By Mustansir Saifuddin
SAP is no stranger to change. In its 50-year history, SAP has continued to reinvent and reassess how to best serve its clients. The 2023 SAP Sapphire and ASUG Annual Conference held in Orlando in May brought together thousands of people in the SAP ecosystem to experience how SAP is making sure customers are “future proof.”
Some key takeaways from the conference:
Partnerships
As generative AI takes the user community by storm, SAP is focused on how it can leverage generative AI to help customers in their businesses. The SAP and Microsoft partnership provides the ability to embed AI in enterprise applications where SAP and Microsoft collaborate.
Data is at the core of how SAP customers can future-proof themselves. The SAP and Google Cloud partnership means an even more powerful ability to work with SAP and non-SAP data. However, SAP has not stopped there. Other partnership announcements include partnerships with ALEPH ALPHA, databricks, data Robot and IBM.
All of this combined means that SAP Datasphere can powerfully bring disparate data sources together to provide customers with the data insights they need to quickly adapt and grow. The power of real time analytics with SAP Datasphere is a game changer.
Optimize Management of Resources
Rather than continuously modifying your core system, SAP is focused on keeping the core (S/4HANA or Cloud ERP) clean. RISE w/SAP takes the burden of maintaining the core off customers and lets customers innovate around it. In other words, SAP delivers the core as SAAS software and continually updates it.
SAP’s business platform offers customers a wide range of data models, integrated services and APIs to address the needs of customers faces with a variety of architectures and services. The business platform approach is a great way for customers to future proof while cost-efficient.
Grow w/SAP
Based on the success of RISE w/SAP, SAP has launched GROW w/SAP to address the needs of the mid-market. This includes SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, which is a ready-to-go cloud-based ERP solution. It is based on the latest industry best practices and continuous innovation. It is even more powerful as it also includes SAP Activate, a methodology that helps facilitate cloud adoption while also providing a community where customers can learn from one another.
Sustainability
SAP announced a new “Green Ledger” initiative that moves companies from carbon estimates to actual data. The first release is planned for later this year as a feature of RISE w/SAP and GROW w/SAP.
These are just a few of the takeaways from this year’s conference. The stories shared by customers continuously highlighted how analytics and data-driven organizations facilitate SAP customers to be future proof.
ASUG takeways
ASUG’s annual conference, held in conjunction with Sapphire, offered members a host of preconference sessions that included:
- SAP Business Technology Platform
- Strategies to help build your resilient supply chain
- Enhancing your finance processes with SAP S/4HANA Cloud
- Analyzing HR data to help monitor your workforce
- Helping HR teams move to the cloud
- Protecting your organization with cyber security
- Learning what Enterprise Architects need to know when moving through a transformation
More resources
Inside look through Women in Tech talk: SAP VP Nichole Smith and Innovative Solution Partners CEO Mariyah Saifuddin talk about how SAP continues to move toward being a customer-focused company.
Top takeaways from SAP Sapphire 2023
Highlight videos on demand: Registered Sapphire attendees can view videos of keynotes and sessions.
