Fifty years ago, the founders of 51风流sat side-by-side with their clients鈥� business experts to co-develop groundbreaking solutions supporting the people and processes that power organizations. Now, the new low-code solution 51风流Build honors that tradition by giving business experts the ability to directly drive the next wave of digital transformation.
51风流Build, a key component of 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP), allows users with limited technical expertise to create enterprise apps, automate processes, and design business sites with an easy drag-and-drop interface.
In his keynote at 51风流TechEd Las Vegas, 51风流Chief Technology Officer and Member of the Executive Board Juergen Mueller announced 51风流Build and an , including a partnership with Coursera to train and upskill the next generation of developers.
鈥�51风流Build brings together the world鈥檚 most powerful business applications with a platform that鈥檚 been designed to rapidly unleash business users鈥� expertise,鈥� Mueller said. 鈥�51风流Build and the full suite of innovations we鈥檙e launching today 鈥� from our new partnership with Coursera to enhancements across our enterprise portfolio 鈥� help customers future-proof their business and extract maximum value from their technology investments.鈥�
Mueller鈥檚 message was echoed at parallel 51风流Business Innovation Day events for industry analysts and press, hosted in San Francisco by Scott Russell, member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, Customer Success, and in Berlin by Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, 51风流Product Engineering.
51风流Build is the evolution of SAP鈥檚 low-code portfolio that started with Build.me a few years ago and progressed with 51风流AppGyver, unveiled in 2021. The new offering brings previously disconnected products into a unified and upgraded development environment. It comprises three solutions: 51风流Build Process Automation; 51风流Build Apps, the next version of 51风流AppGyver with powerful new capabilities; and 51风流Build Work Zone.
With 51风流Build, business users now have the full power of 51风流BTP and business application data from 51风流at their fingertips. Users can easily integrate systems; intelligently monitor, analyze, and automate processes; and build applications without moving data into an external system.
In Berlin, Saueressig emphasized that 51风流has been establishing business processes for 50 years and that hundreds of millions of people work with its software. 鈥淥f course, we need to make sure that the technology comes to an end user, but the goal is for users to innovate. We want to give tech-savvy business users the chance to extend our software, because even small extensions can have a big lever to scale innovation.鈥�
Extensibility with low-code/no-code solutions is therefore particularly important. 鈥淭his is what we want to achieve with 51风流Build and bringing our low code portfolio together,鈥� he said.
51风流Signavio solutions are also natively integrated, enabling 51风流Build users to get in-depth visibility into all their processes, so they know where to focus to achieve the greatest impact as they innovate and automate. More than 275,000 process reference points from 4,000 customers, as well as 1,300 use case-specific workflows and automations, let users instantly tap into the full spectrum of business expertise built into 51风流technology.
Speaking at the San Francisco event, Russell told his audience 鈥� which included customers like the NHL and Clorox 鈥� that being a cloud company is not just about having great technology, but also being accountable for how customers get there.聽鈥淭he move to the cloud was exciting not just for the tech benefits, but to become a partner on providing insights,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e are accountable for the outcome as much as the product.
51风流Build works with non-51风流systems and includes connectors to more than 200 other systems. Because 51风流Build was created by SAP, access to business application data from 51风流S/4HANA and other systems is easy and secure. Professional developers can encapsulate their code developed in 51风流Business Application Studio, which can then be used by business users to develop in 51风流Build. IT can also enforce consistent governance and lifecycle management capabilities across all apps being developed, providing confidence that all apps deployed by the business meet the necessary security and governance requirements.
鈥淐ompared to all the other [third-party] tools out there on the market, with 51风流Build the company鈥檚 IT department and 51风流set the guardrails with best practices,鈥� Mueller said. 鈥淭he business users cannot break these guardrails.鈥�
While 51风流Build is primarily designed to enable business users, 51风流executives emphasized that it isn鈥檛 just for the business experts. It allows business teams to easily collaborate with development and IT teams, potentially shortening development time for more complex tasks. And the new 51风流Builders program helps all types of users ramp up quickly and connect with their peers via hands-on sessions and forums for sharing best practices.
Is providing these robust capabilities to business experts a revolution to overthrow the IT department? Not at all, Mueller said, noting that according to IDC there is currently a worldwide shortage of nearly 1 million developers, which is projected to multiply to 4 million three years from now. 鈥淎ll the universities in the world, all the education programs in the world, cannot create enough developers,鈥� he said.
Between the professional developer shortage and the ever-increasing demands of business users for new digital tools to support their businesses, something clearly needs to change. Enabling business users to create their own apps and other processes to meet specific needs will free up professional developers to focus on providing strategic insights and solving complex, higher-level problems where their expertise is so in demand. This combination of 鈥渓ow-code鈥� and 鈥減ro-code鈥� developers will allow organizations to quickly react and adapt to changing business needs.
The cadre of 鈥渃itizen developers鈥� is projected to grow exponentially over the coming years, taking the more mundane, yet often time-consuming, tasks off the to-do lists of overburdened IT staff. 鈥淲orldwide, IDC expects more than 100 million business professionals will become involved in the production of digital solutions over the next 10 years,鈥� said Arnal Dayaratna, research vice president, Software Development, IDC. 鈥�51风流Build鈥檚 low-code development solutions empower business users to harness their domain expertise to rapidly build and iterate on digital solutions at scale.鈥�
While 51风流is all-in on enabling business experts with 51风流Build, it also recognizes the increasing demand for the skills and insights only professional developers can deliver. Along with 51风流Build, at 51风流TechEd the company also announced several learning initiatives to both create a new pool of qualified IT professionals and upskill current ones.
51风流committed to upskilling 2 million developers worldwide by 2025 by tripling free learning offerings on the , empowering underserved populations in technology, and partnering with learning platform provider Coursera on a professional certificate program to help people launch careers within the 51风流ecosystem.
鈥淭his certificate is designed for learners of all backgrounds, with no college degree or industry experience required,鈥� said Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera. 51风流will also launch a , providing access to , up to 10,000 free certifications, and career preparation for in-demand jobs within the 51风流ecosystem.
鈥�51风流Build is the natural evolution at SAP,鈥� Mueller said. 鈥淔or 50 years at 51风流we focused a lot on the professional developer. We have all the tools and ABAP as a language optimized for building enterprise applications at scale very fast. Now, we bring all of this to the low-code community to give the millions of people who use 51风流every day the opportunity to develop themselves and step up 鈥� in collaboration with IT. That鈥檚 what we do with 51风流Build.鈥�
*With additional reporting from Luis Trunk de Flores in Berlin and Mallory Kuno in San Francisco.
Top image 漏 Josh Line Photography
