New value generation partnership initiative focused on greater customer productivity and innovation through new generative AI capabilities and industry-specific cloud solutions.
May 8, 2024
ARMONK, NY and WALLDORF, Germany, May 8, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) and SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced their vision for the next era of their collaboration, which includes new Generative AI industry-specific cloud capabilities and solutions that can help customers unlock business value.
“IBM and SAP’s joint approach to generative AI, based on an open ecosystem, trust models and purpose-built models, will help clients optimize their business outcomes,” said John Granger, senior vice president, IBM Consulting. “Our new Value Generation Partnership initiative will enable customers to accelerate the path to innovation, competitive advantage and becoming a next-generation enterprise through generative AI.
“It makes perfect sense to expand our partnership with IBM to help more customers accelerate their cloud journey by leveraging RISE with SAP and realize the transformative benefits of generative AI for businesses in the cloud,” said Scott Russell, Chief Revenue Officer and Board Member, Customer Success at SAP SE. “This expanded partnership will help more of our joint customers reach new heights by innovating with cloud, data and business AI to grow and transform their businesses.
IBM Consulting and SAP aim to accelerate the transformation enabled by RISE with SAP by supporting customers in the following key areas:
- Next generation AI Business Process: Together, the companies are exploring opportunities to build new generative AI capabilities for RISE with SAP and to incorporate AI into SAP business processes through cloud solutions and industry-specific business applications. As a first step, IBM plans to extend AI capabilities across SAP’s portfolio of cloud solutions and applications, all supported by SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). This includes RISE with SAP, GROW with SAP solution, financial solutions for the CFO’s office, supply chain management solutions, human capital management solutions, SAP Customer Experience solutions and intelligent solutions expense management. IBM also plans to leverage SAP Signavio and SAP Business AI solutions to help define next-generation business processes through a proof-of-concept adoption program.
- Next generation industrial innovation: IBM and SAP plan to create intelligent industrial use cases, enabled by data-driven insights, in end-to-end business processes to power next-generation industrial innovation. These use cases will initially focus on the industrial manufacturing, consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, defense, automotive, and utility sectors. This includes IBM’s recent work with SAP to develop new AI solutions for the consumer and retail sectors. As part of this initiative, IBM has begun development of a broad portfolio of more than 100 AI solutions across industries, industries and product delivery. Additionally, IBM plans to develop industry prescriptive value maps that define next-generation business processes and impact opportunities with AI. Customers will be able to access all these new AI solutions via the global network IBM Innovation Studios And SAP Experience Center sites.
- Next-generation platform architecture and customer adoption approach: Next-generation enterprises need next-generation platform architectures and a modernized approach to customer adoption. Through the Value Generation partnership initiative, IBM intends to deliver next-generation reference architectures that enable a clean baseline approach. To do this, IBM plans to rely on SAP BTP, SAP Signavio and LeanIX solutions. These new reference architectures will help set standards for data integration, processes, systems and devices, process orchestration and automation. IBM consultants supporting clients on SAP projects can also leverage IBM Consulting Advantage, IBM’s AI services platform, and its portfolio of proprietary methods, assets and wizards to deliver more repeatability and consistency in delivery to customers. With IBM Consulting Advantage, IBM consultants can transform the way they deliver SAP solutions to increase productivity and mitigate risk by leveraging generative AI to help them accomplish tasks such as generating user stories, test scripts, training and change management, and code creation.
- Expansion of the next generation ecosystem: IBM and SAP plan to partner around their respective employee networking groups and “next generation” communities, such as the IBM and SAP Business Women’s Networks, the SAP University alliances program and the Veterans at work SAP and Veterans program at IBM to increase SAP solutions experience in the consulting workforce and develop the next generation of talent. The companies also plan to explore new ways to collaborate on social impact programs, such as training at-risk youth in the IT sector and accelerating the integration of social enterprises into global supply chains.
- Expected availability of Watsonx on the Generative AI Hub: IBM Granite Model Series is expected to be accessible for use across SAP’s portfolio of cloud solutions and applications, which leverages the SAP AI Core generative AI hub. The Generative AI Hub facilitates relevant, trustworthy and responsible business AI and provides instant access to a wide range of extended language models (LLMs). This expands the collaboration between IBM and SAP around integration of IBM Watson AI technology into SAP solutions. To further highlight the capabilities of watsonx.ai Granite, IBM Consulting plans to create extensions using the model on the Generative AI Hub for select clients.
This initiative will build on more than 50 years of collaboration between the companies, based on deep technology, industry and domain expertise, and demonstrates the shared commitment of both organizations to continue to evolve to prioritize to customers and meet market demand.
IBM Consulting accelerates our clients’ business transformation with hybrid cloud and AI technologies, leveraging our open partner ecosystem. With deep industry and business expertise spanning strategy, experience design, technology and operations, we have become the trusted partner of the world’s most innovative and valuable companies, helping them modernize and secure their most complex systems. Our 160,000 consultants embrace an open way of working and apply our proven collaborative engagement model, IBM Garage, to turn ideas into results. As the only large global systems integrator within a technology company, we don’t just advise: we invent and build the future with our customers. Learn more about IBM.com/consulting.
To learn more about the Value Generation partnership initiative, visit https://www.ibm.com/info/sap-value-generation
About IBM
IBM is a leading global provider of hybrid cloud and AI and consulting expertise. We help our customers in more than 175 countries leverage insights from their data, streamline their business processes, reduce costs, and gain a competitive advantage in their industry. More than 4,000 government entities and enterprises in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM and Red Hat OpenShift’s hybrid cloud platform to deliver their digital transformations fast, efficient and secure. IBM’s groundbreaking innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting provide open and flexible options for our clients. All of this builds on IBM’s long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, accountability, inclusiveness and service.
Visit www.ibm.com for more information.
About SAP
As a global leader in enterprise applications and enterprise AI, SAP (NYSE: SAP) sits at the intersection of business and technology. For more than 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out the best in them by bringing together critical operations spanning finance, procurement, human resources, supply chain and customer experience. For more information, visitwww.sap.com
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein and their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in the Germany and other countries. Please look https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional brand information and reviews.
Media contact
IBM
James Nelson
jamee.nelson@ibm.com
SAP: Scott Malinowski,
1 (781) 852-3822
scott.malinowski@sap.com
SOURCE IBM
