SAP TechEd is an annual conference organized by SAP. It is designed for developers, technology professionals, and business stakeholders to come together and learn about the latest SAP technologies, strategies, and innovations. Attendees can attend sessions, workshops, and hands-on training to enhance their technical skills, network with other professionals, and stay on top of the latest developments in SAP technology.

Photo courtesy of SAP

This year, SAP TechEd Virtual took place on November 2 and 3. The keynote speech was given by SAP Chief Technology Offer and Executive Board Member Juergen Mueller. Other senior executives contributed to the event, and thousands of people participated virtually from dozens of countries. The event featured hundreds of sessions, including keynotes, presentations, and hands-on workshops.

In SAP’s own words, “SAP’s mission is to make the world run better and improve people’s lives. As we work to fulfill this purpose each day, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) serves as the unified platform that enables our customers to accelerate their innovation with application development, integration, automation, data and analytics, and AI capabilities.” At SAP TechEd 2023, SAP announced numerous innovations that will help companies and developers simplify the implementation and delivery of new technologies, apps, and custom development. The result will be shorter time and cost to realize business value.

Major announcements at TechEd include the following:

• SAP Build Code – a generative AI-powered application development solution, built on SAP BTP and optimized for Java and JavaScript development. It has embedded generative AI capabilities with Joule, SAP’s copilot, and delivers a turn-key environment for coding, testing, integrations, and application lifecycle management.

• AI Foundation on SAP BTP – billed as SAP’s “generative AI one-stop shop” for developers to build and extend applications powered by AI on SAP BTP. With AI Foundation, developers will have everything they need to quickly include business-ready AI into their applications. The platform includes the following capabilities:

• • AI services
  • Generative AI management
  • AI workload management
  • Access to business data and context
  • Lifecycle management based on SAP AI Core, SAP AI Launchpad, and SAP HANA Cloud

• SAP Datasphere – enhancements announced to further improve business data management, including an open data ecosystem that equips organizations to provide data to consumers of data with business context and logic intact.

• SAP HANA Cloud Vector Engine – introduces innovative capabilities for managing unstructured data in generative AI applications, set to launch in Q1 2024. This technology paves the way for developers and customers to interact with SAP using natural language, simplifying interactions with large language models (LLMs), private business data, and custom applications. The user experience will be like that with ChatGPT. In other words, soon SAP customers will be able to ask SAP to run a process or provide information using everyday language.

Photo courtesy of SAP

What does it mean for my organization?

The updates shared at SAP TechEd 2023 make it clear that SAP is rapidly innovating, offering cutting-edge AI products that promise to simplify and automate technical development as well as business user activities. The AI technologies that are sweeping the tech world are coming to SAP and will greatly improve user experience while driving business value.

Imagine being able to create a purchase order on your phone with a simple voice command spoken in natural language. Imagine being able to requisition, procure, receive, invoice, and pay for raw materials or office supplies with a fraction of the human touch points required today. Imagine being able to ask SAP to generate a spend report for your top 10 suppliers by region and to merge that private business data with publicly available data. These groundbreaking improvements are coming soon. As always, Vortex Consulting is ready to assist you with your technology roadmap. Contact us to talk about how we can support your organization with its SAP needs.