In this issue:
SAP+AI News Train
If you just blinked, you probably missed three new articles on AI, the hottest topic of the century (so far). SAP world is quickly catching on, at least in terms of content.
“Agents is the most important BTP release this 2024” declares this blog post by Mario De Felipe. In AI context, “agent” is about combining reasoning and action, much like humans (well, most of us) operate. The year is still young, so I’m not sure about the “most important” part (take a look at these 2024 predictions) but it is an informative and detailed post that I recommend reading.
In the SAP Community video SAP BTP - Ask Me Anything! On Artificial Intelligence catch a short demo of “just ask” feature in Analytics Cloud around 12-minute mark. There were good questions asked live, some of which were conveniently ignored. That’s how conspiracy theories start, folks.
SAP BTP AI Vision and Strategy is a “video that should’ve been a blog post” and best value here comes from the PDF document linked in the description. It’s a very mildly interesting read (“Johnny, give me 20 slides that look like they have something to do with AI!”) and I’m mentioning it here mostly for the consultants looking to beef up their slides with copy-pasted SAP diagrams and sound bites.
American comedian Jimmy Fallon once said in a sketch about the Christmas gifts: “I’m not complaining, just asking: is this it?” That perfectly describes my impression of SAP AI offerings at this time. JP
Game Of Chairs
Bob Evans gives us his best Lord Varys and dishes on palace intrigue for the upcoming SAP Supervisory Board chair shuffle. Here's the blow-by-blow:
February 2023: SAP announces Hasso Plattner will be done on the board on May 15, 2024.
February 2023: SAP chooses ex-Deloitte CEO Dr. Punit Renjen as successor.
A year passes. Internal strife. The metaphorical body count rises, as Renjen and Plattner struggle to chart the course of SAP's very soul in the century ahead. OR: maybe normal stuff happens that is not really newsworthy?
February 2024: A press release noting that Renjen and SAP have a "difference of perspective" on the role of the chair.
February 2024: Former Nokia president Pekka Ala-Pietilä is put forward as nominee for chair upon Plattner's abdication in May 2024.
I don't know the truth behind closed doors, but Bob's take has a lot of ring-of-truth to it: Hasso "was always The Man, the ultimate visionary and decision-maker". If, as Bob speculates, Renjen was plotting to exercise similar control and direction-setting power, well…I don't know how you try to outdo a founder, inventor, and all-around dynamo like freaking Hasso Himself.
But if Bob's right, I see why someone would want similar direction-setting power. 52 years at the center of a giant means that Hasso's influence touches every single facet of SAP. A company absolutely needs that unifying force. I can understand Renjen’s possible push for power like that - he may have thought that’s exactly what SAP needs with Hasso's departure.
In every sense but the biological, Hasso's the heart. After May of this year, we'll see how powerful the new heart is. PM
No-Code: When the Dust Settles
Maarten Stam’s LI post started an interesting discussion about SAP Build Apps (aka AppGyver) and no-code app building in general. Here are some points I picked up.
“[…] business value is very 'front heavy'” – yes, any business app that is more than primitive requires front-end and back-end effort. In case of SAP Build Apps, it provides front-end to the extent it’s capable of and it means back-end development needs to do all the heavy lifting. This is in general a concern with all no-code ideas: it doesn’t remove the need for developers, it just shifts the effort elsewhere.
“[…] the 'source code' is hard to revisit, as its basically a design made in the proprietary no-code visual editor.” As Maarten elaborates, “[pro-code] can be fitted with comments and can otherwise be parsed and analyzed to see what it does”. If the app gets used for a long time with no changes needed, then it’s a big win. But that isn’t always the case. Who and how will maintain “the code created by no-code”? Also, will SAP Build Apps be there for you (and at what cost?) for the whole planned lifetime of the apps?
I quite liked AppGyver and I’m not saying at all “stay away from no-code”. There are also good comments on Maarten’s post that I’d encourage to read. Main point is when you jump into The No-Code Land, make sure you know what you’re getting into and have a good extraction plan for when things go sideways. JP
Cover Your Tracks Better
Rheinwerk Computing should re-think publishing this blog post. For crying out loud, if you're going to use ChatGPT to write things for you, put in the effort to hide it.
"Front-end and back-end": 7 times
"Importance": 3 times
"Delve into the concept"
"In the dynamic world"
"Digital landscape of tomorrow"
It’s bloated. Padded. It lacks a driving idea. You can say the same thing in a short paragraph. Phrases like “in the dynamic world” are clues that a machine is trying to inflate a bland thesis.
I’m going to return to this theme: use ChatGPT to help you refine your message, not create it. I can just see the prompt that produces the above - look how easy it is to make essentially the same blog post.
If you are a glutton for punishment, search the last year’s SAP Community blogs for “delve into”. PM
Achtung! Technology!
The DSAG Technology Days event’s banner “From vision to reality” is the gist of current sentiment in SAP ecosystem: cool story, bro, but what about the business value?
Even if it’s through the lens of Google Translate, I try to keep tabs on the happenings over at DSAG because their “technical faction” has always been significant. For example, before Clean ABAP became the thing, excellent DSAG ABAP guidelines were my go-to. So their Tech Days are kind of a big deal.
The subject of “why innovation only in Cloud though?” surfaced once again. I’m sure DSAG will keep banging this drum (and rightly so) until SAP finally pulls out “We listen” (tm) card.
Another popular demand I picked up from this article: uniformity and consistency. It always bugged me that output was implemented in SAP in 3 different ways: FI correspondence, condition-based in SD/MM, and that bizarro thing in PP/QM. It might not be an issue for the functional consultants, but developers are expected to know every module, and this output hodge-podge “confuses and infuriates us”. The excuse so far was that this was developed by different teams over 30 years. But now SAP has a fresh start chance to make everything more consistent an uniform. I hope it’s not too much to ask.
Of course, AI was also at the party. Tobias Hofmann wrote (translation by Firefox):
The AI demo was nice. But where are the AI scenarios for developers? Code analysis, unit tests, optimizations? With AI from ECC to S/4HANA? Joule in ADT? Joule in BAS?
Joule in BAS might be coming our way with SAP Build Code (expected to be in GA in Q1 2024) but honestly, who cares about BAS? Customers want AI to sort out their ABAP baggage, so that they can move to S/4HANA easier and get closer to “clean core”. I hope that SAP’s new CAIO revisits some priorities in this area. JP
GenAI Low-Code Buzzword Bonanza
You can’t swing a dead social media platform without hitting a generative AI low-code solution these days. So here comes Pega with GenAI Blueprint!
Not a lot of videos or demos on this product yet. But one phrase appeals to me: “helps teams align on a vision”. I go on and on about how AI should be used to enhance your own ideas rather than vomit out its own, and if this product has that as its goal - I’m all for it.
But holy cow is the press release a perfect mashup of buzzwords and corporate-speak. I just extracted a bunch of words from the article and strung them together…and I’m not sure this sentence is any less clear: “Enterprise-grade generative AI industry best practices turbocharge stakeholder alignment by optimizing workflows to drive transformation projects, which empower business leaders to leverage seamlessly cloud-architected continuous improvement, thus fostering deep collaboration and accelerating their journey.”
I’m inspired by one phrase, but baffled by the surrounding material. Give me something real to look at! PM
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It’s hard for me to get past Bob’s puke inducing brown nosing without wondering whether he’s entirely missed the point. On purpose. While he has correctly identified a problem in this volte face at SAP, he then swerves around the topic in spectacular fashion. And then signs off with the bleeding obvious about the relationship between Klein and Plattner. Sheesh!