At a time when enterprise IT vendors were unsuccessfully trying to incorporate the latest AI technologies into their platforms, SAP turned to veteran IBM Watson.
SAP has signed a partnership with IBM to embed IBM Watson into SAP Start, the search interface for SAP cloud applications, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
New IBM Watson integrations are aimed at helping users be more productive with both natural language capabilities and predictive insights.
SAP CEO Christian Klein said in a press release:
According to the company, SAP Start’s new digital assistant capabilities extend across SAP applications to help users answer questions and automate or speed up common tasks. IBM Watson is now available on SAP Concur’s TripIt mobile app to help you make travel-related decisions.
AI-related shoes are more likely to drop for SAP. At his Q1 2023 earnings call in April, Klein hinted that ChatGPT news could appear at his SAP Sapphire conference.
Jump on the AI bandwagon
According to Ray Wang, founder and analyst at Constellation, SAP has been trying to leverage IBM Watson capabilities for some time, as demonstrated by its SAP Concur integration, but now it’s taking advantage of those capabilities. It looks like you are trying to extend to other industry use cases. research.
“This is a generative AI moment where SAP is leveraging AI and answering questions about whether SAP has an AI-enabled solution,” said Wang. “Why not go with him, one of our biggest partners who have been doing this for a while, and take advantage of it to start a conversation about AI and what they can offer within SAP systems.”
But the partnership appears meant to assure investors that SAP is on the AI bandwagon, said Joshua Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting.
IBM Watson is a “failed technology” that has shown little interest from enterprise customers over the years, he said.
AI in general does not appear to be a high priority for SAP customers, Greenbaum said, adding that a recent survey by members of the SAP user group in the Americas puts AI and machine learning on the list of key technologies. It showed that it was in the 11th.
Nevertheless, he said, SAP appears to be trying to prove its commitment to AI integration.
“They’re certainly trying to line up a series of AI ducks featuring Sapphire, but this is a message to Wall Street to let them know they’re doing something like this.” It’s blockchain and crypto iterations. We’re not going to change revenue streams or customer success, just to make SAP look good to investors.”
IBM Watson needs to prove its claims
IBM Watson was built as a natural language processing and knowledge modeling system that debuted on a quiz show in 2011. Danger!, where they defeated two former champions. IBM later commercialized it as a healthcare product, but Watson was never widely adopted.
IBM overestimated Watson’s ability to get the answers healthcare researchers need in fields such as cancer research, says co-founder of Diginomica, an analytics site focused on enterprise industries. says Jon Reed.
IBM Watson is getting a bit of a bad rap as IBM works to develop useful features for IBM, including applications like weather forecasting, tax preparation, and advertising.
“They took an ambitious undertaking with Watson, but they took a step back and started using it in a more practical way,” he said.
SAP needs to work on finding ways to make these features work for their customers.
“SAP will be working on its own AI development,” says Reed. “But even if IBM has high-profile issues with Watson, they’ve been working on it for a long time, and they’re mature enough with some of the tools.”
For example, IBM Watson is used for HR applications, providing a self-service interface that allows users to streamline and simplify tasks such as onboarding.
“Some people find it useful to have an interactive front end on top of their application, but I’m not sure everyone will like it. It’s going to depend a little bit,” says Reed. “SAP may see an opportunity there to make the SAP Start application environment easier to navigate.”
Generative AI will undoubtedly be a big topic for Sapphire, but SAP’s challenge will be to distinguish its product from all the other AI rollouts enterprise vendors are doing, he said. I was.
“On the one hand, it gives our customers peace of mind knowing that a trusted partner is investing in AI,” said Reid. “But on the other hand, figuring out which vendor is the most advanced, has the most useful applications, and what the customer’s ROI will be for her poses a huge valuation problem.”
Jim O’Donnell is a senior news writer covering ERP and other enterprise applications for TechTarget Editorial.
