IBM and SAP announced they are expanding their partnership to provide new generative AI capabilities and industry-specific cloud solutions that help clients unlock business value. For John Granger, senior vice president, IBM Consulting, “our new ‘Value Generation’ partnership initiative will enable clients to accelerate their path to innovation, give them a competitive advantage and help them become next-generation companies through “Generative AI.”
IBM Consulting and SAP will support clients in the following key areas:
–Next-generation AI business processes: Together, the companies are exploring opportunities to build new generative AI capabilities for RISE with SAP and introduce AI into SAP business processes through industry-specific cloud solutions and line-of-business applications. Initially, IBM plans to extend AI capabilities to SAP’s entire portfolio of cloud solutions and applications, all supported by SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). This includes RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP, CFO financial solutions, supply chain management solutions, human capital management solutions, SAP Customer Experience solutions, and intelligent spend management solutions. . IBM also plans to leverage SAP Signavio and SAP Business AI solutions to help define next-generation business processes through an adoption program.
–Next generation industrial innovation: IBM and SAP plan to create intelligent sector use cases. These use cases will initially focus on the manufacturing, consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, defense, automotive and utilities sectors. This includes IBM’s project with SAP to develop new AI solutions for the CPG and retail industries. As part of this initiative, IBM has begun developing a portfolio of more than 100 AI solutions for industry, lines of business, and product delivery. Additionally, the company plans to develop prescriptive industry value maps that define next-generation business processes and impact opportunities with AI. Customers will be able to access all of these AI solutions through the global IBM Innovation Studios and SAP Experience Center websites.
–Next-generation platform architecture and customer adoption approach: IBM aims to provide next-generation reference architectures that enable a clean core approach, leveraging SAP BTP, SAP Signavio and LeanIX solutions. These new reference architectures will help define standards for data integration, processes, systems and devices, process orchestration and automation. IBM consultants supporting clients on SAP projects can also benefit from IBM Consulting Advantage, IBM’s AI services platform, and its portfolio of proprietary methods, assets and wizards to bring more replicability and consistency to client delivery. . With IBM Consulting Advantage, IBM consultants can transform the way they implement SAP solutions to drive productivity and mitigate risk by leveraging generative AI. In this way, they can help complete tasks such as generating user stories, test scripts, training and change management content, and code creation.
–Next generation ecosystem expansion: IBM and SAP plan to partner around their respective employee network groups and next-gen communities, such as the companies’ women’s business networks, the SAP University Alliances program and the SAP Veterans to Work program, as well as with IBM veterans, to increase SAP solutions experience in the consulting workforce and develop the next generation of talent.
–Watsonx availability planned in the ‘Generative AI Hub’: The IBM Granite Model Series is expected to be accessible for use across SAP’s entire portfolio of cloud solutions and applications, which is underpinned by the Generative AI hub in SAP AI Core. The Generative AI Hub facilitates relevant, reliable and responsible enterprise AI, and provides instant access to a wide range of large language models (LLMs). This addition expands the collaboration between IBM and SAP to integrate IBM Watson AI technology into SAP solutions. To further highlight watsonx.ai Granite’s capabilities, IBM Consulting plans to create extensions using the model in the Generative AI Hub for select clients.
“It makes perfect sense to expand our partnership with IBM to help more customers accelerate their cloud journey by leveraging RISE with SAP to realize the transformative benefits of generative AI for cloud businesses,” said Scott Russell, Chief Revenue Officer. Officer & Executive Board Member, Customer Success of SAP SE. “Expanding this alliance will help more of our customers achieve new goals by innovating through cloud, data and enterprise AI to transform and grow their businesses.”
