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SAP reveals new generative AI capabilities and advancements

SAP unveiled a range of new generative AI features and improvements at its SAP TechEd event in 2023, aiming to help developers of all levels to boost their businesses in the AI era.
SAP reveals new generative AI capabilities and advancements

Company CTO and executive board member, Juergen Mueller, said that every developer needs to be an AI developer in today's fast-changing technology and business environment.

“The innovations we’re launching at SAP TechEd, from AI-infused pro-code tools to a one-stop shop to create generative AI extensions and applications on SAP Business Technology Platform, supporting the developers at the heart of the AI revolution and providing them with resources they need to transform the way businesses run.”

SAP also announced Build Code solutions, which are designed to facilitate collaboration between professional and citizen developers.

These solutions are based on the low-code solutions that were introduced at TechEd in 2022 and are tailored for SAP applications and the ecosystem. They offer AI-powered productivity tools for developers, optimised for Java and JavaScript development.

New AI assistant

They also leverage SAP's new generative AI copilot Joule, which can understand business needs and generate code for data model, application logic and test script creation.

Good data is the foundation of good AI, and SAP HANA Cloud continues to pioneer innovation in the data space by adding new vector database features to its multi-model offerings at no additional cost.

Vector data stores manage unstructured data – such as text, images or audio – to provide long-term memory and better context to AI models. This makes it easy to find and retrieve similar objects quickly. For example, users can search for suppliers based on the language in their contracts to examine payment history and trace individual orders.

These powerful new vector database features enhance interactions between large language models and an organisation’s mission-critical data. The innovation helps put SAP developers at the forefront of delivering radically new levels of data insight within a secure, private framework that uses industry-specific customer data to reduce hallucinations.

AI Foundation on SAP BTP, a new one-stop shop for developers to create AI- and generative AI-powered extensions and applications on SAP BTP, will further help increase developers’ impact and efficiency.

AI foundation includes everything developers need to start creating business-ready AI tools on SAP BTP – from ready-to-use AI services and access to the top large language models to vector database capabilities and AI runtime and lifecycle management.

Role-based certification alongside existing training

The rapid pace of technological innovation has driven up global demand for skilled developers – and SAP is increasing its learning opportunities in tandem. As part of a commitment to upskill two million professionals by 2025 and complement free AI learning content already available, SAP today launched new role-based certification and free learning resources for back-end developers using the ABAP Cloud development model.

The two new learning resources covering ABAP development tools on SAP BTP and SAP S/4HANA are available on the SAP Learning site. They are designed for agile and cloud-compliant business transformation, providing developers with skills to build cloud-ready extensions that are aligned with SAP’s clean core strategy.

SAP has joined the Stanford HAI (Institute for Human-Centred AI) Corporate Affiliate Program. Researchers and engineers at SAP will work with the Stanford academic community, including research faculty and students, on the intersection of generative AI and business.

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