, two winning finalists, and zero slides!

By joining one or more of these sessions, you will gain a greater understanding as to why SAP TechEd is the place where ideas get real!

First up is team number one, check out this great event and watch Pavan and Vishnu share their terrific idea with all of you. All session event links will shared below, as they become available.

The series:

Session 1 - watch now!
Title: SAP Analytics Cloud Office Suite
Description: Pavan and Vishnu, the first team to go on stage at SAP DemoJam 2023, showcase their idea to bring SAP Analytics Cloud Office Suite to a new level! An idea any manager would love!
Speaker 1: Pavan Kowshik Santebidanur Nagaraja | Speaker 2: Vishnuvardhan S

Session 2 - watch now and meet the winning team!
Title: PharmaConnekt: Unleashing the Future of Pharmaceutical Integration and Sustainability
Description: Syed and Navin, winners of SAP DemoJam 2023, bring to you their idea of how the future of pharmaceutical integration and sustainability will look.
Speaker 1: Syed Ejazuddin | Speaker 2: Navin Krishnan Manohar

Session 3 - watch now and find out more about this fantastic app!
Title: Healthy Smart Food App: Revolutionizing the Dining Experience
Description: Vikas and Ravi, one of the finalist SAP DemoJam teams in 2023, introduce the Healthy Smart Food Menu App Powered by SAP BTP and AI. Perfect for anyone with food intolerances, allergies, or dislikes!
Speaker 1: Vikas Jangra | Speaker 2: Ravi Kant Ranjan

Session 4 - watch now!
Title: Intelligent Business Interaction Insight Generation in SAP CX using AI/ML
Description: Prateek and Saravana, the fourth team to take to the stage live at SAP DemoJam 2023, bring to you their insights and ideas for SAP CX using AI/ML.
Speaker 1: Prateek Bajaj | Speaker 2: Saravana Kumar

Session 5 - watch now!
Title: SAP + Generative AI
Description: In the eyes of Rishi and Richa - our brother and sister duo, and second-place finalists at SAP DemoJam 2023, this is the dawn of a new technological era, and they are happy to showcase their ideas to SAP Community.
Speaker 1: Rishi Khandelwal | Speaker 2: Richa Khandelwal

Session 6 - watch now!
Title: Use the power of the in-memory SAP HANA Database to measure Radiation
Description: Adi and Suhas, our third-place finalists at SAP DemoJam 2023, share with you their use case for SAP HANA Database and making the world a safer place.
Speaker 1: Adi Mogilevsky | Speaker 2: Suhas Sudheendra

Be sure to check back again for event links as they become available, and – as always – feel free to give a kudo or leave a comment!

SAP TechEd Shenanigans: Tales of Tech, Learning & Frolics

2023-11-23T22:22:46+01:00

It has only been a few months into my SAP journey, the expansive realm of enterprise technology...and I have had a ball till now! Learning new stuff every day, experimenting with Generative AI models, even having a chance to be in some customer engagements, and spending great time with colleagues. The buzz about SAP TechEd had reached my ears early on, and I was really excited by prospect of being right in the midst of it all in November. Picture this...a bustling carnival of tech enthusiasts, developers, architects, customers and partners all huddled under the SAP flag, ready to unveil the mysteries of app development tools, cloud ERP, and the enigmatic realm of Generative AI.

The day came and we had a full house at the Bangalore International Exhibition Center. After an eternity-long bus ride, we got ourselves at the Keynote hall for the eagerly awaited announcements. Generative AI has emerged as the shining star in SAP's technological constellation, captivating the spotlight with groundbreaking announcements in executive keynotes. The introduction of Joule, a Gen AI-powered copilot, SAP Generative AI Hub, and SAP HANA Cloud Vector Engine has sent ripples of excitement through the tech community. The keynote can be found here.

Announcements at TechEd

After this it was time to get cracking with my sessions. I was involved as a tutor in a highly anticipated hands-on workshop, a demo session about an application that infuses the power of Generative AI with the promise of sustainability, and a busy & insightful demo pod.

XP263 - Develop a Cross-Platform Scenario with SAP BTP and Google, Microsoft Azure, or AWS

During my first session as a tutor along with colleagues, we took a group of 40 participants on a journey through various cross-platform scenarios. Imagine SAP BTP, Google, Microsoft Azure, and AWS waltzing together to create fantastic use cases. My focus was the Azure scenario where we experienced what awesomeness could be achieved by linking the SAP Generative AI Hub with Azure OpenAI services through a Cloud Application Model (CAP) application (architecture). The AWS scenario was about linking SAP BTP to AWS Simple Notification Service (SNS), while the Google one was around building a category management application with Google BigQuery, SAP S/4HANA and SAP Dataspshere.

From left: vedant_gupta, praveenpadegal, kay_, lalitmohan7443, navyakhurana9, maheshkumar.palavalli, Ganesh, akash_amarendra

AI990 - Reduce your CO2 footprint using a smart Generative AI application on SAP BTP

I then shifted to a dazzling demo session with my colleague kay_. About 60 curious souls gathered to witness Generative AI transforming into a green crusader. We showcased an app that not only tracked your CO2 footprint but also suggested actionable eco-friendly suggestions. It was like having your own LLM-driven environmental conscience! The crowd couldn't get enough, firing intriguing questions about the SAP HANA Cloud Vector Engine, the talk of the town, and the eagerly awaited SAP Generative AI Hub.

Demo Pod - SAP BTP and Hyperscaler Reference Architectures
Actionable Use Cases and Demos

Teammates and I were involved in a Demo Pod, showcasing multi-cloud marvels built by us. From Events-to-Business action framework, Data-to-Value projects with SAP Datasphere & SAP Analytics Cloud to Generative AI applications, we presented many mouth-watering use cases. Attendees observed our ongoing projects and posed insightful questions about our approach. and technology in general.

Project Feature during Strategy Talk

I along with colleagues praveenpadegal, ajitkpanda & swati_maste was involved in a really interesting project with SAP partners NTT Data on our Events-to-Business (E2B) framework, wherein we wanted to leverage power of Large Language Models (LLMs) to synthesize action JSON payloads and create action chaining for the framework. Designed with an event-driven architecture, it integrates events from varied non-SAP sources into SAP business processes, enhancing process efficiency. We were able to get a coveted spot in a strategy talk on SAP Business Technology Platform by Senior Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, Board Area Technology & Innovation at SAP, anja.schneider. The demo showcased in the Partner Perspective section of the talk with Wolfgang Möller was truly something cool! You can read more about the usecase from my blog.

The Finale

As tired as we were, we didn't miss the celebration night. It kicked off with the enchanting tunes of Manasi Scott and reached a crescendo with the sensational Sunidhi Chauhan taking the stage. It was a perfect ending to the enthralling two days at SAP TechEd.

The main takeaways: learning never stops, teamwork is the key, and most importantly...have fun while at it! Huge shoutout to our leaders pvn.pavankumar, anirban.majumdar and Anja for their support and providing this opportunity. Kudos to all my teammates praveenpadegal, anbazhagan_uma, ajitkpanda, shanthakumar.krishnaswamy, swati_maste, uklasing, kay_, lalitmohan7443, maheshkumar.palavalli, navyakhurana9 and aryan.raj.sinha for their sessions.

Tired smiles all around!

SAP TechEd 2023 Through My Lens: SAP BTP reference architectures, use cases, collaboration, and fun-filled evenings with colleagues

2023-11-23T23:46:25+01:00

SAP TechEd 2023 captivated Bangalore as a dynamic hub of technological immersion, bringing together a diverse group of technology enthusiasts, ranging from developers to industry leaders, to delve into the cutting-edge innovations of the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).

The event kicked off with an insightful keynote from Juergen Mueller and featured the launch of several innovative products, highlighting SAP's dedication to solving complex business problems with SAP Business Technology Platform. Highlights included the introduction of SAP Build Code, a Gen AI-based code development feature for CAP application development; Joule, an AI co-pilot that understands SAP processes and data; SAP HANA Cloud Vector Engine, which will accelerate development of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) applications on SAP BTP.

Our team, T&I Platform Adoption & Advisory (PAA), actively contributed to the event. Through a series of engaging sessions, hands-on workshops, demos, and insightful lectures, we shared our expertise on SAP BTP – hyperscaler reference architectures and use cases spanning app development, automation, integration, Gen AI, and data-to-value. We aimed to not just showcase SAP BTP's capabilities but also empower attendees to unleash its full potential in their fields.

Key Takeaways & Highlights

Our PAA team, collaborating with different product teams within SAP and external speakers from from AWS, Microsoft, NTT Data & AMD delivered close to 25 sessions in virtual and physical formats at TechEd 2023 which included demos, hands-on workshops, mini-theatres, lectures, usability testing, and Voice of Customer & partner sessions.

You can find out more about these sessions summarized in this blog post by Ajit Kumar Panda

Strategy Talk by Anja Schneider

Anja highlighted the transformative potential of prebuilt business content in SAP BTP, emphasizing its ability to empower customers and partners with enhanced resilience and agility throughout their cloud journey. She further emphasized the importance of utilizing actionable SAP BTP use cases in a repeatable and scalable approach to optimize the cloud adoption process.

My colleague Mahesh Palavalli showcased the effortless deployment of an SAP BTP use case from SAP Discovery Center, powered by SAP BTP Terraform Provider. Wolfgang Möller of NTT Data Germany and Satheesh Dasyapu of AMD shared their experiences with SAP BTP and Gen AI use cases, highlighting their transformative impact on business processes and decision-making.

Strategy talk by Anja Schneider

Presentations by Mahesh Palavalli and Wolfgang Möller

Strategic Partnerships and Industry Use Cases

Collaboration with hyperscalers and partners took centre stage, with a focus on fostering business value through extension applications tailored to specific industries. Notable partner sessions, such as NTT Data's exploration of Industry 4.0 scenarios using SAP BTP Extension applications, offered valuable insights into the enhanced development efficiency enabled by Gen AI.

Our PAA team with AWS colleagues - we jointly delivered an openSAP course

Our strategic partnerships were also emphasized at T&I Day at SAP Labs India

Focus on SAP BTP Platform Capabilities and Joint Reference Architecture with hyperscalers

SAP TechEd 2023 centred on sharing architecture patterns and demos to promote development efficiency in SAP BTP across various technology tracks. Attendees were presented with a trove of knowledge encompassing SAP BTP Platform capabilities, demonstrating the construction and innovation of end-to-end use cases leveraging SAP BTP and Hyperscalers.

Joint Reference Architectures and End-to-End Use Cases with SAP BTP and AWS

Diverse scenarios like IoT, machine learning, and the seamless integration of AWS and SAP BTP services, including AWS Monitron and SAP's plant maintenance capabilities, took the spotlight. Our demos delved into the technical intricacies and architectures of these use cases, providing valuable takeaways for attendees.

SAP and Google Cloud: Understand JRAs for Unified Data and Analytics

Joint Reference Architectures (JRAs) unveiled a treasure trove of opportunities: retail inventory prediction, supply chain planning optimization, and sustainability analytics powered by SAP Datasphere, Google Vertex AI, and Google BigQuery. The data potential of RISE with SAP and SAP Datasphere for multi-cloud advantages was also explored, opening doors to a world of possibilities.

Hands-On Workshops: Bridging Theory and Practice

Our TechEd preparation culminated in a series of hands-on workshops, diving into six distinct scenarios that showcased the power of SAP BTP and its seamless integration with Hyperscaler platforms. These workshops, conducted in a collaborative spirit alongside colleagues from various SAP teams and partner companies, explored a diverse range of topics:

Automation of BTP Accounts using Terraform Provider: We empowered participants to streamline the provisioning and management of SAP BTP accounts using Terraform Provider, unlocking a world of automation possibilities.

SAP Datasphere Integration with Databricks and Google Cloud BigQuery for Data Federation Scenarios: We delved into the seamless integration of SAP Datasphere with Databricks and GCP, enabling participants to harness the power of data federation for advanced analytics.

Building Customer/Partner GenAI Innovations on SAP BTP Leveraging LLMs: We demonstrated the ease of creating customer-centric GenAI innovations on SAP BTP using generative AI hub, empowering participants to unleash the power of AI to transform their businesses.

Integration of Events Generated from Industrial Production Processes: We showcased the seamless integration of events from industrial production processes into SAP business systems, paving the way for intelligent enterprise scenarios that optimize operations and drive business innovation.

Demo Sessions/Mini-Theatres: Unveiling the Possibilities

We had quite a few demo sessions on Application Development, Automation, Integration, Generative AI in SAP BTP, and Data-to-Value use cases and reference architectures that captured the audience's interest. Engaging discussions and questions with partners and customers reflected the growing interest and adoption of SAP BTP in diverse business scenarios.

We had a range of sessions including topics like Event-Driven Architectures on SAP BTP, Enhancing Core ERP processes with resilient applications on SAP BTP, Private Link, Automation of SAP Discovery Center Mission with Terraform and Multitenant SaaS applications.

We also hosted an extensive, day-long demonstration booth focusing on SAP BTP use cases, reference architectures and integrations with Hyperscalers in collaboration with cross a LoB team at SAP. Our team engaged in enriching discussions with developers and architects who showed great interest in understanding the best practices for tackling these use cases.

Voice of Customers: Real-World Success Stories

During the Voice of Customer session, AMD shared their journey leveraging Gen AI on SAP BTP to overcome supply chain hurdles. This real-world application showcased the practical impact and success stories that emerged from SAP's innovative solutions This session was done by Satheesh Dasyapu from AMD along with my colleague SivaKumar and Sally Lawler Kennedy from AppHaus.

Conclusion: Towards a Transformed Future with SAP BTP

SAP TechEd 2023 showcased the transformative synergy between SAP BTP and Hyperscalers, offering a glimpse into the future of multi-cloud innovation. The event not only provided a platform for knowledge sharing but also fostered a community eager to explore best practices in SAP's multi-cloud strategy.

As we reflect on the rich tapestry of sessions, workshops, and engagements, it's evident that SAP BTP is not just a technology platform; it's a catalyst for innovation, collaboration, and the future of enterprise solutions. Our team's active participation and contributions played a pivotal role in making SAP TechEd 2023 a resounding success, setting the stage for the continued evolution of SAP's technological landscape.

Finally some fun behind the scenes

Build SAP BTP use cases with us!

The T&I Platform Adoption and Advisory team collaborates with customers and partners creating actionable use-cases, reference architectures and best practices on different areas of SAP BTP like app development, automation, integration, Gen AI, and Data to Value. We also focus on integration of SAP BTP with Hyperscalers and third party systems showcasing the power of cross-collaboration.

If you are interested in connecting with us and collaborating, you can contact us at paa@sap.com

Don't miss it ! SAP TechEd Japan at Dec 6th 2023. / 登録はお済みですか？

2023-11-24T06:59:05.950000+01:00

グローバルのSAP TechEdに続き、日本のユーザー・コミュニティメンバーに向けたSAP TechEd Japanが12/6にオンライン開催されます。ご登録お忘れなく！

日本SAPユーザーとパートナー・エコシステムに向けたオリジナルイベント「SAP TechEd Japan」日本語で最新のSAPテクノロジー情報やプロジェクトに役立つ情報を配信いたします。

イベント情報と登録はこちらから

[Replay]: SAP DemoJam 2023 - the Full Live Show!

2023-12-04T14:23:31.302000+01:00

Didn't get to attend Bangalore November 2023 for SAP TechEd? Don't worry, we are bringing you one of the fun highlights from the end of day one. This year we had six finalist teams that qualified to take part in SAP DemoJam and show off their amazing ideas. Watch as host, Craig Cmehil, brings the stage to life and gets the most out of the participants in terms of energy and enthusiasm. Watch to the very end, the noise-o-meter used for voting brought a really fun and exciting element to the whole event!

Team 1
Title: SAP Analytics Cloud Office Suite
Description: Pavan and Vishnu, the first team to go on stage at SAP DemoJam 2023, showcase their idea to bring SAP Analytics Cloud Office Suite to a new level! An idea any manager would love!
Speaker 1: Pavan Kowshik Santebidanur Nagaraja
Speaker 2: Vishnuvardhan S

Team 2
Title: PharmaConnekt: Unleashing the Future of Pharmaceutical Integration and Sustainability
Description: Syed and Navin, winners of SAP DemoJam 2023, bring to you their idea of how the future of pharmaceutical integration and sustainability will look.
Speaker 1: Syed Ejazuddin
Speaker 2: Navin Krishnan Manohar

Team 3
Title: Healthy Smart Food App: Revolutionizing the Dining Experience
Description: Vikas and Ravi, one of the finalist SAP DemoJam teams in 2023, introduce the Healthy Smart Food Menu App Powered by SAP BTP and AI. Perfect for anyone with food intolerances, allergies, or dislikes! Speaker 1: Vikas Jangra
Speaker 2: Ravi Kant Ranjan

Team 4
Title: Intelligent Business Interaction Insight Generation in SAP CX using AI/ML
Description: Prateek and Saravana, the fourth team to take to the stage live at SAP DemoJam 2023, bring to you their insights and ideas for SAP CX using AI/ML.
Speaker 1: Prateek Bajaj
Speaker 2: Saravana Kumar

Team 5
Title: SAP + Generative AI
Description: In the eyes of Rishi and Richa - our brother and sister duo, and second-place finalists at SAP DemoJam 2023, this is the dawn of a new technological era, and they are happy to showcase their ideas to SAP Community.
Speaker 1: Rishi Khandelwal
Speaker 2: Richa Khandelwal

Team 6
Title: Use the power of the in-memory SAP HANA Database to measure Radiation
Description: Adi and Suhas, our third-place finalists at SAP DemoJam 2023, share with you their use case for SAP HANA Database and making the world a safer place.
Speaker 1: Adi Mogilevsky
Speaker 2: Suhas Sudheendra

Don't forget to give the video a "thumbs up" 😊 and if you haven't already become a member of this SAP TechEd Group - click on "Join Group" at the top.

コミュニティとエコシステム : SAP TechEd Japan こぼれ話

2023-12-12T04:57:06+01:00

Communityな皆様、12/6のSAP TechEd Japanは、ご視聴ありがとうございました＾＾t
SAPのクラウド化が進む中で、SAPシステムの価値を最大化させるための活動を今年も多く実施して来ました。

その中の重要な活動の一つが、BTPの技術者育成・パートナーの立ち上げです。

今日は、その辺の実施してきたSAPジャパンにおけるBTPパートナー向けのイネーブルメントの考え方や実際の実施体制、進んでいるパートナーさん達の成功の形を例にとって、お伝えしたいと思います。

まずは、TechEd Japan クロージングセッションのおさらい

技術変化の激しいクラウド時代の学習は、ヒト（他人）の知識を積極的に吸収し、学習効果を最大にすること

恩送り：自分からも情報を共有する。自分がお世話になったら、自分の知識も誰かのために提供すること

こんな知識なんて大したことない！などと思わず、昔の自分を思い出してみて！

そして、コミュニティイベントに積極的に参加してみてください！！

SAP Inside Track Tokyo（Link）は、その最も早いチャンスです。

乱暴にまとめてしまえば、この３つがコミュニティとエコシステムについて言いたかったことです。

では、時間の関係上、あまり触れられなかった点についても、以下でお話ししていきたいと思います。

そうはいっても、自助や公助は欠かせない

SAP Japanが提供しているイネーブルメント・サポートコンテンツについて

SAP TutorialやSAP Discovery CenterのMission、OpenSAP、Helpなどは皆さんよくご存知ですが、それ以外について以下にまとめておきます。

今、SAPジャパンで提供しているパートナー向けのイネーブルメントコンテンツは下記の図のピラミッドの部分にあるものを中心に提供しています。これは、海外のコンテンツでは、カバーされていないポイントや細かくて英語ではニュアンスやより実践的な内容の理解が追いつかないものなどをカバーしています。

例えば、

S/4拡張を考える会（Extension Consortium）は、事例や新機能や重要サービス、契約形態など提案フェーズで有用な情報・コンテンツの提供を進めています。

Meet the Expertsでは、SAPのBTPコンサルタントがプロジェクトで実際に経験したBTPをより十分に利用するためのトピックスを機能系から非機能系まで、各テーマごとにレクチャーする実践的な内容です。

また、BTP Champion Groupは、新たにSAPが認定したPartnerさんのBTP Champion受賞者の方とSAPジャパンのメンバーでマーケットにおけるBTPの現状や課題、これからについてディスカッションし、SAPとして日本のマーケットの現状を外部から理解していくための場として今年スタートしました。

今年イチオシのコンテンツ

そんな日本独自の活動の中で、生まれた最新のイチオシコンテンツがあります。それが、「S/4HANA拡張の新常識とガイドライン L1 & L2」のコンテンツです。SAP S/4HNAを導入し、Core Cleanを目指す上で、複数あるSAPの拡張機能・拡張方式をどのように理解・選択し、プロジェクトに活用していくのか？誰もが一度はぶつかるこの課題について、わかりやすく日本語で解説をしています。

誰でもこちらの内容を学習できるように、そのコンテンツをYoutubeに先日アップいたしましたので、ぜひ、まだご覧になられていない方は、下記リンクからアクセスしてみてください。

1. S/4HANA拡張の新常識とガイドライン L1 (SAP Japan Youtube Link)
2. S/4HANA拡張の新常識とガイドライン L2 (SAP Japan Youtube Link)

SAP Globalが提供しているイネーブルメント・サポートコンテンツについて

もう一つ、SAPのグローバルのBTPチームも数多くのパートナさん向けの育成・支援サポートを提供しています。

基本を学ぶ

SAP Partner Portal > SAP BTPランディングページ (Link)

- セールスプレゼンテーション
- ソリューション概要および1-pagers
- 戦略インサイト（ホワイトペーパーなど）
- パンフレットとインフォグラフィック
- コマーシャルライセンスモデル
- マーケティングキャンペーン
- お客様の成功事例などが共有されています。

SAP Business Technology Platform オンボーディングリソースセンター（Link）

ポジティブなオンボーディングエクスペリエンスを顧客へ提供し、価値実現までの時間を短縮する

オンボーディングリソースセンターには、SAP BTPの利用開始に役立つ多くのリソースが用意されています。

- SAP BTPのサービスおよび製品の理解
- SAP BTPデプロイメントのガバナンスと構造に関するサポートの取得
- セルフサービスガイダンスおよびベストプラクティス共有のための有用なアセットおよびリソースにアクセス可能
- 複数の言語によるライブ（または録画された) ウェビナーのオンボーディングセッションに参加

など

Learning Journey （Link）

無償のLearning Journeyでは、必要なスキルを自分のペースで構築し、認定トレーニングに備えることができます。無償のLearning Journeyでは、以下に対応しています。コンテンツは多数ありますが、SAP Certification（パートナー認定アカデミー）が取得できるものだけでも下記のようなものがあります。

LoB別スキルの拡大

SAP は、SAP BTPでユースケースを実現するために、ジャーニーの複数のステージにわたってコーチングサービスを提供しています。

アドバイザリサービス

- LoB Integration/ExtensibilityアドバイザリーSAP BTPでの拡張を使用して開発および市場投入 (GTM) を行う方法に関する概要レベルの1:1アドバイスを提供
  - SAP S/4HANA Cloud
  - SAP SuccessFactors
  - Intelligent Spend Management
  - SAP SME solutions
- SAP BTP Technical Advisory

SAP BTP の具体的な使用例に関する技術アドバイザリー (1:1)

- Use-Case Exploration & Validation Advisory

ユースケースの探索とアーキテクチャの検証に関する詳細なアドバイザリーとサポート (1:1) (顧客固有ではありません)

- - SAP BTP Use-Case Advisory
  - SAP S/4HANA Clean Core & Extensibility Advisory

他にも有償のもの含め、いろいろありますが、まずは無償で利用できるこの辺りを押さえておいて活用できると良いと思います。

SAPパートナーとしてBTPをスタートするには

では、これからBTPに取り組むパートナーさんはどこからBTPを始めるべきなのでしょうか？現在、SAP Discovery Centerで検索すると、91コのサービスの存在が確認できます。さて何から手をつけていくべきでしょうか？

私が、そのような相談をパートナーさんから受ける時にお伝えするのは、この３つです。

- 推進体制＝集合知化を図る

パートナーさんの中にBTPを技術面とビジネス面でキャッチアップし、社内に展開・案件支援を担当するメンバーを明示的に設置することをお勧めしています。この責任の所在が曖昧なままで、ただ「BTPやるぞ！」という号令だけで、個々人やプロジェクト単位にそのキャッチアップを任せてしまうと、膨大なBTPサービス数に圧倒されてしまうことになります。

そこで、この集合知化です。BTPが社内で一般化し、全てのメンバーがBTPを理解・自己学習できるところまで成熟するまでは、この責任を明確にしておくことが成功への第一歩です。

- フォーカス領域＝強みを作る

BTPはPaaSです。BTPの価値はSAPソリューションと組み合わせて初めて発揮されます。ですので、BTP単体でビジネスを考えず、自社が推進するSAPソリューションとの組み合わせで、BTPのどの領域を優先的に取り組むのかを、考える必要があります。

新規アプリケーション開発ですか？
既存パートナーテンプレートのS/4HANA Cloud対応ですか？
外部システムやSAPLoBクラウドとの連携ですか？

BTPを使って、皆さんのSAPビジネスにどんな付加価値が提供できるでしょうか？

- リソース

皆さんの組織の中で、実際に提案・デリバリーするメンバーを育成・拡充していく必要があります。皆さんの担当されるSAPプロジェクト数を考えたときに、何人必要でしょうか？
社内で育成しつつ、エコシステムとしての、既存で実績のあるBTPパートナーとの連携やSAPのBTPコンサルサービスメニューについても、検討・計画に盛り込むことをお勧めます。
実際、このようなエコシステム連携によって、プロジェクトでの自社戦力育成と早期案件獲得を進めている例もすでに始まっています。

SAPパートナーの皆さん　もう、BTPをやらない選択肢は残されてません。

どのような形であったとしても、SAPビジネスを行うのであれば、BTPを学び、自社のビジネスに取り込んでいく必要があります。

今年のSAP TechEdをスタートにしてください！

SAP TECHED 2023: Navigating the Digital Transformation Landscape with Innovation and Next Practices

2023-12-19T13:32:28+01:00

Introduction:

In the constantly evolving world of technology, SAP TechEd serves as a beacon of innovation. Every year, it brings together thought leaders, experts, and enthusiasts to explore the latest advancements in the SAP ecosystem. In 2023, the conference marked another significant milestone as it continued to push the boundaries of what's possible in enterprise technology.

Data Driven Digital Transformation enabled by RISE With SAP and KTern.AI

Amidst this constantly changing digital landscape, a pivotal session at SAP TechEd titled "Data-Driven Digital Transformation enabled by RISE With SAP & KTern.AI" brought together industry leaders Ratnakumar Nagarajan (Chief Product Officer at KTern.AI) and Sven Denecken (SVP & CMSO SAP Industries & CX).

Ratnakumar Nagarajan and Sven Denecken

Industry Convergence and Digital Transformation:

Sven Denecken opened the session by emphasizing the transformative power of data and the profound impacts of industry convergence, particularly in the post-COVID era. He illustrated this with an example of how the energy industry is evolving into an energy-retail industry.

Energy Retail

During the session, Sven discussed how different factors such as changing workforces, improving technology, and evolving processes all contribute to the convergence of industries. This convergence affects the way we work and requires us to be adaptable and resilient. To tackle the challenges of digital transformation, we need innovative solutions. The session provided insights into strategies for navigating these challenges and optimizing operational efficiency.

Sven Denecken's insightful discussion at SAP TechEd 2023 emphasized the importance of "next practices" – forward-looking strategies that go beyond the conventional and embrace emerging technologies and innovative solutions.

Central to next practices is the strategic use of data. Organizations must prioritize data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to derive actionable insights. Data-driven decision-making is the cornerstone of informed choices and staying ahead of trends.

Next Practices

The session discussed the potential benefits of combining RISE with SAP and Industry Cloud Solutions like KTern.AI. These solutions can help to unleash untapped potential from existing data and drive innovation beyond simply adopting new technology. The importance of beginning the digital transformation journey with a clean core was emphasized, as it is a fundamental principle for success in this rapidly changing landscape.

KTern.AI: Pioneering the Landscape:

Ratnakumar Nagarajan then took the stage to provide insights into KTern.AI's journey as an SAP DXaaS platform, recognized as an Industry Cloud Solution for its significant contributions to the SAP ecosystem and for aiding customers on their intelligent enterprise journey.

KTern.AI for RISE With SAP

The session explored several key use cases, offering examples of how KTern.AI assists businesses in generating compelling business cases, optimizing organizational change management, and enhancing testing and optimization processes. This briefed how KTern.AI helps the organizations during every phase of SAP digital transformation. It shed light on the proactive approach employed by KTern.AI to ensure a seamless transition to intelligent enterprises and it highlighted KTern.AI's exceptional data-driven capabilities and its prowess in translating SAP data into tangible business value.

The session concluded with a forward-looking perspective, emphasizing the collaborative nature of innovation and the importance of staying ahead in the ever-evolving digital landscape. The insights gained from SAP TechEd 2023 highlighted the critical role of transformative technologies in building resilient and future-ready enterprises.

Trust Data and Transform Business

Insights and Lessons from SAP TechEd 2023

As organizations navigate the future, the key takeaways from SAP TechEd 2023 will undoubtedly shape the strategies of those embarking on their digital transformation journeys. The session emphasized the need for organizations to stay tuned to transformative trends and innovations reshaping the SAP ecosystem.

The collaborative nature of innovation was a recurring theme, highlighting the importance of partnerships and collective efforts in driving meaningful change. SAP TechEd 2023 showcased that staying at the forefront of technology requires a commitment to continuous learning, adaptation, and embracing transformative technologies.

As we look to the future, the insights and lessons from SAP TechEd 2023 will serve as a compass for organizations navigating the complex and dynamic landscape of digital transformation. Beyond mere technological adoption, next practices empower organizations to lead, innovate, and shape the future of their industries. In the dynamic digital landscape, success lies in continuous innovation, adaptability, and a commitment to ethical and responsible practices. Embrace the future with next practices, and let them guide your organization toward enduring success.

Access the on demand session recording: Session link

Navigating the Corporate Carousel: A Journey of Wearing Different Hats

2023-12-30T06:18:52+01:00

Hey Folks, it's Navya again!

As the year draws to a close, it's time for introspection, especially regarding my dynamic journey through the corporate landscape. Among the noteworthy weeks that defined my experience, the TechEd Week stands out prominently.

Commencing with the visit of our esteemed CTO, Jurgen Muller, and CMO, Julia White, to the SAP Labs India Campus, the Women Changemakers session with Julia was a highlight. Her insights on Branding and Marketing, coupled with her inspirational journey, left a lasting impression on all participants.

My Emcee Hat:

Moving forward in the week, I had the honor of hosting the T&I India Day. This event brought together the entire T&I India unit to celebrate our achievements and gain insights from our leaders on the strategies that have shaped our product roadmap. Sharing the stage with leaders Juergen Mueller Martin Heinig Dharani Karthikeyan Mitesh Shah Anja Schneider Anirban Majumdar Sindhu Gangadharan and our esteemed Customer, Wolfgang Möller., was a privilege.

The day was packed with engaging sessions, including leader presentations, demo showcases, fireside chats, panel discussions, and the eagerly anticipated Aawishkar Award Ceremony. It was a moment of pride as my team, Tech Mavericks Vedant Gupta Swati Maste Aryan Raj Sinha, secured the 2nd Runner Up award, presented by Juergen Mueller and Martin Heinig. This success was made possible by the incredible support and guidance of our team members Anirban Majumdar PavanKumar PVN Anja Schneider Uma Anbazhagan Mahesh Palavalli Ajit Kumar Panda Lalit Mohan Praveen Kumar ShanthaKumar Krishnaswamy.

For Aawishkar, our work-in-progress concept centres around a Gen AI service capable of generating tailored Bill of Materials (BoM) for SAP BTP services and entitlements, given a project’s use case and requirement. This BoM format will provide a concise yet comprehensive list of recommended services, pricing details, and associated entitlements, streamlining the selection process.
For more information, you can visit our repo which contains a demo around the same, with it's code and presentation!

In case anyone is interested to have a sneak peak into it, Repo Link

As the week unfolded, I wrapped up my first SAP TechEd 2023, and what an exhilarating journey it has been. As a tech enthusiast, being surrounded by developers, practitioners, enterprise architects, and global IT leaders was truly inspiring.

Capturing the essence of SAP TechEd in this blog post, it's evident that it serves as a confluence of minds, where diverse professionals, SAP experts, and partners unite with a shared passion for technology. The event explores the realm of generative AI, showcasing its role as a catalyst for innovation and collaboration with human creativity.

Generative AI: Unleashing Creativity:

As the technological landscape advances, so does the role of artificial intelligence. SAP TechEd explores the realm of generative AI, a frontier where machines collaborate with human creativity. Attendees get an exclusive look into how AI is becoming a catalyst for innovation, transforming industries and business processes. From intelligent automation to creative augmentation, the possibilities are boundless.

Clean Core for Cloud ERP:

In the era of cloud computing, ERP systems form the backbone of organizational operations. SAP TechEd delves into the concept of a "clean core" for cloud ERP, emphasizing efficiency, agility, and sustainability. Participants gain insights into streamlining ERP systems for the cloud era, ensuring that the core remains robust, scalable, and adaptable to the dynamic needs of modern enterprises.

A Glimpse into the Future:

As the event unfolds, attendees catch a glimpse of the future. SAP TechEd is not merely a snapshot of the present but a vision of what lies ahead. The technological innovations discussed today become the building blocks of tomorrow's digital landscape. For global IT leaders, this foresight is invaluable, enabling them to steer their organizations towards success in an ever-changing world.

My Tech Hat:

It was privilege for me to deliver sessions on:
- Federate queries to Databricks from SAP Datashpere for Real Time Analytics with Lalit Mohan Chaturved Akash Amarendra Rajesh Rajan Ashwini Deshpande
- Cross Cloud Modelling with SAP Datasphere and Hyperscalar Datasources with Lalit Mohan Chaturved Akash Amarendra Rajesh Rajan Abdul-Gafoor Mohamed
- Automate a Discovery Center mission deployment with Terraform with ShanthaKumar Krishnaswamy Karthikeyan M
- Cross Platform Scenerio with SAP BTP, GCP, AWS and Azure with Mahesh Palavalli Lalit Mohan Vedant Gupta Praveen Kumar Ganesh Suryanarayanan Kay Schmitteckert Chaturved Akash Amarendra

My Dance Hat:

Also, not to forget I was also part of an energetic kick start of SAP TechEd with our Dance Performance highlighting festivals of India.

In conclusion, SAP TechEd is not just an event; it's an expedition into the heart of technology. It's a journey where individuals and organizations alike embark on a quest for knowledge, collaboration, and innovation. As we navigate the technological frontiers revealed at SAP TechEd, we are not just spectators but active participants in shaping the destiny of technology. The experiences gained, the connections forged, and the insights discovered converge to form a collective force propelling us towards a future where possibilities are limitless.

Eagerly anticipating the reunion in the coming year, I'll be sharing more exhilarating blog posts, delving into both my journey and the exciting world of technology!

Have a Joyous and Happy New Year! 🎊

Reflecting on my Transformative Journey at SAP Demo Jam 2023

2024-01-15T10:45:33+01:00

SAP Demo Jam 2023, for me, wasn’t just a competition; it was a journey filled with exciting experiences and lessons that opened my eyes to new possibilities & learnings. It was a place where people came together, shared their ideas, and celebrated creativity.

When I got the email from SAP announcing our team had been selected for Demo Jam at TechEd 2023, it was an unbelievable moment. All the hard work and creative thinking was finally paying off. This win didn’t just belong to us, it was the power of our team, the collaboration, and all the great ideas finally bearing fruit. SAP Demo Jam wasn't just about competing; it was about working together and supporting each other as a team.

SAP TechEd is BIG! There is no better platform to showcase our idea using different SAP technologies & GenAI. That in itself, was a big motivation for us to demo this idea in front of a large audience. After the announcement from SAP, we were excited, to say the least, and once we shared this news with all our colleagues at Mindset, excitement knew no bounds.

We navigated through the different stages of Design Thinking: Understand, Observe, Point of View, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. After several iterations of prototyping, we agreed on a final prototype for development. The feedback from katherine.kenneally.

(SAP Demo Jam co-ordinators), was instrumental in shaping the final version of the app.

Our healthy smart food app utilizes the latest and most advanced technology available to us today. We had such a blast exploring new technologies.

Working on new areas in BTP – low-code/no-code (Build Apps), Build Process Automation, HANA Cloud, Generative AI, SAP Mobile Start – has been fascinating to say the least, and each day, we realize the endless possibilities available to us today through these technologies. It’s such a pleasure and a matter of pride for us to share the stage with the other teams and be a part of one of the most awaited tech events of this year. In addition to Demo Jam, we attended different sessions and had a lot of learning.

One of the best parts about attending TechEd was learning about new technologies, attending developer keynotes, and different learning sessions as well as the hands-on sessions.

SAP TechEd for me wasn't just a one-time feeling, I will treasure this experience forever. The things I learned and the connections I made will continue to guide me in my future journey to explore more about technology and innovation.

Meet our Demo Jam Core Team Members: Keerthana Subramani shivananda B Vinay Chowdary Maulik Parekh Ravi Kant Vikas Jangra .

To explore or if someone missed our demo please use this link to watch:

Healthy Smart Food Menu App Demo .

Some quick snaps from the Sap Tech-Ed Demo Jam.

Ravi Kant & myself with our Demo Jam Host as well as instructor craig.cmehilon the rehearsal day.

Privilege to meet juergen.mueller at backstage of the SAP Tech-Ed 2023.

Some glimpse during our SAP Demo Jam presentation on the stage.

It was great to meet organizer team chuergo16 of the SAP Tech-ed this year.

Unique opportunity to meet & discuss latest technology innovations around SAP with our favorite developer advocate team Joshua Bentley katherine.kenneally.

Thank you Mindset Consulting SAP Labs for this wonderful opportunity.

Unlocking Success with SAP: Syed's Inspiring Journey to DemoJam Triumph

2024-01-29T17:46:41.044000+01:00

Syed couldn't imagine what it would feel like to be on a big stage. He couldn’t image the wild clapping and shouting coming from a crowded room of tech enthusiasts. He couldn't imagine the feeling he would have in his stomach when the six important minutes began – his team’s six important minutes. “I just thought, how can I be so lucky?” Syed was thrilled. He was driven by the excitement of the room – and his own.

Syed used the SAP Learning site to quickly gain new skills.“It was my first time in a competition”, the 30-year-old from Bangalore recounts. With his colleague Navin, Syed presented their innovative solution addressing a supply chain problem in India: the issue of counterfeit drugs. And they did it on stage the SAP TechEd DemoJam in 2023. Six teams were given six minutes each to present their solution to a problem – live in front of hundreds of people. No mock-ups were allowed, their demo had to be flawless. “My mentor Chandramohan Sankaran, alongside my colleagues such as Kesavan and Vipin, actively contributed to my DemoJam journey. Their diligent efforts and valuable feedback significantly elevated our demo story, pushing it to new heights.” And they secured the first place in the competition.

Newfound knowledge helped clinch the victory

However, it didn’t come along that easy, the Senior Product Specialist at SAP Labs Bangalore explains. With only 15 to 20 days to prepare the demo, the duo turned to the SAP Learning site to quickly gain expertise in technologies such as SAP Cloud Application Programming Model, SAP Build Apps, SAP Build Process Automation, SAP Mobile Start, SAP S/4HANA Extension, SAP Adobe Forms, Integration and more. “The knowledge acquired played a pivotal role in delivering the best solution within the tight timeframe, ultimately leading to our success”, Syed says and adds: “I am grateful for the valuable resources provided by SAP, which significantly contributed to our achievements.”

But Syed’s dedication to staying informed about the latest technologies and innovations does not only define his professional life as a Senior Product Specialist, where he strives to staying at the forefront of SAP advancements and contributing to the development and success of SAP Business Technology Platform. It has also long permeated into his private life as well, where the father of a 3-year-old daughter feels equally excited by cheering when he's in the kitchen. “I enjoy exploring new cuisines and trying out different recipes in my kitchen”, he says, stating that he is a Biryani expert who knows his way around the famous South Indian rice dish. It’s again a testament to his love for continuous learning.

Broader skillset and industry recognition

“Learning something new has always brought about significant positive changes in my life”, Syed says. “And acquiring knowledge and skills, particularly through platforms like the SAP Learning site, has enhanced my professional competence. It fostered a mindset of continuous improvement and problem-solving, enabling me to address challenges creatively. It has broadened my skillset and positively influenced various aspects of my professional life, including networking opportunities and industry recognition. In essence, continuous learning has played a pivotal role in my overall growth and success in the dynamic field of SAP technologies.”

And for those who are still thinking about whether to make their appearance on a big stage and showcase their newfound skills, Syed has a clear message: “If I can do it – you can do it too.”

Start your own success story

Did you feel inspired by Syed’s story? Then kick-start your own success story with SAP today. Benefit from tailored and self-paced learning opportunities that meet you when and where you learn best on SAP Learning site. Get certified to demonstrate your expertise and boost your career. We are looking forward to many more great success stories!

Installing SAPRouter on Linux: A Step-by-Step Guide

2024-05-11T15:55:48.753000+02:00

What is SAP Router ?

SAPRouter is a software component used to secure communication between SAP systems and the internet. Installing SAPRouter on Linux is a crucial step in ensuring secure communication for your SAP landscape. This step-by-step guide will walk you through the installation process.

Prerequisites:

- Linux server (e.g., CentOS, Ubuntu)

- Root access to the server

- SAPRouter software package downloaded from the SAP Support Portal

Step 1: Download SAPRouter:

Download the SAPRouter software package from the SAP Support Portal. Ensure that you download the correct version for your operating system.

Step 2: Extract the SAPRouter Package:

Transfer the downloaded SAPRouter package to your Linux server. Use the following command to extract the package:

tar -xvf saprouter_<version>_linux_x86_64.tar.gz

Step 3: Create a Directory for SAPRouter:

Create a directory to store the SAPRouter files. You can use the following command to create the directory:

mkdir /usr/sap/saprouter

Step 4: Copy SAPRouter Files:

Copy the extracted SAPRouter files to the newly created directory:

cp -R <path_to_extracted_files>/saprouter /usr/sap/saprouter

Step 5: Create a Configuration File:

Create a configuration file named `saprouter.ini` in the `/usr/sap/saprouter` directory. Here's a basic example of the configuration file:

# SAProuter Configuration File

version = 39

httpport = 81

tracefile = /usr/sap/saprouter/saprouter.trc

authid = *

permit = *

Step 6: Set Permissions:

Ensure that the SAPRouter binary and configuration files have the correct permissions:

chmod 755 /usr/sap/saprouter/saprouter

chmod 644 /usr/sap/saprouter/saprouter.ini

Step 7: Start SAPRouter:

Start the SAPRouter using the following command:

/usr/sap/saprouter/saprouter -r -R /usr/sap/saprouter/saprouter.ini

Step 8: Verify SAPRouter Status:

Verify that SAPRouter is running and listening on the specified port (e.g., 81):

netstat -tuln | grep 81

Step 9: Configure Firewall:

Configure your firewall to allow incoming and outgoing traffic on the SAPRouter port (e.g., 81) to ensure proper communication.

Step 10: Configure SAP Systems:

Update the `secinfo` file of your SAP systems to include the SAPRouter details for communication through the SAPRouter.

Overall information:

By following these steps, you can successfully install SAPRouter on your Linux server. This will help secure communication between your SAP systems and the internet, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of your SAP landscape.

#SAP #SAPRouter #Linux #Installation SAP Young Thinkers #Red Hat Enterprise Linux SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SAP Women in Tech SAP Integration Suite SAP Business Application Studio @Muthumayandi_Yadava @Subramanian @Sap @YejinYun

SAP Developer News, July 11th, 2024

2024-07-11T21:10:00.130000+02:00

Podcast Version: https://podcast.opensap.info/sap-developers/2024/07/11/sap-developer-news-july11th-2024/

DESCRIPTION

SAP TechEd 2024

TechEd Event Website https://www.sap.com/events/teched.html

SAP CodeJam Latin America Roadshow

SAP CodeJam Roadshow 2024 - Latin America edition 🇧🇷 🇨🇱 🇦🇷 🇨🇴 (August 8th - 21st 2024): https://community.sap.com/t5/sap-codejam-blog-posts/sap-codejam-roadshow-2024-latin-america-edition-august-8th-21st-2024/ba-p/13710015

July Developer Challenge on “Reverse APIs” - a reminder

July Developer Challenge - "Reverse APIs" blog post https://community.sap.com/t5/application-development-blog-posts/july-developer-challenge-quot-reverse-apis-quot/ba-p/13749653

openSAP Migration to learning.sap.com

New home of openSAP content: https://learning.sap.com/courses?page=1&subtype=mooc-content

CHAPTER TITLES

0:00 Intro

0:10 SAP TechEd 2024

2:18 SAP CodeJam Latin America Roadshow

2:52 July Developer Challenge on “Reverse APIs” - a reminder

3:51 openSAP Migration to learning.sap.com

TRANSCRIPT

[Tom] Hi there everybody, I'm here with Kasimir The Cat, the official SAP TechEd mascot and she's very excited for TechEd this year, as you can tell. We're doing lots to get ready for TechEd already, even though it's several months away. We've got some great new things planned for you this year. First of all, we want to bring more of the TechEd experience to you where you're at. So as already announced, we're going to have the TechEd On Tour events. These are going to be in-person events that focus on the hands-on exercise experience and we're going to bring them to more regions of the world and work together with the user groups to bring you that experience. So be on the lookout for more details about that soon.

But of course, we also have the TechEd Virtual experience, the free online event experience, And I know our team is working really hard on content for that already. We're going to be doing a Developer Keynote Deconstructed. So throughout the two days, we're going to bring you different parts of a developer keynote highlighting major new innovations for developers in all different parts of the SAP ecosystem.

And finally, we have Devtoberfest again this year, and we're going to be bringing you Devtoberfest wrapped around TechEd, a little different this year because we're going to do two weeks before the virtual TechEd and two weeks after the virtual TechEd with Devtoberfest. That way we can help you prepare for TechEd and also do deeper dive follow-ups to some of the key TechEd content through Devtoberfest. And as always, we'll have the big contest. It will also tie into exercises from the TechEd virtual event as well. So be able to look out over the next couple of weeks for information on all these great aspects of TechEd, and also look forward to seeing more of Casimir the cat. So say goodbye, everybody. Bye, Kasimir. [Meow!]

[Antonio] Hola, SAP Developers. We are less than a month away from the start of the SAP CodeJam Roadshow in Latin America. The CodeJams we will be doing are Event-Driven Integrations with SAP Integration Suite, Advanced Event Mesh and SAP Build. In São Paulo, Brazil, it's fully booked. But we still have available spaces in the events of Santiago, Chile, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bogotá, Colombia. See you soon.

[DJ] Hello. We just wanted to quickly remind you that this month's SAP Developer Challenge on reverse APIs is well underway. What do we mean by reverse APIs? Well, basically, we get you to set up services using CAP and API endpoints in those services, and we call those endpoints automatically to check you set them up as required. There's tons to discover and learn about. By the time you see this SAP Developer News episode, we'll have released the next task, that'll be the fourth one, out of a total of 12 that you'll have to complete this month.

Next week, the tasks revolve around creating endpoints in a more plain RESTful style service. Anyway, the link to the main challenge blog post is in the description, so head on over to to the blog post now and get started with the tasks and don't forget to have fun!

[Tom] As someone who has been involved with openSAP since its very beginning, I'm happy to see that the content from openSAP lives on as a part of the SAP Learning website. Many of the courses have been migrated over to the learning site and you can now find them unified with all the other learning journeys and free content to help you prepare for certification. Now the old openSAP website is only going to be available till the end of July, so don't forget to go in and download any certifications or other completion documents that you have there. But most of the recent content is going to live on and I think we can look forward to seeing other openSAP style content in the future on the SAP Learning Platform. So be sure to check it out in its new home there.

SAP ATTP overview, Architecture and features

2024-07-15T12:55:51.577000+02:00

SAP ATTP – Overview, Features and Architecture

SAP Advanced Track and Trace for Pharmaceuticals (ATTP) is a specialized solution designed for pharmaceutical companies to effectively manage serial numbers, minimize compliance costs, and strengthen supply chain integrity. Its robust features ensure comprehensive visibility and traceability of pharmaceuticals, fully compliant with global serialization regulations.

SAP ATTP Overview

Ensuring Visibility and Traceability: SAP ATTP's primary objective is to ensure seamless visibility and traceability of pharmaceuticals by meticulously adhering to stringent global regulations on serialization, tracking, tracing, and reporting. This commitment fosters transparency, accountability, and trustworthiness throughout the entire supply chain ecosystem, ultimately enhancing the integrity and reliability of pharmaceutical products.
Overseeing Complex Supply Chains: ATTP plays a pivotal role in managing intricate supply chains, ensuring product genuineness, and mitigating risks associated with counterfeit activities or illicit diversions. This enhances brand reputation, bolsters consumer trust, and ensures stringent regulatory compliance.
Centralizing data and analytics: By centralizing product data serialization, tracking, and incorporating comprehensive reporting and analytics capabilities, SAP ATTP empowers organizations to make informed, data-driven decisions, enabling continuous improvement and operational excellence in pharmaceutical supply chain management.
Strengthening Pharmaceutical Supply Chains: Through fostering transparency, accountability, and operational excellence, SAP ATTP strengthens pharmaceutical supply chains, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements, reducing counterfeiting risks, and building enduring consumer trust in the authenticity and safety of pharmaceutical products.
Risk Mitigation: SAP ATTP employs advanced algorithms and data analytics to detect and mitigate risks associated with counterfeit products and unauthorized diversions within the supply chain. By implementing secure serialization processes and authentication mechanisms, it helps pharmaceutical companies protect their brands and maintain consumer trust in product authenticity.
Equipped with robust features and functionalities, SAP ATTP serves as a vital tool for pharmaceutical companies to streamline serialization processes, mitigate compliance risks, and enhance supply chain security, ultimately contributing to the advancement of public health and safety.

SAP ATTP Features

Serialization Management: Serialization management involves the systematic assignment and tracking of unique identifiers (e.g., serial numbers) to individual units of pharmaceutical products. It ensures compliance with global regulatory mandates by enabling precise identification and traceability throughout the supply chain.
Aggregation and Disaggregation: Aggregation refers to grouping serialized units into larger entities (e.g., bundles, cases) for streamlined handling and distribution. Disaggregation involves breaking down these larger entities into individual serialized units. These processes optimize inventory management and logistics while maintaining traceability and compliance with serialization requirements.
Regulatory Compliance: Regulatory compliance in pharmaceutical supply chains entails adhering to stringent serialization, tracking, and reporting regulations enforced by agencies such as FDA and EMA. SAP ATTP facilitates compliance by providing robust tools for data capture, audit trails, and regulatory reporting, ensuring adherence to mandated standards.
Product Traceability: Product traceability involves tracking the complete lifecycle of pharmaceutical products, from manufacturing to distribution and beyond. SAP ATTP enhances traceability by capturing and managing serialized data at every stage, enabling rapid identification and resolution of quality issues and facilitating efficient recall management.
Reporting: SAP ATTP offers advanced reporting capabilities for generating comprehensive insights into serialized product data, compliance status, and supply chain performance metrics. These reports support informed decision-making and regulatory submissions by providing actionable analytics on operational efficiencies and compliance metrics.
Integration: Integration capabilities within SAP ATTP enable seamless connectivity with ERP, MES, and logistics systems, ensuring real-time data synchronization and visibility across the supply chain. This integration facilitates efficient management of serialized product data and enhances collaboration among stakeholders in compliance and operational workflows.

Architecture of SAP – ATTP

The architecture is designed to integrate seamlessly into pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution environments, providing end-to-end visibility and control over product serialization, traceability, and compliance. Each layer plays a critical role in ensuring data integrity, regulatory compliance, operational efficiency, and secure data management throughout the product lifecycle.

Database Layer: Responsible for managing structured data storage, including serialization data (unique identifiers for products), transactional information (events related to product movements), and detailed product specifications. It ensures robust scalability to handle large volumes of data and maintains data integrity through transactional consistency and relational database management.
Application Layer: This layer hosts the core business logic and application services of SAP ATTP. It executes complex algorithms for transaction processing, manages serialization processes (assigning, capturing, and verifying unique identifiers), handles aggregation (combining serialized units into larger containers), and enforces compliance with regulatory standards (such as track-and-trace requirements).
Integration Layer: Facilitates interoperability between SAP ATTP and other enterprise systems such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), WMS (Warehouse Management Systems), and external stakeholders' systems (regulatory authorities, trading partners). It supports various communication protocols (like web services, messaging queues) to ensure seamless data exchange, synchronization of serialization data, and real-time visibility across the supply chain network.
User Interface (UI) Layer: Provides multiple interfaces (web-based, desktop, and mobile) for users to interact with SAP ATTP. It offers functionalities for managing serialization activities (such as querying and updating product traceability data), monitoring compliance status, handling exceptions (like product recalls), and generating reports on serialization performance and regulatory adherence.
Security Layer: Implements robust security measures to safeguard sensitive serialization data and ensure regulatory compliance. This includes access control mechanisms (defining user roles and permissions), encryption of sensitive data during transmission and storage, authentication (verifying user identities), and authorization (granting access based on roles and permissions).
Analytics & Reporting Layer: Utilizes data analytics tools and reporting functionalities to generate actionable insights from serialization data. It provides predefined and customizable reports on supply chain performance, compliance metrics (like adherence to serialization regulations), and trends analysis. These insights help stakeholders make informed decisions, improve operational efficiencies, and ensure continuous compliance with regulatory requirements.

MAH View for SAP ATTP Architecture

The MAH (Marketing Authorization Holder) view in SAP ATTP serves as a specialized perspective within the system, focusing on enabling marketing authorization holders to manage serialization processes efficiently, ensure regulatory compliance, and gain actionable insights into supply chain operations.

MAH View encompasses several key functionalities and perspectives tailored to the needs of the marketing authorization holders in the pharmaceutical industry:

Authorization and Access: Customizes permissions and access levels specific to the roles of marketing authorization holders, ensuring appropriate visibility and control over serialization and traceability activities within the system.
Serialization Configuration: Empowers MAHs to configure serialization parameters such as serial number formats, aggregation rules, and other settings crucial for compliance with global regulatory standards. This capability enables MAHs to adapt to varying regulatory requirements across different markets efficiently.
Compliance Management: Supports MAHs in maintaining compliance with global serialization regulations through robust tools for serialization, traceability, and compliance reporting. This includes functionalities for capturing and managing serialization data, verifying product authenticity, and responding to regulatory queries or audits effectively.
Reporting and Analytics: Provides comprehensive reporting and analytics functionalities tailored to MAHs’ needs. This includes tracking serialization activities in real-time, generating compliance reports (such as serialization status reports and audit trails), and analysing supply chain performance to identify opportunities for optimization and regulatory adherence.

Registration For SAP TechEd Virtual In 2024 Is Now Live!

2024-07-25T13:19:14.891000+02:00

It’s time to bring out your best again and join us for this year’s SAP TechEd Virtual! The high-energy, interactive and virtual experience is accessible to everyone and will take place on October 8-9, 2024. Spoiler: Registrants will benefit from an amazing goodie this year – so read on!

Here’s what you can expect from SAP TechEd Virtual

SAP TechEd is all about innovation and collaboration. By joining the virtual experience, you can gain the skills and expertise needed to advance your career and help your organization thrive using SAP technologies. Get ready to explore new tech, learn from industry leaders, and discover best practices from SAP experts and partners. Plus: Hear firsthand customer accounts and join a vibrant, growing community of peers.

Deep dive into 6 SAP TechEd tracks

At SAP TechEd Virtual, you can choose from six content tracks covering SAP technologies, products, and solutions, each offering a variety of sessions and formats:

Digital Transformation with Cloud ERP

SAP Business Technology Platform – General

Application Development and Automation

Data and Analytics

Integration

Artificial Intelligence

As always, the packed agenda includes keynotes, expert sessions with our Developer Advocates, lectures, and more. The full session catalog will be available on August 15, 2024.

SAP TechEd goes on tour

To continue your learning journey beyond SAP TechEd Virtual, you can also participate in one of our in-person SAP TechEd on Tour stops and an additional event hosted by SAPinsider EMEA.

Get excited for Devtoberfest

Can’t get enough of SAP TechEd? Then don’t worry, we've got you covered. To extend the spirit of SAP TechEd even further and enable everyone in executing sought-after development skills all year round, Devtoberfest will become Devtoberfest by SAP TechEd and take place September 23 - October 4 and October 14 - 25. Block your calendars today to learn, code, collaborate, and earn the chance to win the grand prize!

Register now and get an exclusive discount!

We know that learning is vital – now more than ever. As an SAP TechEd Virtual registrant, you can take advantage of an exciting package of curated learning, engagement, and solution experience offerings, including a 25% discount on SAP Learning Hub.

Register today for SAP TechEd Virtual, secure your discount and stay tuned for the go-live of the SAP TechEd Learning zone on August 15, where you can acquire in-demand skills and prepare for a globally recognized certification with self-paced learning to boost your career.

See you all at SAP TechEd Virtual!