Artificial intelligence: SAP's autonomous agent armada is coming

At the start of the Sapphire conference in Orlando, SAP CEO Christian Klein promised the audience the proverbial blue sky when it comes to AI. He said that ubiquitous artificial intelligence could boost productivity by up to 30 percent. What's more, it helps companies to remain successful in an increasingly unpredictable world.

Joule, SAP's assistant system with generative AI, for example, will accompany all processes and applications of the Walldorf-based software group in the future. While Joule currently only reacts to input prompts and within specific guidelines, the tool is set to mutate into an omnipresent, proactive helper with a new action bar.

Let the AI agents do it for you

The technology behind the action bar comes from the start-up WalkMe, which was acquired around a year ago. It analyzes user behaviour and the business context in third-party SAP or cloud applications. Joule then uses the information to independently provide real-time information and recommendations, both inside and outside the SAP application world.

SAP also presented an expanded collection of specialized AI agents for tasks in customer relationship management, supply chain organization, spend management or HR management. Using Joule, these can be bundled and processed together to form autonomous, end-to-end process workflows. This includes agents, data and third-party systems. SAP relies on the new Agent2Agent protocol for cross-platform collaboration between AI agents. The data supply, including the standardized semantic understanding, is again provided via the Business Data Cloud (BDC) recently introduced by the software group.

Partnerships with Perplexity and Palantir

Klein also used the Sapphire event to announce a number of new partnerships relating to AI. Among other things, the Group is working with Perplexity on a kind of omniscient business answering machine. Perplexity's answer engine will be integrated directly into Joule. By combining the AI-supported search engine and the knowledge graph from SAP's BDC, the assistance system will respond to questions with structured, visual answers such as diagrams and key figures based on real-time data in SAP workflows.

For example, a user could ask the tool what consequences general policy decisions, such as on customs duties, would have for their own business activities. The forecast would then include information on current events as well as the company's operational data.

Palantir is also one of the new SAP partners. There was only scant information about the content of the cooperation with the specialist for analysis and monitoring software, which is controversial in Europe. In an informational talk before the event, SAP board member Thomas Saueressig tried to play down the significance of the cooperation. The use of Palantir AIP (Artificial Intelligence Platform) tools in the BDC context is optional and primarily geared towards the US market, or more precisely the US government business. This is because not only Palantir, but also SAP with its subsidiary SAP NS2 (National Security Services) is prominently represented there.

(mma)