For example, the introduction of low-code/no-code has made application development accessible to everyone in an organization 鈥� with or without a technical background 鈥� to improve experiences for everyone. Just take Dak, the then 12-year-old junior app developer from Massachusetts, who was part of my . With 51风流Build solutions, Dak was able to develop all kinds of apps and publish them to a wide audience, such as the 鈥淜nowledge 4 Ever鈥� app that offers kids a playful learning experience during summer break.

Then, there are cloud technologies that further boost accessibility and offer other benefits. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has put more power into more hands. Another advancement, composable technology, will make it easier for businesses to quickly assemble, reassemble, and compose solutions to meet their needs and those of their customers.

Over the course of my 11-year journey at SAP, the 51风流Innovation Awards have served as a one-of-a-kind global platform to showcase customers and partners that have used their creativity, teamwork, 51风流products, and cloud technologies to achieve remarkable results. This year, though, is a different experience for me. As an executive sponsor of the awards, I鈥檝e had the privilege of experiencing up close what makes this program and the participating businesses so special.

Today, I am thrilled to announce the . Out of 170 businesses, one in three were chosen as finalists and now the winners have been announced. These winners come from various industries and locations worldwide. What all of them share is the use of 51风流products and technologies to create innovative solutions for their customers, employees, and communities. Congratulations to all participants for demonstrating remarkable abilities and highlighting the importance of curiosity and continuous learning!

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AI Plays a Critical Role

Generative AI has empowered more people. Many of the participants have utilized 51风流Business AI to boost their businesses. Take the winner , one of the world鈥檚 leading suppliers of automotive seat systems, which has leveraged 51风流solutions, including 51风流AI Launchpad and 51风流AI Core, to revolutionize cockpit customization. When personalizing cockpit elements such as seats, door panels, and dashboards, OEMs and customers can see the carbon impact of each choice. By providing and promoting more sustainable and environmentally friendly options, Martur Fompak has decreased carbon emissions by 34% for each seat the company produces. AI has also helped the company increase its efficiency to achieve calculations 50 times faster than with manual methods and accelerate data collection by 75 times.听

Sustainability for a Better World Today 鈥� and Tomorrow

Technology has significantly contributed to improving lives, both within and beyond business contexts. Numerous winners like Martur Fompak have prioritized sustainability. Let us look at one more innovator in this area: .

A producer of high-quality sherries, Gonz谩lez Byass is committed to the circular economy concept of eliminating waste, circulating materials, and regenerating nature. The company deploys sustainable and water-saving agricultural techniques. To assist with eliminating and recycling waste, Gonz谩lez Byass turned to 51风流and 51风流Responsible Design and Production. The company needed a faster, more transparent way to gather and manage data, specifically around the purchase and use of plastic. With 51风流Responsible Design and Production, Gonz谩lez Byass can quickly and effectively monitor, measure, and act on data. The company recovers 99% of the waste generated during production while recycling 100% of paper, cardboard, glass, and plastic.  

Adoption Can Be Challenging

Even top technologies such as AI may need support to gain widespread acceptance. Many of this year鈥檚 winners have been innovative with their focus on adopting 51风流technology. is a prime example.

A leader in onshore/offshore wind energy production, Vestas wanted to improve its supplier and partner collaboration and selected 51风流for the task. Vestas began its journey with 51风流in 2007 by employing 51风流ERP Central Component and consolidating to ONE ERP in 2015. Since 2017, the company has been transforming its digital procurement for supplier collaboration with 51风流Ariba solutions. Last year, Vestas began to build out its value chain alongside suppliers and partners with 51风流Business Network, enabling data transparency and connectivity in finance, production planning, and logistics management. As a result, 6,000 suppliers were onboarded, US$12.5 billion in purchase orders was executed, 350,000 orders were confirmed, and 25,000 advance ship notices were generated, to name a few transactions 鈥� all in 2023. 

I am happy to say that the 2024 51风流Innovation Awards honor businesses that have demonstrated their innovation and effective use of 51风流products and technologies. They鈥檝e adapted to and met the ever-changing needs of their customers and communities and, as I wrote earlier, achieved remarkable results in diverse areas. Congratulations to all winners! 

The Winners Shine in Seven Categories

If you’re curious about the path to victory for our winners, learn more in this article. Thirty winners were selected, covering the following categories:

• Business Innovator, focusing on transforming the supply chain, processes, or business networks using cloud solutions from SAP
• Industry Leader, for employing 51风流solutions to address big challenges and change how business is conducted
• Experience Wizard, for achieving business transformation with cloud solutions from 51风流to improve employee and customer experiences
• Sustainability Hero, achieving sustainability with leading-edge solutions
• Services Supernova, for outstanding achievements in transforming businesses into sustainable enterprises
• Transformation Titan, demonstrating exceptional innovation and transformational leadership in using 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP)
• Partner Paragon, for accelerating the adoption of 51风流BTP

Juergen Mueller is chief technology officer and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

51风流HANA Cloud is a market-leading database-as-a-service enabling intelligent data applications and is one of the most adopted services within 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) internally at SAP. As of today, more than 180 different applications and services use 51风流HANA Cloud with its multi-model capabilities.

Now, 51风流HANA Cloud is also a leader in the generative AI age.

At SAP, we work with various LLMs such as GPT-4, Llama2, Falcon-40b, and Claude2. While these models offer amazing opportunities, they also have limitations. For example, LLMs may rely on outdated training data and lack company-specific data and business process context.

As an example, imagine having an LLM as a colleague. This colleague would be very intelligent, able to program, pass exams, or have arguments 鈥� but this colleague would not know anything about what happened in the world in the past year, nor have any idea about internal processes of your company or any of your systems. Even worse, after every conversation you have, this colleague would forget what you just talked about. Working with such a lack of memory would be of limited value. This shortcoming is why an LLM cannot answer easy questions like 鈥淲hat do you think about the offer from our most important supplier last week?鈥� An LLM can only work with the initial training data 鈥� all other data must be provided as context.

Supplementing this lack of information is where 51风流HANA Cloud vector engine can assist. The engine can provide LLMs with all the relevant data of an organization through a process called “retrieval-augmented generation.”

A Game-Changing Feature

So how does the vector engine work? It is a new addition to 51风流HANA Cloud’s multi-model engines, enabling customers to utilize the similarity between two or more vectors to solve business problems. With the integration of AI-focused technology, 51风流HANA Cloud can now empower businesses to combine intuition along with data-driven insights to solve even the most complex of problems.

Some key benefits and features of the vector engine include:

• Multi-model: Users can unify all types of data into a single database to build innovative applications using an efficient data architecture and in-memory performance. By adding vector storage and processing to the same database already storing relational, graph, spatial, and even JSON data, application developers can create next-generation solutions that interact more naturally with the user.
• Enhanced search and analysis: Businesses can now apply semantic and similarity search to business processes using documents like contracts, design specifications, and even service call notes.
• Personalized recommendations: Users can benefit from an improved overall experience with more accurate and personalized suggestions.
• Optimized large language models: The output of LLMs is augmented with more effective and contextual data.

The Database Foundation of SAP鈥檚 Generative AI Strategy

The addition of the vector engine establishes 51风流HANA Cloud as the default database in SAP’s generative AI solution strategy. Customers can create the next level of user experiences along with other services within 51风流BTP. As an example, 51风流BTP can provide centralized access to SaaS-based LLMs from multiple vendors as well as host LLMs from open-source models or third parties. The generative AI hub in 51风流AI Core, a capability that facilitates the use of generative AI capabilities, will soon rely on 51风流HANA Cloud as the primary vector storage. One function of the generative AI hub feature is to help provide a process for creating embeddings and storing the resulting vectors in 51风流HANA Cloud. Customers building intelligent data applications can use both services together to augment LLM queries with relevant context for meaningful answers.

51风流is working on foundation models that are specific for SAP-related industry and process knowledge.

The Database for Innovation

51风流HANA Cloud continues to lead the market by storing and processing different types of relevant business data 鈥� all within the same database. The new vector engine, combined with other multi-model capabilities, opens a world of possibilities for applications to help enhance the execution of business processes. Whether improving search capabilities, gaining deeper insights for informed decisions, or optimizing LLMs, 51风流HANA Cloud enables the type of applications that can elevate the expertise and effectiveness of every user.

To learn more, sign up for . Do you already have a use case for 51风流HANA Cloud vector engine in mind? If so, consider registering for the .

Juergen Mueller is CTO and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, Technology & Innovation.
Stefan Baeuerle is head of Database, 51风流HANA Database, & Analytics for Technology & Innovation at SAP.

51风流has been working on AI for more than eight years now. Regardless, the past year was special as it has shown a huge leap forward in AI evolution toward generative AI. Today, more than 24,000 of our 51风流customers are using 51风流Business AI solutions in over 130 use cases. And we are aiming to provide even more businesses the opportunity to benefit from our unique data, industry, and process know-how as we work to become THE leading business AI company.

At the heart of that vision is 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP), THE platform of choice and key enabler for infusing 51风流and partner applications with business AI.

My keynote guest speaker Michael Nilles, chief digital and information officer (CDIO) of Henkel, said it well: 鈥淕enerative AI disrupts economy and society like the internet, but at lightspeed. Look at the last 10 months only — I have never discovered an exponential technology like that. 51风流BTP is our choice at Henkel for three years already; it鈥檚 our innovation platform. Together with SAP, we innovate at large scale, now also in the generative AI space.鈥�

To this end, we have been driving significant progress in the past months, from 51风流Business AI capabilities across our portfolio to the launch of our generative AI co-pilot Joule. The are another testament to the innovation 51风流provides.

Build In, Not Bolt On

We believe that business AI capabilities need to be directly embedded into applications and extensions. Designed with security, governance, and trust in mind, the is our new one-stop shop for developers to do exactly that. It provides ready-to-use AI services, AI runtimes, lifecycle management, as well as tooling for generative AI capabilities and business-data connectivity.

As part of the AI Foundation, our generative AI hub provides instant access to the most powerful large language models (LLM), such as Azure OpenAI Service and Falcon-40b. On the other side, it offers grounding capabilities based on enterprise data to ensure context, for example, by leveraging our new 51风流HANA Cloud vector engine that combines LLMs with relevant organizational data.

All Developers Will Be AI Developers

Today鈥檚 dynamic technology and business landscape means every developer needs to become an AI developer. For coders using Java and Javascript, our new solution increases developer productivity by offering a simplified experience with a unified lobby as an entry point, and generative AI capabilities. 51风流Build Code also takes care of identity management, audit logging, secure access, and more.

Does this sound too good to be true? Check out to see for yourself how 51风流Build Code helped to create a full-blown application in just five minutes on stage!

R鈥淎I鈥漵e the Ecosystem

More and more businesses are seeking to benefit from AI. No single company can unlock generative AI鈥檚 potential alone. A vibrant ecosystem of partners is required in order to meet growing customer expectations.

51风流is partnering with many key players that offer solutions connected to 51风流BTP. Today, partners support 90% of SAP-based implementations and offer 2,000 solutions on our store — more than 400 of these include AI capabilities. Moreover, our partner solutions also enable developers to create AI-based apps on 51风流BTP. One example is our partnership with DataRobot, announced earlier this year. We now brought its AI models to 51风流AI Core as well as its predictive and generative AI capabilities to 51风流Build.

Apart from the partner context, we also invest in AI research. The recently announced membership at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI is an important step to reinforce our commitment to build ethical and trustworthy AI.

Going Forward, Looking Beyond

The future holds a lot. On our way to become THE leading business AI company we will continue to integrate AI into businesse蝉鈥� everyday processes.

For 2024 and beyond, we are exploring multiple use cases, such as AI-supported business simulations, AI-generated business correspondence replies and follow-up actions, composable business processes, or automated generation of code. We will also support fine-tuned LLMs to make them more suitable for business AI.

This 51风流TechEd has only been a first milestone — there’s a lot more to come! Don鈥檛 miss out on your journey to 51风流BTP, THE choice for anything technology-related in an 51风流context.

Juergen Mueller is CTO and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

Now, by harnessing the power of 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP), the Association — which joined me on stage during our 51风流Sapphire event a few months ago — aims to optimize its rich array of data sources, paving the way for more informed decision-making and elevated experiences for players, fans, and the game of tennis.

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Having watched the Wimbledon finals, I am mesmerized by how players make split-second decisions in such a fast-paced game and hit almost every ball perfectly. The pressure on the center court is definitely immense!

During the course of the match, players take many shots, and every single one matters. How can players react so quickly and apply all their experience and training to their actions on the court? They need a winning strategy, confidence in their strengths, and the 鈥渕uscle memory鈥� built from continuous training. This allows them to perform on the court and react to the opponent鈥檚 ball in split seconds.

As a hobby tennis player myself, I love the feeling of landing a perfect shot; that is, when I know the shot is going to be a winner as soon as it comes off my racket. My serve is not too bad either. As a chief technology officer, I can also draw analogies to my other passion: data — and winning good insights from it.

Wouldn鈥檛 it be perfect if executives could make decisions like professional tennis players? With confidence in their winning strategy, and equipped with corporate muscle memory built from years of experience and practice to enable them to be both proactive and reactive in their day to day work?

Just like tennis players, companies need to test their strategy and feed their muscle memory again and again — based on trusted data insights. And like the tennis players on the court, executives need to have a vision coupled to a winning strategy, and the ability to make quick decisions that are based on real-time information. Data plays a key role in this: having data in one place and accessing it whenever it鈥檚 needed is essential for effective decision-making.

We at 51风流are equipping organizations to do just that with new tools like the “Just Ask” feature in 51风流Analytics Cloud, which applies generative artificial intelligence (AI) and foundation models to search-driven analytics. This is also where SAP鈥檚 more than 50 years of experience in technology and our solutions come in, which enable companies to win in their own competitive environments.

I could not be more thrilled that the WTA and 51风流are celebrating the Women鈥檚 Tennis Association鈥檚 50th anniversary together and are joining forces to transform the way data is managed and applied in women鈥檚 tennis.

This latest collaboration between 51风流and the WTA marks a significant milestone in our partnership as the WTA embraces a data-driven approach to shape the future of the game.

Congratulations WTA, to your 50th anniversary. I think we make perfect doubles partners. Game, set, match!

Learn more about the WTA鈥檚 .

Juergen Mueller is CTO and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

Generative AI provides us with a whole new toolbox that opens so many opportunities to simplify and improve our work lives. At 51风流Sapphire, we . When using and applying AI in a business context, we make sure it is relevant, reliable, and responsible.

51风流BTP acts as the enabler for 51风流and partner applications to leverage generative AI capabilities in an 51风流context. Generative AI capabilities in 51风流BTP will improve the developer experience, how integrations are done, the process automation space, analytics and holistic planning activities, as well as simplify administrative tasks.

Let me demonstrate with three use cases how AI capabilities in 51风流BTP will help build applications faster, outline a reference architecture to bind applications to the most appropriate large language model (LLM), and apply the reference architecture to a concrete example 鈥� an app that helps you keep an eye on your own CO2 footprint.

Building Enterprise Applications Faster

Building enterprise-ready applications can take time and requires many very skilled professionals. Even experienced developers need to consult documentation and websites like Stack Overflow to help them with their daily tasks. In our 51风流Labs, we are working on making developer蝉鈥� lives easier.

For example, we are utilizing the power of generative AI to automatically generate an 51风流BTP application based on our cloud application programming (CAP) model. This means that in the future, developers will be able to describe an application鈥檚 capabilities, and 51风流Business AI will create a proposal for the actual application. An 51风流BTP application developer can simply insert a prompt into the command-line tool and , and then continue to refine it.

This will enable applications, such as extensions for 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, to be built in hours instead of weeks or months. Not only will developers be faster and even more productive in their work, but organizations will be able to respond to business needs with rapid innovation.

Enabling Large Language Model Choice

51风流BTP applications can leverage any LLM or similarly powerful tools available as a service from one of the hyperscale providers or open source models.

We are enabling 51风流BTP application developers to choose the most appropriate LLM for their use case. We that enables developers to bind their 51风流BTP application to OpenAI鈥檚 GPT or any other LLM.

This means developers can build applications with our CAP model on 51风流BTP to blend LLMs with 51风流S/4HANA and other 51风流solutions. Access to LLMs such as GPT models will be offered through SAP鈥檚 AI Core, which provides key benefits, including context validation and portability between LLMs.

With this architecture, developers can benefit from the co-engineering work we have done with hyperscalers on 51风流Single-Sign On and Private Link, helping ensure that data is secured within the network backbone and does not exit to the public internet.

With 51风流Business AI, we apply powerful tools and services in a responsible way, in a context that makes the use cases highly relevant for our customer蝉鈥� businesses and ensures reliable outcomes.

Using the Power of AI for Good

The old saying holds true: you cannot manage what you cannot measure. This is especially true for sustainability. But with AI, we have a new lever to support sustainability efforts.

Using the reference architecture, we built a on 51风流BTP based on a customer co-innovation project with an enterprise from the finance industry. It helps bank customers better understand how consumption habits are driving their carbon footprint, become more climate conscious, and adapt their behavior accordingly.
How does it work? The app matches spending behavior based on purchase data from banking customers with the corresponding carbon emission information from our sustainability partner . The app, which was built using SAP鈥檚 CAP model, blends customer蝉鈥� banking data with Connect Earth data and then calls out to Microsoft Azure OpenAI services via SAP鈥檚 AI Core on 51风流BTP to summarize and recommend actions for improvement.

This is an example of how the reference architecture for Microsoft Azure OpenAI services mentioned before can be implemented through the sample code shared on GitHub.

These are just three out of many of the ways 51风流is using generative AI to make a difference for professional developers and our customers and users alike.

It is an amazing time to be alive, and 51风流is ready to take enterprise software into the generative AI age and to support our customers in this transformation as a strong partner.

Juergen Mueller is CTO and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

This content was originally published on LinkedIn:

With the unified experience of 51风流Datasphere for data integration, data cataloging, semantic modeling, data warehousing, data federation, and data virtualization data, professionals can now easily distribute mission-critical business data 鈥� with business context and logic preserved 鈥� across their organization鈥檚 data landscape.

51风流Datasphere is the next generation of 51风流Data Warehouse Cloud, but with new capabilities that enhance data discovery, modeling, and distribution. This includes a new data catalog that acts as a centralized repository, describing all the data and metadata, including lineage and governance, to assure data is accurate, complete, and up to date. State-of-the-art data flow capabilities allow organizations to automatically generate pipelines at enterprise scale. We also enriched the business semantic layer with advanced modeling capabilities.

Existing 51风流Data Warehouse Cloud customers will automatically see the new functionality in their product environment today 鈥� no migration necessary.

Here, we go deeper into some of the new 51风流Datasphere capabilities announced today, which will enable organizations to deliver seamless and scalable access to mission-critical business data.

Access Authoritative Data

Customers tell us that they spend countless hours and resources extracting 51风流and non-51风流data from heterogeneous data sources in order to rebuild the semantics, logic, and context that often already exist in applications such as 51风流S/4HANA or 51风流SuccessFactors solutions. The result is a costly cycle of extracting and rebuilding, often while losing the rich context that business insight needs.

51风流Datasphere solves this issue by connecting 鈥� rather than just extracting 鈥� data with easy federation or replication to a business semantic layer, which in turn enables self-service modeling for business users without deep technical knowledge of the underlying application data structures.

51风流Datasphere enhances the business semantic layer to provide advanced multi-dimensional capabilities by introducing the 51风流Datasphere Analytic Model. This modeling experience includes complex aggregations, time dependencies, data preview, business hierarchies, business KPIs, and more. Analytic models harmonize data from different sources and expedite access to contextual, relevant business data for faster insights and decisions: they are the foundation for data consumption in听51风流Analytics Cloud.

Data professionals can choose the business entities required for their use case while having flexibility to leverage their existing attributes, relationships, and relevant measures or key figures. With this consistent, rich, and targeted analytics experience, they can distill relevant insights faster.

51风流Datasphere Catalog makes it simpler to browse and search, discover data and metadata from 51风流applications, and classify objects for your own business catalog, enriching them using the glossary, custom defined terms, and hierarchical tags. With the data lineage capability, whether it is business data or metadata, users can understand relationships between assets and visualize where the data is coming from and where it is landing. Lineage offers a structured overview of objects and spaces for users to quickly understand object and data dependencies and directly navigate to the relevant business objects.

51风流Datasphere Catalog supports data objects from other 51风流Datasphere instances and 51风流Analytics Cloud. The catalog will soon expand to include other 51风流applications and sources, including 51风流Business Warehouse (51风流BW), 51风流ERP Central Component (51风流ECC), and 51风流S/4 HANA. But that鈥檚 not all: we strive to help businesses unify all their enterprise data, both 51风流and non-SAP. We are continuously developing integration with industry-leading data catalog partners, such as Collibra, to support the non-51风流sources and provide trusted governed data across the enterprise.

Enrich All Data Projects

We have kept all the powerful capabilities of 51风流Data Warehouse Cloud in 51风流Datasphere to enhance collaboration across the enterprise. In this way, we empower both business and IT and enable instant access to application data via pre-built integrations to federate or instantly replicate data using change data capture. 听

A new data ingestion capability takes this further. 51风流Datasphere can replicate data and automatically generate large numbers of pipelines without any manual build or configuration required. With the new replication task, you can identify the source system from where data needs to be replicated (51风流ECC, 51风流S/4HANA, or 51风流BW), then select objects in the source systems and a target location. The system will automatically configure all the pipelines needed to handle the initial data load and ongoing delta changes without any user intervention. These pipeline tasks are fully resilient, automatically managed by the task, and even restarted in case of failure. With this new capability, 51风流Datasphere makes it simple to replicate large numbers of tables automatically and continuously with minimal user effort or overhead.

Whether you decide to federate or replicate data into 51风流Datasphere, organizations can now easily manage user access and govern data in a virtual workspace called 51风流Datasphere Spaces. In this environment, business data professionals can model data, blending from internal and external sources and extending the model with additional business semantics.

As workloads today are ever-changing, the virtual workspace is fully elastic, and as permissions are often space-dependent, further developments will support these very specific demands. For example, at the end of the year finance departments require sensitive HR data to calculate the bonus payout for every employee of an organization. With 51风流Datasphere Spaces, you can create a separate secured area for HR to share data with finance to calculate the bonus payouts 鈥� with no movement or copying of sensitive required.

51风流Datasphere Marketplace has been enhanced to make it even easier to leverage external industry data to support business-relevant use cases and data democratization initiatives via internal data markets. 51风流Datasphere Marketplace today offers more than 3,000 datasets, including sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data products from Connect Hub, public data sources from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and Eurostat. The intelligent lookup feature in 51风流Datasphere brings together disparate and non-changeable datasets, so that organizations can enrich their internal datasets with externally available third-party data with just a few clicks. Within 51风流Datasphere Marketplace, you benefit from access-control mechanisms that manage who can read which dataset. This helps ensure secure and governed data exchange for B2B networks with which data professionals can create new, objective KPIs and processes built over public, shared data sets.

Simplify the Data Landscape

With 51风流Datasphere, the capabilities of 51风流BW bridge will be augmented to help leverage current investments in 51风流BW and 51风流BW/4HANA and sustain your current access to 51风流data with ABAP level extractors, staging data, and understanding of 51风流data and relationships. You can use听existing SAP听BW听functionality and skills to move 70 to 80% of your existing 51风流BW and 51风流BW/4HANA听artifacts into听51风流Datasphere.

In addition, our upcoming application integration features will allow business teams to leverage pre-built business models and content packages. These accelerate the onboarding of data and metadata from 51风流business applications to 51风流Datasphere, with business context and logic preserved.

Existing 51风流S/4HANA customers can to:

• Get a sneak peek and demo of the new application integration features in 51风流Datasphere
• Share feedback directly with the 51风流Datasphere product management team
• Stay up to date with the latest news and road map items around 51风流Datasphere

Delivering a Business Data Fabric

51风流Datasphere, and its open data ecosystem, is the technology foundation that enables a business data fabric. This is a data management architecture that simplifies the delivery of an integrated, semantically rich data layer over underlying data landscapes to provide seamless and scalable access to data without duplication. It鈥檚 not a rip-and-replace model, but is intended to connect, rather than solely move, data using data and metadata. A business data fabric equips any organization to deliver meaningful data to every data consumer 鈥� with business context and logic intact. As organizations require accurate data that is quickly available and described with business-friendly terms, this approach enables data professionals to permeate the clarity that business semantics provide throughout every use case.

For organizations, the value of the business data fabric is the simplified delivery of authoritative data, in business terms, to consumers across highly distributed data landscapes. It unleashes the rapid creation of intelligent data applications and quick spin-up of new analytics and planning projects, so organizations can derive more business value from data assets.

Building a Powerful Open Data Ecosystem Around 51风流Datasphere

51风流is also partnering with an open ecosystem of leading technology vendors seeking to alleviate organization蝉鈥� need to simplify, integrate, secure, and govern the data landscape. The first set of open data partners providing core components of the value the business data fabric delivers include , , , and . Together, we will work to champion and strengthen SAP鈥檚 business data fabric as a new industry standard for an interoperable data strategy.

Each of these strategic partners brings the unique strengths of their ecosystems:

• Databricks and 51风流will deliver bi-directional integration between 51风流Datasphere鈥攚ith 51风流data鈥檚 complete business context鈥攚ith its Data Lakehouse platform on any cloud platform
• Collibra and 51风流will start by integrating their data catalogs to future-proof data governance, privacy, and compliance initiatives听for every organization.
• Confluent will enable data in motion with real-time streaming data from/to 51风流Datasphere
• And finally, DataRobot will allow any organization to build powerful custom machine learning models on top of 51风流Datasphere and bring results directly into their business data fabric

51风流Datasphere represents the tailored integration point for all partners, enabling customers to connect, unify, and distribute 51风流and non-51风流data unlike ever before. With the support of some of the world’s most renowned advisory firms, such Accenture, , , , , and , every organization can enable a business data fabric that delivers meaningful data to their data consumers.

We welcome all partners to join us in our mission of empowering customers to unleash the power of business data.

Get Started with 51风流Datasphere Today

Start your journey today to unleash the power of business data across your data landscape with 51风流Datasphere.

• and the new capabilities with the guided experience
• instantly with the free tier of 51风流BTP
• today for an early preview of the upcoming application integration features

Juergen Mueller is CTO and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

It鈥檚 been around for three years, and we have more than 15,500 live customers on 51风流BTP with an ecosystem of over 1,500 partners working with us.

51风流BTP is not just a unified technology environment optimized for 51风流applications helping move companies to the cloud. It also has all the necessary tools and services as a comprehensive and interoperable platform enabling application development, data management, planning and analytics, integration, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. From Villeroy & Boch automating 91% of incoming emails to NHL hockey team the San Jose Sharks embracing data insights to grow fan engagements, 51风流BTP is powerful technology.

Business has been at the core of everything we do at 51风流in our 50-year history; it鈥檚 what sets us apart from other providers. That is the 鈥楤鈥� in BTP. It stands to reason that our technology and platform create business value by enabling developers, business users, and ecosystem partners to innovate with market-leading capabilities and native integration, building faster with business context and running with confidence on a trusted platform.

Business-centricity includes semantic integration of data to make it consistent across various 51风流solutions and ready for business consumption. 51风流BTP users have easy role-based, governed access to relevant content and contextual data sitting in line-of-business applications. The platform contextualizes the business data as needed by use case.

Finally, imagine that with semantic integration and contextualized data, customers can instantly use data from 51风流applications without losing business context and meaning, leading to faster time-to-value and lower total cost of ownership. No matter where the data comes from or which use case is used, the user gets a harmonized experience.

This past year, I have spoken to numerous customers and partners who have told me that 51风流BTP is top of their minds, and they all want to learn more. Global market intelligence firm IDC went a step further. IDC interviewed nine 51风流BTP customers about what business challenges are top of mind, why they selected the 51风流platform, and what business value they derived from their investment in 51风流BTP. Across the nine customers interviewed in the IDC鈥檚 study, it yielded benefits worth an annual average of $195,000 per 100 51风流users, an average three-year return on investment (ROI) of 495%, and a break-even point averaging only six months.

In the context of integration and development gains through 51风流BTP, one customer cited: 鈥淲ith 51风流BTP, it has taken us two months to mobilize a full carbon reporting platform in terms of development across many different systems with numerous data sources. That鈥檚 not a lot of time because it was meant to take 12 months. It鈥檚 speed to value, it鈥檚 how quickly can the business that we鈥檙e working with realize the value of the data in their processes.鈥�

Further customer use cases across 51风流BTP and findings can be found in the .*

IDC also developed a fully . Business leaders and IT professionals can enter information about their business and desired goals, and the tool will generate a custom report for each participant using it, allowing them to quantify the value 51风流BTP could bring to their organization.

Let me sum it up: more than 15,500 cloud customers are live on 51风流BTP with access to extensions, use cases. and several thousand pre-built business content packages across all 51风流BTP capabilities. We have a large ecosystem of more than 1,500 partners using 51风流BTP. The available 51风流BTP business content packs and use cases include:

• More than 3,300 APIs
• Packages and dashboards for analytics 鈥� more than 260 data and analytics packages
• Integration flows 鈥� more than 2,600 pre-built integrations
• Process automation packages and bots 鈥� more than 300 51风流Process Automation Packages business rules, data models, and more

Businesses that use 51风流BTP do not have to start with a blank canvas. Our , pre-built business, and industry content help customers understand what is possible to keep their business innovative and future ready. One thing to remember is that pre-built business content may not get you 100% of what you need but is likely to get you 80% or more to where you need to be. You can then add the remaining specific features and functionalities required for your business. This is usually implemented within a two-to-four-week period versus six months, typically.

Learn how to get started with and how to get the value of 51风流BTP for your business: 鈥�.鈥�

Juergen Mueller is CTO and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

*IDC White Paper, sponsored by SAP, The Business Value of 51风流Business Technology Platform, IDC #EUR149650022, September 2022

For more details on the 51风流Build announcement, read Unleashing Business Expertise with 51风流Build, from JG Chirapurath, chief marketing and solutions officer for 51风流BTP.

With this new low-code offering, we are evolving our strategy from visual prototyping — known to many customers as Build.me — to designing, deploying, and running enterprise-grade applications fully visually. Learnings from Build.me around project ideation and discovery are being leveraged for the new 51风流Build offering.

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The worldwide market for low-code tools ballooned almost 23% in the last year and these days, 41% of non-IT employees are building or customizing applications, . So, if it is widely accepted in the industry that low-code platforms will help accelerate business transformations, it is unclear to many what can be achieved with visual development.

Let鈥檚 take a deeper look at 51风流Build capabilities and how they help 51风流customers deliver new, innovative solutions quickly.

Unified Developer Experience

51风流Build provides a unified experience for users of all skills levels. They can collaborate on creating applications, automating processes, and deploying business sites by using visual tools and a rich set of services and pre-built content.

51风流Build users can share reusable artifacts such as user experience (UX) components, workflows, automations, data models, and business logic among team members and across projects. When it comes to accessing business data from other systems, developers can encapsulate APIs as simplified service interfaces, so called 鈥渁ction projects,鈥� and make them available in the 51风流Build library.

From there, non-technical users can use them without the need to handle the underlying complexity of APIs, while at the same time complying with IT security requirements. Similarly, citizen developers can use 51风流Build solutions to access artifacts, such as data models, created in our professional integrated development environment (IDE) 51风流Business Application Studio.

All this greatly facilitates the creation of composable and sophisticated applications leveraging the skills, expertise, and resources from fusion teams.

Let鈥檚 have a deeper look at what can be achieved in 51风流Build.

51风流Build Apps

Today鈥檚 enterprise users are widely accustomed to modern, fast, and responsive user interfaces. With 51风流Build Apps, the evolution of 51风流AppGyver, we can deliver both mobile and web applications with pixel-perfect design using the drag-and drop functionality and a rich component library. Business users create business logic visually and build beautiful user interfaces without coding.

But there is more: With 51风流Build Apps 鈥渃loud functions,鈥� we introduce a way to visually create a cloud-deployed back end for your application. These new cloud functions provide a way to define and run custom business logic and manage persistency and integrations in the cloud, without the need to provision or manage underlying computations. With 51风流Build Apps and the cloud functions capability, now everyone can become a full-stack cloud developer.

The cloud functions capability has two components: business logic and a data persistence layer.

Business services are built from individual logic nodes with inputs and outputs. An individual node can perform an action, such as updating a data entity or receiving data via the node鈥檚 input parameters. These nodes can then be connected to perform a series of activities, enabling visual building of business logic in the cloud.

A data entity defines the field structure and data types of the data being managed by the application. The native data entities are building blocks of the visual cloud functions project. Extended data entity expands the native entity by allowing users to modify data taken from the native entities using formula expressions. Furthermore, with extended entities, data transformations can be performed on the cloud side.

51风流Build Process Automation

Often, applications are just the start of extensive enterprise processes, including approval steps and additional data collection. 51风流Build Process Automation offers task and process automation leveraging robotic process automation (RPA) bots, workflows, forms, embedded artificial intelligence (AI), business rules, and decisions.

In order to accelerate a business transformation from process insights to process automation, 135 tailored process improvement recommendations from 51风流Signavio Process Intelligence can directly be leveraged in 51风流Build Process Automation. Also, 51风流Signavio Process Intelligence can trigger automated actions through APIs to perform process automations with workflows and bots. In addition, 51风流Build Process Automation complements 51风流Signavio Process Governance, managing approvals of process model changes in 51风流Signavio Process Manager.

With this integration, 51风流has now the most comprehensive set of capabilities needed for business transformation and automation.

Regarding openness with third-party tools, Google Workspace integration allows to automate around products such as Google Sheets, Google Calendar, and Google Drive. It improves document-based processes by leveraging Google Vision AI with OCR and Google Document AI, in addition to Document Information Extraction from 51风流AI Business Services.

51风流Build Work Zone

Finally, with 51风流Build Work Zone, users can create beautiful, custom business sites using new capabilities such as a flexible page builder and context-aware integrated UI cards. They can easily deploy the new applications and processes created in 51风流Build Apps and 51风流Build Processes Automation to an 51风流Build Work Zone business site.

With 51风流Build Work Zone, we bring together 51风流Launchpad service and 51风流Work Zone into a unified solution with two editions:

• 51风流Build Work Zone, standard edition, is an evolution of 51风流Launchpad service. It features an enhanced workspace navigation experience, UI integration cards that support 51风流Fiori design system, low-code page building capabilities, and pre-packaged business content. 51风流Build Work Zone standard is planned for general availability in early 2023 with the new enhanced experience. (.)
• 51风流Build Work Zone, advanced edition, formerly 51风流Work Zone, provides additional advanced features for content management, web content, interactive and engaging work spaces, enhanced menu builder, and integration with third-party solutions.

51风流Build Work Zone allows end users to access all relevant applications from a single place. Users can easily build simple-to-consume and engaging digital workplace experiences that drive productivity and business agility for themselves, colleagues, suppliers, customers, partners, etc. — without writing any code.

In addition, we are announcing the beta of 51风流Start, an out-of-the-box central access point for 51风流public cloud solutions. It includes pre-configured business content from 51风流applications to simplify access to 51风流apps, processes, and tasks. Customers will be able to use 51风流Build Work Zone to extend 51风流Start to their needs.

Security and Compliance

51风流Build relies on existing 51风流BTP services for security and compliance.听 For secure user management, this includes the identity authentication, user authorization, and provisioning services. The 51风流Audit Log service is leveraged to keep records of all activity in the tools, helping ensure full transparency and compliance.

51风流Build safeguards operations with built-in centralized lifecycle management, monitoring, and governance. It provides robust DevOps framework with continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), automated testing, security, and performance checks to ship production-ready software confidently. IT admins can rely on the known platform capabilities, while at the same time empowering their business users with the agility of 51风流Build.

Glimpse of the Future: What Are the Key Priorities in Our Road Map?

With the announcement of 51风流Build today, we鈥檙e just at the beginning of a new journey. We have defined an ambitious road map. Our key priorities for the next quarters are to integrate 51风流Build deeper with the portfolio of advanced cloud technologies available on 51风流Business Technology Platform. Our endeavors in that direction include:

• will provide 51风流Build users with straightforward access to semantically connected data entities across all 51风流applications.
• will integrate more and more 51风流AI Business Services to allow the extensive use of AI in both design time and run time. This includes auto-identification of application changes to suggest corrections in design time. For run time, it contains root-cause analysis of failures, self-healing corrections to automations based on best-recommended action, and soliciting human-in-loop or auto-adjusting job distribution.
• will be leveraged as a service. It will enable IT experts in fusion teams to build comprehensive data logic and leverage this in 51风流Build Process Automation.

Become an 51风流Builder

Ready to become an 51风流Builder and build your next great idea without writing code? I have two recommendations for you on how to get started:

• Check out our new , which helps customers ramp up quickly on 51风流Build and connect with their peers. The program offers learning with interactive hands-on sessions and hackathons and gives 51风流and community experts a forum to share best practices.
• Get started with 51风流Build right away, as it is available on , which enables you to start for free and without time limits. You can test your scenarios up to a specified capacity limit. When you鈥檙e ready to go, you can easily switch to the paid service plan, without losing your work. Check out our and get started right away.

Juergen Mueller is CTO and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

The Race Is On

I have witnessed how sustainability is top of mind not only in business engagements but also in my personal life. Recently, for example, my niece turned four. So, I wonder, what world will she see in 2050? We talk about similar questions in customer meetings: What will the world look like for future generations? I usually emphasize how critical it is for everyone 鈥� citizens, businesses, and governments alike 鈥� to invest in sustainability to create long-term value.

Due to increasing awareness over the past decade about the perils of climate change, the imperative to set commitments has left its mark on all sectors and geographies. At this point, the question is not whether major companies will commit to net-zero emissions, but how they plan to achieve this target.

There are many reasons to reduce greenhouse gas emissions aside from protecting the planet. It benefits the bottom line because efficient practices reduce operating costs and help increase employee productivity. In addition, companies must respond to pressure from consumers to act more responsibly, they must adhere to new regulations, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria are of increasing interest to companies, their investors, and other stakeholders.

Despite all the best intentions and commitments, significant challenges stand in the way, including the scale of economic transformation that a net-zero transition entails as well as the difficulty of balancing the short-term risks of poorly prepared or uncoordinated action with the longer-term risks of insufficient or delayed action.

A notes that the path to achieving net-zero will require a universal transformation of the global economy throughout all energy and land-use systems, with significant capital allocations, costs, and shift in jobs. And while universal, the economic exposure to the transition will not be uniform across sectors, geographies, and communities. Different industries will transform at a different pace.

The risks are considerable. Geopolitical disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in the Ukraine can create setbacks that might even accelerate climate change. But the opportunities for countries, sectors, and companies could be considerable. Nations that have abundant natural capital such as more hours of sunshine, or that invest in technological, human, and physical capital, will be well positioned to prosper in the net-zero economy.

Dealing with the Scope 3 Challenge

Achieving net-zero begins with reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the three categories, or Scopes, defined by Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the international accounting tool. Scope 1 covers direct emissions from owned or controlled sources. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling consumed by the reporting company. Scope 3 includes all other indirect emissions that occur in a company鈥檚 value chain, which can range from business travel to waste disposal to third-party goods and services, making it by far the most difficult area to monitor and control.

According to the SBTi, , and the Gold Standard, there are several ways companies can address their Scope 3 challenges.

Scope 3 emission reduction starts by integrating circular economy principles in product and service design. Products can be designed to have longer lifespans and to be more efficient, so that life-cycle emissions intensity is lower. Circular systems incorporate more product service models, such as selling a car sharing package instead of just a car, and they lead to greater supply chain efficiency as more products are reused, recycled, or refurbished.

Engaging with suppliers to reduce their emissions — ideally in line with climate science — is another effective way to reduce Scope 3 emissions. After identifying key suppliers, companies can set objectives, maintain close collaboration, monitor progress regularly, and create incentives for action. For example, procurement choices can favor suppliers with lower carbon footprints.

At SAP, we facilitate this by connecting businesses on trusted networks to share information and accelerate sustainable commerce for impact. 51风流runs 51风流Business Network, one of the world鈥檚 largest supply chain collaboration networks, committed to scale social procurement on 51风流Ariba software. We are also helping lead industry cloud sharing transformations like for the automotive industry and tackling Scope 3 emissions accounting through the .

Leveraging customer awareness and desire for more sustainable products is another way to drive lower emissions. Companies can engage customers either directly through education, collaboration, or compensation, or indirectly through company regulation or customer motivation via marketing and choice architecture. Many utilities companies, for example, are engaging with their consumers to educate them on the importance of energy reduction or giving consumers .

Finally, operational policies can lead to large reductions in Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions. These steps include moving away from fossil fuels to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy and investing in low-carbon projects and resilient development. As lawmakers around the world are introducing caps on carbon emissions, performance standards, carbon pricing and taxation, companies are responding through compliance and by setting their own targets, often in alignment with the (UN SDGs). These include Clean Water and Sanitation, Affordable and Clean Energy, Industry Innovation, and Responsible Consumption and Production. 51风流has accelerated its commitment to achieving net-zero along its value change 20 years earlier than originally targeted.

The Power of Technology

51风流technology helps companies manage and lower global emissions, and to track and reduce their carbon footprint across their supply chains and operations. Our customers can connect data and business processes while embedding sustainability metrics into all business functions, including carbon accounting. Customers get real-time visibility into the enterprise, facilitating better insights while establishing a primary source of emission data for overall corporate sustainability reporting and carbon credit accounting.

is the technological foundation for an intelligent and sustainable enterprise. It helps to integrate and extend applications across business networks and enables visibility of disaggregated data for compliance 鈥� ESG reporting, holistic steering, and supply chain transparency.

Among our specific designed to help companies in achieving net-zero, 51风流Product Footprint Management lets companies calculate carbon footprints for their products across the value chain. It not only equips companies with the necessary insight, but can enable data exchange with customers, suppliers, and business partners 鈥� driving transparency across a company鈥檚 Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions.

makes business sense: it future-proofs growth, saves money, provides resilience against regulation, boosts investor confidence, and spurs innovation and competitiveness. It also demonstrates concrete sustainability commitments to increasingly conscious consumers. With the right guidance, tools and solutions, any company, regardless of size or industry, can make — and keep — their sustainability commitments.

Juergen Mueller is CTO and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

You鈥檝e guessed it. I did not become a doctor, but with the digitization of work, my own path and the path of healthcare professionals started to head in the same direction. Today, whichever career path we choose, we all work for a technology company.

Technology sits at the heart of every company鈥檚 business and customer experience strategy. In the latest , 82% of the respondents said that their focus is on implementing new technologies and methodologies to create new revenues, enhance operations, and improve the customer journey. Companies are looking for smarter ways to update customized software solutions and increase the application delivery speed.

But here is a catch! Most IT teams are already tied up with servicing the existing volume of requirements and support requests, leaving them little time to innovate. On top of it, the demand for software developers is higher than the global candidate supply.

Overcoming Innovation Bottlenecks with Citizen Developers

To remove the innovation bottleneck, increasing the size of the IT team is simply not enough. CIOs need to go beyond their department and empower employees in the entire organization to take part in application development as citizen developers.

This is possible with low-code/no-code (LCNC) application development. Employees with no or little coding experience can automate workflows and build apps by using visual tools and services — such as drag-and-drop, point-and-click tools, and flow charts — instead of traditional lines of programming. They can experiment, prototype, and deliver apps or automations in weeks, and sometimes even within days, in collaboration with the IT department and by following its governance model. This includes giving guidance on the areas of focus, application design, security, data protection, version control, and systems integration.

On the flip side, having citizen developers on board enables the IT team to focus on the of application development and automation, to scale and accelerate innovation.

Providing low-code/no-code tools and governance models increases the number of people within the organization who can tackle business challenges by delivering new apps and extensions. Already, 41% of non-IT department employees build or customize their own solutions and citizen developers are expected to outnumber professional developers fourfold in large enterprises by next year, .

More Development Power to the People

The potential is huge. Low-code/no-code solutions can make software development as much as 10 times faster than traditional methods, says . Innovation becomes part of everyone鈥檚 job.

For example, the international logistics firm DHL Freight created a fleet management application without coding using . The team wanted a better way to manage the fleet鈥檚 drivers and track the maintenance needs of the trailers during their journey across Europe. This includes real-time reports from drivers at the hand-over and receipt of trailers. Drivers can now report the exact location of damages to the trailer. The app is available in multiple languages across mobile and web-based platforms and offers role- and region-based user authentication.

Electric motorcycle manufacturer is even running its entire factory operations, from inventory management to assembly lines to smart TV dashboards on apps that were built with zero lines of codes with 51风流AppGyver. The apps interface the backend enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and use formular functions for easy and accurate calculations for the assembly line.

Having access to features such as formular functions is one reason why in the near future application development with low-code/no-code tools a common office skill, like creating presentations and spreadsheets.

Unifying the Developer Experience for Larger Impact

The collaboration of professional developers and citizen developers with low-code/no-code tools can catapult a company鈥檚 innovation capability to another dimension. Professional developers can free up time to focus on core tasks and more complex business transformation initiatives. IT teams also get a deeper understanding of how applications will be used by colleagues and customers, as well as where innovation needs are.

To fully unleash the innovation potential of low-code/no-code requires a unified developer experience for citizen developers and professional developers alike. It should support low-code and no-code application development and process automation for citizen developers while enabling professional developers to participate and contribute as needed. Companies need to strike the right balance between highly flexible yet complex professional development tools and easy-to-use tools. Every type of developer should feel empowered to build apps fast and have access to the right tools.

To get started, check out this . It teaches citizen developers the basic concepts of software development and how to build mobile apps. I showed it to the medical professionals in my family, and it triggered so many ideas on how to improve patient care.

Imagine what your company can achieve — and what we can achieve for our society together — if every employee turns into a developer.

For more information, .

Juergen Mueller is chief technology officer and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

As CTO and member of the 51风流Executive Board, a number of topics are especially close to my heart: digital transformation, education, and promoting sustainable business and development.

Digital Transformation

Germany is falling further and further behind in the technology race. In the , published by the Berlin-based European Center for Digital Competitiveness, Germany ranked only third to last in the G20 list of the world鈥檚 leading advanced and emerging economies.

Fundamental structural changes are required to massively accelerate Germany鈥檚 digital transformation. Steps are being made in the right direction. One is the Online Access Act, under which, by the end of 2022, German citizens will be able to access around 600 digital administrative services — allowing them, for example, to apply for state-funded student loans, parental leave benefit, and birth certificates online. It鈥檚 a start. But it鈥檚 not enough — a more ambitious approach is required.

Germany鈥檚 federal system is a pillar of its success. But the coronavirus pandemic is a reminder that that system can work against us at times too. Germany needs a clear digital agenda that federal, state, and local governments are jointly committed to. Because there鈥檚 a seemingly endless list of subjects to address: digitalization in the public sector, cybersecurity, ensuring a secure cloud infrastructure, development of open standards (鈥減ublic money – public code if no standard software is available鈥�), interoperability, network expansion, high-speed Internet, the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

Who better to drive this agenda than a new federal ministry devoted entirely to digital transformation? But just as crucial as establishing a new digital ministry is taking action to bring about the necessary cultural change.

Education

Let鈥檚 face facts: Our education system, just like our public sector and healthcare systems, works pretty much in the same way it did in 1997.

Take STEM jobs, those in science, technology, engineering, and math: According to the , just over 1 million women work in STEM in Germany, occupying only 15.4% of the total number of posts in that field. But with 76% of working-age in Germany, that figure should be much higher. We have to strive for better! We need to promote STEM careers much earlier, and not wait until young people start making their vocational and degree choices. If we want to get children and young people 鈥� especially girls and young women 鈥� excited about STEM careers, we need to reach them right when they start school or, even better, when they鈥檙e still at kindergarten or nursery school.

Without excellent education and research, we can say goodbye to developing the digital technologies of the future. Knowledge is Germany鈥檚 most important resource. We should be up there with the world鈥檚 best! But reality tells a different story. In a , Germany ranked 76th (out of 78!) when it came to the availability of professional resources for teachers to learn how to use digital devices. And yet there is still so much to do here too, in addition to teaching about technology, such as promoting social and intercultural skills, empathy, teamwork, creativity, and strategies for life-long learning.

As a land of technology, we should expect to be nothing less than world-class — just like we want to win the FIFA World Cup again next year!

Supporting Sustainable Business and Development

No one disputes that an innovation- and industry-friendly economic policy must be sustainable, European, or — better still — transatlantic or even global. It is vital that business and government work in unison. The shocking natural disaster that hit Germany recently is a reminder of why. Many of those affected by flash flooding lost everything and some communities will take years to rebuild.

Certain countries are more responsible for climate change than others. Germany is the world’s sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. As such, we can and must make a significant contribution to reducing carbon emissions. And each and every one of us can play our part here.

Following a ruling by the country鈥檚 constitutional court in April 2021, Germany has brought forward its carbon neutrality deadline by five years to 2045. 51风流is aiming to be carbon-neutral by the end of 2023. If global enterprises can do it, then the state should at least pursue more ambitious goals.

Conclusion

The last 18 months have seen us filling out contact detail forms in restaurants and faxing documents to local government offices. The pandemic has shown us clearly, and at times painfully, that we have a long way to go. Implementing a clear digital and technology strategy will require a concerted effort among technological promotion, administration, education, health, and data protection — to name just a few. This strategy is therefore central to Germany鈥檚 future.

It really doesn鈥檛 need a Juergen Mueller to point this out. But my role means I meet many entrepreneurs, managers, employees — people who are working to build a future worth living. What unites them is the desire for a digital 鈥渏olt.鈥� And I鈥檇 like to encourage every effort toward making this happen. I am sure Germany鈥檚 business community will be good partners in this endeavor too.

My hope is that the next German government will deliver a clear, bold strategy. I want to see us tackle the technological transformation in Germany with determination and the right mindset.

Juergen Mueller is CTO and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

While this has always been the case for implementation of 51风流applications, the opportunity is even greater for partners to extend, integrate, and build with 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP).

Let鈥檚 look at it in more detail.

What Is 51风流Business Technology Platform?

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent pressures on the global supply chain demonstrate even more urgently how important it is for companies of all sizes to digitally transform their business. Today鈥檚 businesses need to be able to adapt quickly to volatile markets and changing business requirements. For this, they need a modern technology platform that enables integrated applications and processes, helps users create value from data, and supports easy extensibility and ecosystem access while offering development agility and speed.

51风流BTP is the unified, business-centric, and open business and technology platform for the entire 51风流ecosystem. It is the unified foundation for the Intelligent Enterprise, integrates and extends SAP鈥檚 intelligent suite, and is central to the industry cloud as well as partner applications.

In a nutshell, what 51风流BTP offers is all about business centricity:

• Integration that connects applications, data, and business processes across 51风流and third-party solutions, including hyperscaler technology
• Data to value, with actionable insights and automation across enterprise data and processes
• Extensibility and ecosystem access, thanks to rapid configuration, plug-and-play extensions, and business content from partners
• Development agility and speed, with intuitive tooling and interfaces that create an engaging developer and user experience

What Is In It for Partners?

Let鈥檚 step back for a second and look at the market potential. 51风流solutions touch 77% of the world鈥檚 transactions. Because of that reach, we can offer , such as lead-to-cash, design-to-operate, source-to-pay, and recruit-to-retire. And within those processes are hundreds of specific components or sub-processes supported by 51风流partners.

So when our partners build on, integrate with, or extend 51风流technology using 51风流BTP, they have a unique opportunity to help customers by delivering solutions that reach across business processes, often tapping into data sources across various master data domains. Connecting and enriching the business processes increases the value and impact that each sub-process brings to an organization.

Let me give you an example: Within the , partners are adding value with solutions that extend the core 51风流offering, including supplier certification, sustainability ratings, as well as search and data lookup. With those, customers are creating new revenue streams as a service business models using 51风流BTP.

51风流BTP offers opportunities for all types of 51风流partners. It enables partners to stay competitive and innovative while keeping service practices, software sales, and margins secure. Software partners can build and sell complementary applications that extend and integrate with SAP鈥檚 end to end business processes. Value-added resellers can package data, analytics, workflow, and other automation content as accelerators to differentiate their businesses and drive new revenue streams. Services partners can continue to maintain ABAP practices, develop custom extensions on 51风流BTP, build integrations to customer鈥檚 non-51风流systems, and deliver specific data-to-value business requirements.

A good example is 鈥檚 work with 51风流and 51风流partners Bourne Digital and Bluetree, each of which played an essential role in Taronga鈥檚 digital transformation journey. As a strategic advisor for the customer, 51风流provided expert guidance and support to identify the right technology and approach according to its strategic objectives. From the beginning of the 51风流Analytics Cloud journey, 51风流experts helped develop a proof of concept and integration approach in partnership with Bluetree. Bourne Digital helped design and implement the using 51风流Workflow Management and other services in 51风流BTP, leveraging design thinking and agile development to quickly deliver an easy-to-use application in a short time frame.

Recently, in a commissioned survey conducted on behalf of SAP, , Forrester Consulting concluded that partners benefit greatly from building solutions as part of . The integrated industry portfolio puts partner蝉鈥� offerings front and center alongside SAP-built solutions. 51风流BTP also provides a framework, technologies, and additional features such as artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics that help ensure interoperability with 51风流while enabling the creation of replicable industry-specific solutions.

What Is the Role of the Partner Ecosystem in RISE with SAP?

We cannot speak about the importance of 51风流BTP for our partner ecosystem without addressing our latest offering: .

RISE with 51风流is about helping customers transform their businesses to an intelligent enterprise that is flexible, resilient, and built for continuous innovation. For many customers this transition will include a journey to the cloud at a pace that supports their business and industry requirements.

51风流BTP, as the platform for the Intelligent Enterprise, is one part of the RISE with 51风流offering. It helps partners and customers further innovate in the cloud with in-app extensions to fill small gaps, side-by-side innovations to extend the core, and integrations to bring the business processes together.

What Lies Ahead?

To meet the current and future needs of our customers and partners, we want to firmly establish 51风流BTP as the unified, business-centric, and open business and development platform for the entire 51风流ecosystem. Partners that adopt the platform can develop more efficiently, provide foundational functionality, and commercialize products faster. Lower entry burdens will encourage our partners to develop applications that run on 51风流BTP.

Going forward, all 51风流line-of-business and industry solutions will be built on 51风流BTP. Partners can efficiently innovate and extend core solutions, create integrations, and deliver new content.

Let鈥檚 deliver innovation together — faster and with less complexity.

Want to Learn More?

For all the news from the 51风流Global Partner Summit, see 鈥�Why Partners RISE with SAP,鈥� by Karl Fahrbach, global partner officer at SAP. And read 鈥�How Partners Enable Customer Success Through a Unified Technology Platform,鈥� by Jagdish Sahasrabudhe, CTO of the Global Partner Organization at SAP.

Visit for more information on how to partner with SAP. Partners can find details on .

Juergen Mueller is chief technology officer and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

Since then,听the听demand for听professional听developer talent has continued to grow听faster than the world can educate them. In part to deal with this听challenge, technology听developers听have increasingly composed听software by听working with libraries and the like, rather than rewriting the same code over and over.听Working this way saves time and gives more agility.听

Today,听the latest progression of this trend can be found in the听low–code and no–code听(LCNC)听solutions for application development,听extensibility services,听experience management, and end-to-end process automation.

COVID-19听is considered an听accelerant for digital process automation — it is, of course — but听the听space was already听rapidly developing.听LCNC solutions听that听empower more employees to digitize and automate their work听offer听a pathway to听greater enterprise resilience.听The听pandemic brings听the benefits听of such agility听into stark contrast,听further propelling adoption.听Take听robotic process automation (RPA)听for example, where听Gartner听predicts 鈥�.鈥�*听听

The听goal of these听technologies听is to allocate human resources more intelligently and to听empower听the end user — the professional developer as well as the听citizen developer — to focus on more valuable work听while听taking听control of digitizing and automating their听processes.听LCNC is faster, more efficient, and frees up professional developer time for more complex activities, like security and big migration/integration projects.听Most importantly,听LCNC听and automation technology听build systemic resiliency and responsiveness into the daily functioning of a large organization,听while fostering compliance and governance,听with defined workflows and clear responsibilities.听

As听large companies听aim听to听become more听future-proof,听they see LCNC听and听automation platforms听as听an听immediate听opportunity on the听horizon.听Gartner听indicates听that听鈥�.鈥�

Low-code application development platforms (LCAPs) mainly provide tools and services to听easily set up and configure processes and workflows, whereas automation platforms enable companies to easily automate recurring manual work. This听begins听with听the conversion of听paper-based processes into digitized workflows then leads听to the seamless combination of digital workers with human-led processes.听

With decades of听process听knowledge听across industries and听lines of听business, 51风流is well-positioned to provide the expertise and tooling needed by our customers to advance听automation with听LCNC digital transformation.听

We听are听firmly established听with听听(SAP听BTP)听and听citizen automation听products听for Business Process Improvement听such as听听and听.听And听we have听further听extended听our competitiveness with听the听recent acquisitions听of听Signavio听and听AppGyver.听听

Signavio听strengthens听SAP鈥檚听ability to keep the promise听to support customers in their digital transformations by offering听a holistic听approach and technology听in the听business听process听intelligence space.听Signavio听enhances听existing capabilities and听allows听us to听provide standardized process KPIs, broad benchmarking data, process mining,听customer journey mapping,听user behavior mining,听and customer experience analysis. We can听give users a complete view of every business process听and recommend how to solve identified issues听and听drive change efficiently.听

AppGyver听is听a听pioneering听no-code development platform听with a strong developer community听that听complements both SAP鈥檚听own as well as our听partner蝉鈥�听offerings for听citizen听developers. The cloud-based builder for creating web and mobile apps is extremely simple yet immensely powerful; users can visually craft logic flows of any complexity, access native device capabilities, and connect to 51风流data and services (and any听additional听third-party APIs) via听OData and other听REST API integrations.听听

Further听to that,听SAP听has听already听been听partnering with听Mendix听to offer a low-code development platform,听streamlining听and simplifying development for professional developers.听Mendix听and听AppGyver听enhance SAP听BTP听with full flexibility and capabilities that allow business users to build web and mobile applications, from low–code to听no–code.听听听

With these additions to our听strong听portfolio,听SAP听BTP听is in a unique position to help听many听customers听implement digital transformation for end-to-end process automation.听For example,听听was able to achieve significant productivity gains and听improved forecast planning through different initiatives leveraging听51风流Business Technology Platform, in particular 51风流Workflow Management and听51风流Intelligent听RPA.听Standardization resulted in听better听decision-making,听and听the use of听more granular trend analysis resulted in a 25% reduction of G&A expenses.听听

Looking to the future, the landscape is changing but听the demand for professional developers remains high and growing.听Companies听continue听to evolve on their mission for greater听speed and agility, with a听particular听eye on听their听citizen developers听as听the听next major agents听for听expanding digital听capabilities.听The breadth of the SAP听technology听portfolio, our process knowledge听across all lines of business,听and the high-value data running through 51风流systems听translate into听solutions for our users and听measurable听outcomes听for our customers.听

As we create a unified, business-centric, and open platform with a marketplace for the Intelligent Enterprise, customers, partners, and cloud users can count on 51风流for future-proofed听resilience.听

Juergen Mueller is CTO and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.
.

Customers often look to us for insights since we have been privileged to help run the world鈥檚 most critical business processes for almost 50 years 鈥� seamlessly and end-to-end. This is no different in today鈥檚 cloud world. To remain competitive, customers require access to live data to make informed decisions in real time. They benefit most when functions and processes are fully aligned.

According to a recent , 88% of integration leaders were able to increase transparency into their operations and 94% improved their profit margins.

Last year, we embarked on the mission to reimagine integrated end-to-end business processes and experiences along the entire value chain 鈥� including SAP, partner, and third-party solutions. We laid out our cloud integration strategy and road map with delivery timelines covering 2020 and 2021.

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Integration 鈥� along with the value it brings for our customers 鈥� will continue to be one of our key priorities in 2021. In our , we share more details of the business benefits our scenarios will bring.

Integrated Business Processes, Unmatched Customer Value

In 2020, we made great strides in integrating our four core end-to-end processes that touch every business across all industries: Lead to Cash, Design to Operate, Source to Pay, and Recruit to Retire.

Customers like Orica have undergone a significant transformation over the past few years to redefine their business processes. With its 4S program, Orica consolidated its systems on 51风流S/4HANA complemented by other 51风流cloud solutions and extensions. A prerequisite when rethinking the company鈥檚 business processes was to avoid customization of the solutions. This way Orica could benefit from faster innovation delivery and a new level of transparency and efficiency across the enterprise.

In 2020, we delivered close to 350 integrations, representing more than 160% growth year-over-year. This year, we already have over 200 additional integrated business scenarios planned 鈥� and this number is growing as we speak.

But it鈥檚 not only about the number of integrations. We are particularly proud of the specific value these integrations deliver to our customers. Let鈥檚 look at some concrete examples of business outcomes. Already, customers today can:

• Handle multiple product types from physical products to services to subscription through the integration of and .
• Reduce time-to-hire by proactively collaborating on talent decisions thanks to the integration of , 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, and .
• Embed experience management at every step of the design phase to create products that customers love by integrating and Qualtrics.
• Conduct strategic sourcing by using contract management capabilities in and centralized contracts in 51风流S/4HANA to identify opportunities and improve the efficiency of negotiating their contracts.

We are also making great progress with delivering on the underlying suite qualities that serve as a strong foundation for all our integration efforts. They include elements such as:

• End-to-end process blueprints to reduce the planning effort for implementation projects and support architecture decisions
• Harmonization of domain models via to simplify the exchange of business objects and improve data consistency across applications
• Embedded analytics with 51风流Analytics Cloud, as well as customer-managed cross-product analytics using to make quick and confident decisions by relying on comprehensive analytical insights

With (51风流BTP) as the foundation for our intelligent suite applications and industry cloud, SAP has the unique ability to integrate core processes end to end. At the same time, customers can choose the integration strategy that best fits their landscape, including cloud-to-cloud and hybrid integration options. The 51风流Integration Suite offers more than to third-party cloud applications.

Intelligent Enterprise: It鈥檚 Integration and Innovation

We will continue our journey to seamlessly integrate all our solutions based on 51风流BTP; to deliver on our promise of making the Intelligent Enterprise a reality. We want to meet our customers where they are. Our customers set the pace for their own transformation.

We have heard the requests for more hybrid scenarios from customers and user groups loud and clear. We will therefore extend our efforts to hybrid integration scenarios, including existing and new developments. Quite a big portion has been delivered already — for example in — and there is much more to come in 2021.

Not only do we focus on integration as such, but also on delivering highly integrated and innovative best-in-class cloud solutions to our customers. Based on the innovation delivered over the past years, we plan to even accelerate our innovation efforts in helping customers analyze and redesign business processes and make those more intelligent. This will include process innovations around artificial intelligence (AI) using machine learning and robotic process automation to improve data-to-value.

Customers no longer need to decide between integration and innovation. With SAP, it鈥檚 not one or the other. It鈥檚 both.

Juergen Mueller is chief technology officer and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.
Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, Product Engineering.

In a only few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has advanced the digital transformation of supply chain and customer activities as well as internal processes by three to four years, according to a recent . However, while most companies note the strategic importance of technology for their competitiveness, many are uncertain about the next steps. Regardless of where these companies are on their own transformation journey, we want to support their unique digitalization needs, help them become resilient, and enable them to respond to new requirements with agility and speed.

That鈥檚 why today, 51风流announced RISE with SAP, our concierge service to the Intelligent Enterprise. Ultimately, the intelligent enterprise strategy is about integrating data and processes across all lines of business, and (51风流BTP), as its technological foundation, plays a pivotal role in making this happen.

We recognize that to truly transform, a business requires a holistic approach. The therefore also includes access to 51风流BTP capabilities in the areas of application development and integration, database and data management, and analytics, as well as intelligent technologies. These capabilities allow customers to easily extend and integrate with any other SAP, partner, or third-party solution, both in the cloud and on premise, and enable them to turn their data into value.

One Platform for Integration, Extensibility, and Data-to-Value

There are three main challenges customers face along their business transformation journey that I keep hearing over and over again.

Customers operate in increasingly complex IT environments, ranging from everything between on premise to cloud, across multiple vendors, own legacy applications, various platforms, and open-source technologies. reports that large companies maintain 129 different applications on average, with the total number increasing by 68% since 2015. Every operational system requires context-relevant data models, business logic, and process definitions. Integrating these systems becomes a precondition to ensure these key components understand each other across a company鈥檚 systems and business processes.

One of our customers, , a utilities company from the Netherlands with about 3,000 employees and over 鈧�4 billion in revenue, was able to cut down IT spend for integration middleware by around 50% of its total cost of ownership (TCO) in a matter of weeks. The company used the capabilities of to implement an end-to-end process from designing a product to operations and further used it to integrate between all 51风流and third-party systems.

The current pandemic has painfully shown how important it is for companies to manage their supply chains flexibly in response to volatile markets and changing requirements. New digital business models are also becoming a serious threat to established companies. estimates that while in 2016 the average company lifespan on the S&P 500 was 24 years, companies will only have a 12-year tenure by 2027. To make sure businesses stay relevant and seize new opportunities quickly, they need to be able to flexibly build, extend, and enhance their core processes and applications.

, an innovative energy company operating in 40 countries, is quickly transforming itself into an industry leader in the cloud using several capabilities of 51风流BTP, including and . This helps the company to streamline and digitalize its operations across its plants, the field and the back office. By doing so, it could save 50% of time used on plant inspections and achieve 10-times faster data entries for job requisitions.

Businesses also require a singular data view and simple access to all their enterprise data. But while data sources, types, and volumes continue to increase, the dilemma is that companies struggle to make use of it and create business value. A reveals that 69% of companies do not follow a data-driven approach. Federated data access and consistent information on data semantics and relationships between objects becomes essential for them to get one single source of truth and real-time insights into all processes across the company.

, a telecommunications company with more than 19,000 employees, needed to find a way to simplify its real estate operations and reporting so that it is more intuitive, context-based, and requires fewer steps to build a dashboard. With the help of and among other solutions, the company cut the time it took to create reports by half and could reduce front-end issues by 90%.

Here are some additional updates that I would like to share concerning the future of our platform:

ONE Platform

In line with our goal to establish 51风流Business Technology Platform as the platform for the Intelligent Enterprise, we decided to sunset the 鈥溾�� product name to avoid confusion with the 51风流Business Technology Platform brand. While the actual cloud platform capabilities are renamed — for example, 鈥�51风流Cloud Platform Integration Suite鈥� becomes 鈥�51风流Integration Suite鈥� — the products and services continue to be available, their functionality and agreements will stay unchanged, and the services will remain as important as ever.

A Strong Partner Ecosystem

Additionally, many parts of our strategy build on the successful collaboration with our partners. They are essential for establishing a harmonized product architecture across the entire ecosystem and to facilitate integration and interoperability, or to give our customers infrastructure flexibility. As part of this, a few days ago, 51风流and Microsoft announced the expansion of their existing partnership, including a continued commitment for the collaboration in the technology space. By combining 51风流BTP and Microsoft Azure, we will continue to improve availability, integration, connectivity, and security for 51风流solutions on Microsoft Azure. This includes event integration, simplified administration and provisioning, faster landscape creation provisioning, .

The Foundation for Your Transformation

I’m convinced that technology can help companies achieve their business objectives, no matter how siloed their internal structures might be or how far they are in their digital transformation journey. For almost 50 years, customers have relied on 51风流to run their business processes, most recently applications within the intelligent suite and SAP鈥檚 industry cloud. To further drive their business transformation, intelligent enterprises need additional flexibility and independence to move their assets to the cloud, integrate their IT landscape, and configure and extend their 51风流applications.

This is what 51风流Business Technology Platform is all about: a business-centric and open platform that provides our customers with the technology they need to transform their business and prepare for a new digital future.

For more information about RISE with SAP, read blogs from Christian Klein, Thomas Saueressig, and听Uwe Grigoleit,听as well as an interview with听Jan Gilg.

Juergen Mueller is chief technology officer and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

This means that European citizens can now warn each other of the threat of infection. Their smartphones will exchange pseudonymized keys for this purpose, which makes it easier to identify and interrupt chains of infection, even across national borders. For Europe, this is an important step in the fight against COVID-19.

For Deutsche Telekom and SAP, it is another example of working together to set a new, pioneering standard. The German Corona-Warn-App developed by the two companies was already ideally suited to Europe-wide use thanks to its decentralized approach.

An EU system does bring a range of challenges:

Data Protection

Security is the top priority in a Europe-wide system for corona-tracing apps. The gateway service helps ensure the security of shared keys and pseudonymizes them. This means that the user蝉鈥� identities remain hidden. Furthermore, the systems behind the countries’ corona apps 鈥撎� the so-called听 “back ends” communicate exclusively with the gateway and not with each other. This minimizes the transported data volume and maximizes data protection.

Stakeholder Landscape

This is much larger for an EU project than for a national one. Here it was necessary to reconcile the various conditions and requirements of the participating member states.

Heterogeneity

The countries use different IT systems and programming languages. As a universal translator, the gateway service helps ensure that the different systems can communicate with each other.

Scaling

The gateway is designed for European dimensions and several hundred million users. Its performance must always be ahead of the curve of users, which grows every day.

Flexibility

Countries that connect their back ends to the gateway can flexibly define how information about an infection flows toward and out of the gateway. The gateway offers three options for the interaction between national back ends and corona apps:

1. One Europe: All diagnostic keys from all participating countries are distributed via the national and European gateway to all app users from all participating countries.
2. Traveler: On the devices of travelers, travelers download the diagnostic keys of all participating countries. On the devices of non-travelers, domestic users download not only the domestic diagnostic keys but also the keys of all people traveling.
3. Country of Interest: Diagnostic keys of travelers are shared, in addition to the country of residence, only with selected and relevant countries.

Corona-Warn-App: A Way Out of the Crisis

Clarity about what happens with user data has played a key role in the success of the German Corona-Warn-App. The app was developed in the middle of a lockdown, with nearly all project staff working from home, and was completed under immense time pressure and public scrutiny.

We have never seen a project of this kind before.

It is the result of a joint open-source project between two DAX-30 companies. The effort was worth it — the German Corona-Warn-App has already been downloaded more than 19 million times, a vote of confidence from the public that few were expecting. Now it is time to use the app and share positive test results. Each and every one of us can make an important contribution to overcoming this crisis, together and in good health.

The of the Corona-Warn-App supports the European gateway. With its launch, we are taking a step forward in the fight against the pandemic, together with our European neighbors. Pooling the individual efforts of member states creates something bigger and brings us closer together. The Union is demonstrating both solidarity and its ability to act.

From a political point of view, today sends a hopeful message: We are one Europe, and we will protect each other against .

Adel Al-Saleh is a member of the Board of Management of Deutsche Telekom AG and CEO of T-Systems.
Juergen Mueller is chief technology officer and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

Over years and decades, companies have implemented streamlined business processes in their value chains using the features of on-premise 51风流systems to adapt the standard functionality to their needs. However, within the growing heterogeneous landscapes of 51风流and non-51风流systems, these customizations became more complex and expensive to maintain. Additionally, most of the customers use hybrid landscapes听with a mix of cloud and on-premise systems to run their businesses.

With the move to 51风流S/4HANA, customers have the chance to standardize their business processes. This has two benefits: Customers can avoid modifications in their 51风流S/4HANA systems to the absolute minimum, and they can implement process extensions or integrations to other SAP, partner, or third-party systems using 51风流Cloud Platform Extension Suite and 51风流Cloud Platform Integration Suite. This is true for both 51风流S/4HANA Cloud and 51风流S/4HANA on premise.

What Are the Advantages of Using 51风流Cloud Platform Integration Suite?

As an integral part of ,听 allows simplifying integration for both 51风流as well as third-party scenarios. This versatile, fully managed, multi-cloud suite was recently rated by Gartner as a .

51风流Cloud Platform Integration Suite offers a modular set of integration services covering all needs of cloud and hybrid landscapes:

• Application-to-application process integrations across value chains, such as lead-to-cash, recruit-to-retire, source-to-pay, and design-to-operate
• Business-t0-business (B2B) integrations to integrate with suppliers across the digital ecosystem, including e-government (business-to-government or B2G) integrations to support digital compliance
• API-driven integrations, including full API life-cycle management and omni-channel access
• Event-driven integrations to support sense-and-respond scenarios based on business events
• Data integration and pipelines to support artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data lake or data warehousing scenarios with 51风流Data Intelligence
• Master data听integrations via听听that provide master data synchronization enabled by the 51风流One Domain Model

51风流Cloud Platform Integration Suite is complemented by a rich set of听, available on 51风流API Business Hub, both for cloud-to-cloud as well as for hybrid integration scenarios.

The latest additions include for core business objects, with more than 290 APIs, including 61 event objects that enable customers to build integrations with third-party solutions and to build apps and extensions on 51风流Cloud Platform.

Running Hybrid Scenarios in the Integrated Intelligent Suite

After releasing听 this year, customers asked if 51风流also offers out-of-the-box integrations for hybrid 51风流landscapes. We are currently working on these. The good news is that customers can already benefit from some of the existing integrations between 51风流S/4HANA and other 51风流cloud solutions and extend their processes to the 51风流cloud portfolio.

Within the hire-to-retire business process, for example, the following scenarios with the 51风流Cloud Platform Integration can be enabled:

• Customers that want to transition their human capital management (HCM) system to the cloud while still leveraging investments into employee data administration on premise and that need to replicate 听and听听data from 51风流S/4HANA to 51风流SuccessFactors Employee Central can use the听.
• 51风流SuccessFactors Employee Central is used as the system of record holding the employee data and reporting lines of all employees. But existing processes, such as payroll, time management, or custom human resources (HR) processes still run in an on-premise 51风流S/4HANA system landscape.
• With听, we use a new way of simplifying SAP-to-51风流integrations. 51风流applications can synchronize business objects with common attributes and use common semantics, for example a workforce person (employee, contingent/external worker) or a cost center. The models and additional information can also be found on .
• A first hybrid use case will soon be available. The on-premise release 2020 of 51风流S/4HANA is ready for master-data integration with 51风流SuccessFactors as leading human capital management (HCM) system to 51风流S/4HANA. Using the aligned 51风流One Domain Model 听via听听will soon be available for cloud and on-premise customers

SAP鈥檚 Integration Strategy Moving Forward

51风流will continue to invest in the SAP-to-SAP听out-of-the-box integrations听for hybrid scenarios along the integrated intelligent suite. Our goal is to provide customers with the capabilities they need to help ensure an open and holistic integration听with partner and third-party solutions.

With this rich set of integration capabilities that SAP鈥檚 Business Technology Platform provides as part of its integration strategy, customers can accelerate their journey to digitize their value chain.

To learn more, check out the 听and the听.

Juergen Mueller is CTO and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.
.

But has a huge impact on values and cultural norms. Language expresses and reinforces culture. Language encourages us to develop behavioral .

As part of our commitment to social justice and equality, we acknowledge and take action toward offensive and insensitive language used in the software industry. Unconscious bias, such as using certain terminology, contributes to everyday discrimination and indignities and leads to negative emotions and psychological stress for Black people and other people of color. Therefore, we have decided to replace insensitive terms with inclusive language that is free from expressions or words that reflect prejudice.

It was important for us to take a holistic approach to this project. The new terminology we are introducing today is not an exercise in word-for-word replacements, but rather a thoughtful discussion based on research and best practices at 51风流and across the industry. We looked carefully at the use of the terms in English and German across our entire product portfolio, as sensitive and mindful terminology does not always transfer. Moving forward, thanks to a true cross-company effort, we will not only have a technically accurate nomenclature, but terminology that is inclusive and descriptive.

The new terms — with guidance from 51风流terminology experts, as well as applicable references in German — are .

Addressing insensitive language is only one aspect of inclusion. We must all understand the important role each of us plays in fighting discrimination, including taking a stand against racism to drive change inside and outside of our organizations.

Together we can ensure that equality becomes a reality.

is chief technology officer and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, leading the Technology and Innovation board area.
is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, leading the 51风流Product Engineering board area.

Our CEO Christian Klein just announced an update to (see 鈥�Integration Makes All the Difference鈥�). I am happy and proud to share today some of the main achievements for the cloud integration suite qualities.

It鈥檚 important to note that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for integration: Lowering the integration hurdle considerably for SAP-to-51风流integrations is one part of the equation but offering the tools and the knowledge for integrating into non-51风流applications is an essential cornerstone for us as well.

This holistic view on integration is what customers expect from SAP.

Let鈥檚 look a bit closer at where we stand today.

Progress on Suite Qualities for SAP-to-51风流Integrations

In the first half of 2020, we laid the foundation for a deep integration along four key end-to-end processes of every intelligent enterprise: recruit to retire, lead to cash, design to operate, and source to pay:

• End users expect a harmonized solution that is based on the same navigation patterns and user interfaces (UIs); they do not want to work with individual products. Therefore, we now support a seamless user experience based on common 51风流Fiori designs across the source-to-pay, lead-to-cash, and design-to-operate processes.
• Another pillar for SAP鈥檚 integrated intelligent suite is a uniform data model for the most important master data objects of a company, such as customer, supplier, product, and employee. With the , we delivered the first aligned data models for the domains 鈥渃ost center鈥� and 鈥渨orkforce person.鈥� They are integrated across 51风流SuccessFactors software and 51风流S/4HANA via a central 51风流Cloud Platform Master Data Integration service. As laid out in our Integration Road Map, we will deliver six aligned business objects across the four end-to-end processes until the end of this year, and we are aligning all other objects required for the end-to-end processes.
• One of the business benefits of such aligned domain models is that they can simplify data-driven decision-making. Companies need to be able to quickly map and analyze the impact of the changing business conditions on their profitability, cash flows, workforce, and supply chains. To enable such a 360-degree view of customers and companies, 51风流Analytics Cloud is already embedded in 51风流S/4HANA and 51风流SuccessFactors applications. A front-runner project is underway for to provide an integrated and unified dashboard on, for example, spend across people (51风流Fieldglass), procurement (51风流Ariba), and travel (51风流Concur).
• To further accelerate our integration work, a front-runner project is currently underway for . Typically, users work with multiple 51风流applications across the end-to-end business process. This can mean having to handle multiple local inboxes for each product. We target to provide a single inbox for customers where the tasks and approvals across multiple applications can be accessed and processed.
• Another front-runner project relates to coordinated life-cycle management. aims to offer an integrated monitoring experience across 51风流applications 鈥� on premise and in the cloud 鈥� with the help of our new 51风流Cloud ALM solution.
• Any successful transformation journey starts with a clear plan: 51风流now shares the for the recruit-to-retire, source-to-pay, and lead-to-cash processes so that customers can map out their road map to become intelligent enterprises. With all integration content being linked 鈥� such as APIs for integration 鈥� customers can now explore how end-to-end processes can be broken down into applications, modules, business services, technologies, and integrations.

These are just a few examples to show the significant progress we are making to deliver a seamless business process integration to our customers. Let me repeat what Christian mentioned as well: We have already implemented 50 percent of the before mentioned suite qualities, up from 30 percent just three months ago. By the end of this year, we expect to deliver up to 90 percent of these common qualities for our applications, and we are working on additional common qualities.

Open Integration

While SAP-to-51风流integrations are currently being standardized to a large extent 鈥� with our intelligent suite applications and industry cloud running on SAP鈥檚 鈥攃ustomers also need additional flexibility to integrate and extend their IT landscape.

More than 11,000 51风流customers rely on 51风流Cloud Platform Integration Suite. gives customers the flexibility to adopt the integration strategy that best fits their landscape, including cloud-to-cloud and hybrid integration options. The offering comprises more than 1,500 pre-packaged integration templates and more than 160 open connectors for 51风流to non-51风流applications.

Furthermore, and as shared during SAPPHIRE NOW, we continue to support 51风流Cloud Platform Integration Suite on and have now also in place.

Integration Guidance for Cloud and Hybrid Landscapes

helps customers to define and execute an integration strategy by providing proven integration patterns and architecture blueprints for cloud and hybrid landscapes. It allows customers to introduce, optimize and scale an agile integration practice within their organizations.

In close collaboration with customers, we have with further best practices, including digital integration hub and robotic process automation. For customers that are new to this methodology and want to get started with it right away, we now offer a Web-based .

The Way Ahead

Our commitment remains unchanged: In these times of change and beyond, 51风流is helping our customers to adapt, stay agile, deliver quick time to value, and become the best integrated businesses.

My team and I are looking forward to 51风流TechEd later this year, where we will share further integration results with you, our customers and partners, and the broader 51风流network.

Read more:

Juergen Mueller chief technology officer and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

Relational databases on premise had been the backbone of enterprise systems, and some questioned whether the in-memory approach could really work when applied enterprise-wide to a company鈥檚 data assets. At that time, relational data lakes and the cloud were mostly a dream of the future.

I was very fortunate to gather customer feedback on 51风流HANA early on. While I was working on my PhD on new applications optimized for in-memory databases at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), I had the opportunity to present one of the first 51风流HANA demos, a dunning app, developed at the HPI for SAPPHIRE in 2010. Just as it continues to be today, customer feedback was invaluable and helped us a lot in those early days.

Fast forward 10 years, and more than 32,000 customers are now benefiting from what has become the engine of the Intelligent Enterprise. Analysts have also consistently confirmed SAP鈥檚 database strategy: In 2019 51风流was positioned as a leader for the seventh consecutive year in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics, and most recently was rated as a leader in the Forrester Wave for Data Management for Analytics.

The “complete fantasy” of 51风流HANA turned out to be a reality that severely disrupted the database market. And with its latest innovation — — 51风流HANA has become a fully fledged cloud solution that offers all the innovative capabilities that are unique to 51风流HANA, as a cloud service.

As 51风流Supervisory Board Chairman and 51风流Co-Founder Hasso Plattner , an in-memory database paved the way to do things that had previously been considered impossible.

The core features of 51风流HANA — its ability to process both analytical and transactional workloads, remove aggregates and secondary data structures, and harness the performance of in-memory computing — led Hasso to predict not just a revolution in the database market, but in applications too.

The architecture of 51风流HANA paved the way for an entirely new approach to building solutions.

Lasting Impact

In 2012, 51风流Business Warehouse was the first 51风流product to benefit from the in-memory performance, soon followed by an 51风流HANA-optimized 51风流Business Suite at the beginning of 2013. In 2015, 51风流launched the next-generation enterprise resource planning (ERP) system 51风流S/4HANA. Specifically designed to take full advantage of the benefits offered by 51风流HANA, 51风流S/4HANA enables much faster business processes, simplified data models, and the ability to analyze transactional data in real time.

The following year, 51风流BW/4HANA was launched and since then the number of products powered by 51风流HANA has continued to grow. The database now underpins , including 51风流SuccessFactors, 51风流Customer Experience, and 51风流Ariba solutions.

Since it completed the migration to 51风流HANA, 51风流SuccessFactors solutions have been able to hit a peak of 1 billion cloud transactions per day. 51风流Customer Experience solutions can import data 65-times faster than legacy databases. 51风流HANA, with its column orientation, allows for higher data compression ratios and helps to minimize data footprints. For example, the 51风流Customer Experience team achieved compression rates of up to 10-times with 51风流Sales Cloud. By moving to 51风流HANA, the 51风流Ariba team has been able to increase its key measure of overall cloud health number by 18 points (on a 100-point absolute scale) across the board.

51风流HANA also provides a development framework to build custom data-driven applications that use, for example, predictive analytics, data anonymization, and spatial services in real time, in the cloud, and on premise. The many 51风流Innovation Award entries submitted every year by our customers and partners offer some great examples.

For instance, this year鈥檚 winner in the Technology Disruptor category: Independent Big Data consultancy and 51风流partner Clariba created an app called “act路in | football.” This mobile-enabled sports performance repository and application uses in-memory 51风流HANA technology in the cloud — . The app brings together a variety of structured and unstructured data from numerous sources, including game-day statistics, sensors, medical history records, scouting reports, and on-pitch cameras. The result is a solution that gives players, coaches, and managers real-time performance feedback that enables them to take action, maximize impact, and win on the field.

Another customer that has benefited is , one of Europe鈥檚 largest university hospitals, renowned for its leadership in healthcare and research. When the hospital decided to expand the scope of its TBase database for digital patient records to other departments, it needed a robust solution to bring together disparate databases and meet the needs of the different specialist areas, while still guaranteeing the highest standards in patient data security.

Thanks to 51风流HANA, clinicians and researchers at 颁丑补谤颈迟茅 now work on a single shared, integrated, and much faster platform. According to 颁丑补谤颈迟茅 CIO Martin Peuker, 鈥淥ur data must be easy to capture, secure, and accessible for doctors, nurses, and patients. For the first time, this is now possible on our 51风流HANA platform with our developed solution, TBase@颁丑补谤颈迟茅.鈥�

Dawn of a New 51风流HANA Era in the Cloud

In the decade since 51风流HANA was first introduced, we have seen an explosion in the amount of data produced, the impact of digitalization, and the growth of cloud computing. Research firm IDC predicts that .

For the vast majority of our customers, the data they need to access to understand their business is no longer contained within the four walls of the enterprise. It is generated by everything from smart devices to social media. And while companies are really excited about the possibilities of digitalization and all this data, they are also struggling to exploit its full potential. Even though many organizations have access to petabytes of data, the majority can only use terabyte蝉鈥� worth of information at most. They experience what we call a 鈥渄ata swamp.鈥�

Companies are struggling to manage their data value chain and to extract value from it. This includes the access to the data, the storage of data, its quality and consistency, as well as how it is used and consumed. In response, we have made it our mission to establish a new approach to database and data management. Our goal is to enable our customers to get the maximum value out of the data available to them. To do that, we鈥檙e taking the brilliance of 51风流HANA — the same speed, the same simplicity, and the same convenience — and transitioning it into this new context.

Last year, we announced the . It is not a new product, but a set of integrated solutions that accelerate the transformation of data into business value. It includes 51风流HANA and the most recent milestone in the evolution of SAP’s proud database history: . The Business Technology Platform also encompasses , , , and the 51风流portfolio of .

51风流HANA Cloud deals with any type of data, regardless of whether it is big or small, structured or unstructured. It provides one technology to store and process data at scale. Working with any data means going beyond main memory, so with 51风流HANA Cloud, we have a disk option, a data lake option, and it integrates directly with remote object stores — for example, from cloud infrastructure providers.

While the advantages of cloud computing are indisputable, we also recognize that our customers are at different stages of their digital transformation journeys. That鈥檚 why we have designed 51风流HANA Cloud to extend on-premise landscapes to the cloud while enabling our customers to continue to benefit from their existing investments and transition at their own pace. 51风流Data Warehouse Cloud is, for example, already running on 51风流HANA Cloud.

Ultimately, the combination of advanced virtualization capabilities and flexible data storage and process options provides companies with a single gateway to all their data. Once again, 51风流HANA is set to revolutionize the way organizations work by helping them understand their business better than ever before. Looking back on what has already been achieved in its first decade, we鈥檙e very excited to see the innovation that this next step in the 51风流HANA journey will fuel.

Juergen Mueller is chief technology officer and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.