In myyesterday’s analysis of SAP’s HANA announcement, I wondered why SAP stays
silent on the AI and Machine Learning frontiers. Well, today I know.
They saved this
announcement for today.
And the announcement is a bang. SAP will deliver what they
call ‘intelligent business applications’ that are based upon SAP’s new machine
learning platform. The platform itself shall be made available with SAPPHIRE
NOW 2017. The first significant intelligent application by SAP that is
mentioned, is a brand intelligence application that leverages deep learning to
analyze brand exposure in video and images to provide ‘accurate, real-time insights
into sponsoring and advertising ROI”. You may remember that SAP earlier showcased
an application to reduce recruiting bias, which is based on the machine
learning platform, too.
According to Juergen Mueller, Chief
Innovation Officer at SAP, the new machine learning platform is intended to serve
SAP’s and their ecosystem’s applications with the goal of creating more
business value.
Consequently, there are two more aspects to the
announcement.
1.
SAP launched a partner program dedicated to SAP
Application Intelligence.
2.
SAP invests into education offerings, starting
with a ‘massive open online course’ on Enterprise Machine Learning on their
OpenSAP platform.
MyPoV
This announcement clearly shows that SAP is as serious about
machine learning as the company is about leveraging the power of its ecosystem.
As I, and many other people, have often said, SAP is a formidable organization
if and when it chooses to drive a topic. This is shown here again. And SAP is
absolutely on the right track by pursuing this three-pronged approach of
delivering a platform with first solutions, encouraging partners, and offering
education around their platform.
However, there are three concerns.
The first one is obvious. As per yet there is nothing really
tangible beyond the announcement and a
marketing oriented page on their site, which refers to four intelligent applications.
Having no doubt about willingness and ability to deliver it appears that SAP is
playing catch up with Microsoft and Salesforce here.
Second, and more importantly, there is no statement about
how the new machine learning platform relates to SAP HANA nor how it is
delivered. I can only speculate that this platform is made available via SAP’s
cloud services and is not built on or directly using SAP HANA, although I
expect interoperability.
Lastly, some words about the licensing model and cost would
do.
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