UPDATED 09:00 EST / MARCH 06 2024

AI

SAP beefs up its Datasphere platform with yet more generative AI

Enterprise software giant SAP SE is adding to its generative artificial intelligence capabilities with a raft of new features that will soon become available in the SAP Datasphere platform.

The updates will enable users to interact with their business data more intuitively and help drive more intelligent business transformations, the company said. Among the new features are a copilot tool that helps users to automate various data analytics tasks, as well as vector database capabilities that support more advanced generative AI workloads, plus a new knowledge graph for uncovering insights and patterns within complex datasets.

SAP Datasphere was launched in March 2023, and today’s updates fall just two days short of its birthday. The company explained at the time it was launched that SAP Datasphere is the next generation of the older SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. It’s designed to serve as the main, centralized point for connecting, harmonizing and distributing customers’ data, both from SAP and non-SAP applications.

The platform pulls information from various cloud providers, data vendors and on-premises systems and makes all of this data accessible in one place, where it integrates with third-party analytics tools to help companies analyze that information for business insights. The advantage of SAP Datasphere is that it automatically retains the business context of the information it gathers, unlike other centralized data warehouses where this context must be captured using manual processes.

Thanks to today’s updates, SAP Datasphere should now provide users with even more advantages. For instance, SAP’s generative AI copilot Joule is being made available in SAP Analytics Cloud, where it can help to automate the creation of reports, dashboards, visualizations, plans and more.

SAP said this automation is enabled through SAP HANA Cloud’s new vector capabilities, which are now generally available. Vector search is a key feature for generative AI that allows large language models to tap into unstructured data, meaning they can be enhanced with much greater knowledge.

To ensure that customers’ data isn’t leaked by Joule or any other generative AI model, SAP said, it’s expanding its partnership with Collibra Inc. It’s integrating the Collibra AI Governance platform with SAP Datasphere, helping ensure that compliance and privacy regulations are adhered to.

Meanwhile, the new SAP Datasphere Knowledge Graph will help users to discover hidden insights and patterns across all of the applications and systems in their business. With Knowledge Graph, both technical and business leaders will be able to understand the relationships between data, metadata and business processes more deeply. It will also help improve the performance of generative AI.

Finally, SAP Datasphere is being integrated more tightly with SAP Analytics Cloud to deliver more powerful analytics for cross-organizational planning. SAP said companies can now leverage a single, flexible model to break down data silos, using a single tool for data preparation, modeling and planning.

The integration also brings a new “compass” capability to SAP Analytics Cloud that’s designed to enhance planning and analytics processes through data-driven simulations. Users can design and run complex simulations using a simple chat interface, helping them predict business outcomes more accurately.

Chief Technology Officer Juergen Mueller said the need to capture data to make better decisions has become a key imperative for enterprises. Modern AI applications rely on high-quality data, he said, reiterating that SAP Datasphere is the perfect platform obtaining that data. “Our newest SAP Datasphere innovations, as well as a new and expanded partnership with Collibra, represents a quantum leap in our ability to help customers drive intelligent business transformations through data,” he added.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Doug Henschen told SiliconANGLE he believes SAP has taken the right path with Datasphere, emphasizing an open data ecosystem and semantic layer that sits above all information sources. “SAP is now leveraging its contextual understanding of its apps and customer business objectives to power vector search, a knowledge graph and generative AI,” he said. “SAP customers tell me that the fabric-style architecture of Datasphere gives them flexibility to access everything they need in the cloud without having to move or replicate data at great expense.”

SAP has been advancing its AI initiatives on multiple fronts. Just weeks after launching Joule, it rolled out various Joule-powered tools for customer services teams. Then in November it debuted SAP Build Code, a version of its low-code development platform SAP Build that folds in AI-powered productivity aids optimized for Java and JavaScript development.

Last July it was among a group of investors participating in a $500 million series B funding round by Aleph Alpha GmbH, a German startup focused on developing large language models. That same month, it invested unspecified amounts in LLM developers Anthropic PBC and Cohere Inc.

Photo: SAP

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU