AI and IoT at SAP - Yin and Yang

During the 2017 SAPPHIRE NOW conference SAP advised the greatly surprised target audience approximately how they associated some dots to create better fee and further smart corporation applications for their customers.

In essence SAP lifted the veil on how the agency will skip in advance with technology at the manner to dominate the following years and which might be broadly speakme handled as one-of-a-type topics.

But which, in essence, are like yin and yang.

I speak approximately AI and device getting to know on one hand, and IoT at the alternative.

SAP has been fairly quiet on the former and fairly vocal on the latter, although the first announcement was about machine learning powered intelligent business applications, back in November 2016. At that time SAP announced the availability of the machine learning platform for SAPPHIRE NOW 2017.

After this, SAP announced SAP Leonardo, the bundling of their IoT portfolio back in January 2017.

On day 1 of SAPPHIRE NOW SAP introduced at the November promise through saying ?It?S time for system learning to take the workout of your paintings waft. It?S time for billions of devices to transport from questioning, to doing. It?S time for SAP Leonardo, the SAP system for digital innovation.?

With this approach they even pass beyond quality connecting technologies however similarly they upload Blockchain, Big Data, Data Intelligence and Analytics into one unmarried platform. Whereas one have to argue that Big Data, Data Intelligence and Analytics are essentially the same.

With this powerful combination, as Holger Mueller, Principal Analyst of Constellation Research, aptly observed, ‘technology for the first time can do more than business best practices want’.

To accommodate for this, SAP delivered consulting factors into the contemporary Leonardo logo.

This makes SAP Leonardo more of a toolkit than an actual answer, but a toolkit that SAP proved to help fixing unique enterprise troubles in short times.

In the phrases of Mala Anand, president for SAP Leonardo: ?SAP Leonardo is our emblem range but to deliver transformation at scale we need greater than IT so we?Ve multiplied SAP Leonardo to be our virtual innovation device to help you, with a bit of success, redefine your business business enterprise for this virtual worldwide.?

A awesome flow.

As I already indicated, AI and IoT are like Yin and Yang. They are sides of the equal factor. While present day ?Matters? Are specially sensors they will be developing a great amount of records that wants to be analysed for the styles that allow for smart action and response. This big quantity of information additionally explains why SAP moved Big Data, Data Intelligence and Analytics into SAP Leonardo.

In not to date future those ?Matters? Will now not only be sensors but also be actuators, approach take motion ? Self-driving motors are handiest the most noted theme here. There may be many extra. This is where the ?Things? Start the doing. And a variety of those ?Matters? May be inside the boundary of corporations, SAP?S center area.

Although SAP also moves into consumer technologies, e.g. automated cars.

Finally, SAP introduced Blockchain into the combination. This without a doubt rounds off the device kit, as it is a security generation this is geared for putting in agree with ? First among structures and then via making the systems trustworthy to people. More mature safety era is added thru the SAP Cloud Platform that is the muse of SAP Leonardo.

With this set of technology plus a technique round them that allows in fixing issues speedy, SAP has some issue reachable that could hardly ever be overvalued.

At this time I do no longer see the other huge organization software providers having something of comparable capability handy, no longer Oracle, now not Salesforce, even now not Microsoft, which might be closest to be there.

Now, after those sparkling words there of route are a few buts.

The first one is that there now can be some confusion about what SAP Leonardo stands for. Originally it was about ‘connecting intelligent devices with people and processes to achieve tangible business outcomes’. Now it is far more, and not only a technology anymore. While this shift is in my eyes straightforward, I would expect that it still needs some education.

The 2nd, and greater crucial one, being that there are infinite unique IoT platforms obtainable within the marketplace. There hasn?T been lots of standardization yet and interoperability between those structures is also however in its infancy. And SAP despite the fact that has the popularity of being tough to paintings with, that's a clear inhibitor on the manner to turning into the leading canine on this market. Similarly for the Blockchain generation. There are quite some groups of businesses searching for to get proper into a dominant function, with inter-enterprise interoperation being very confined.

On the other hand there are only few companies that can move with a similar thrust. One of them being Google, who just announced during the Google I/O conference that they will weave AI and machine learning into their products, around 2 billion of which happen to be the ‘things’ called smartphones. And Google has quite some interesting consumer use cases.

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