More than a Joule required to power up enthusiasm for SAP's AI strategy

SAP marked its annual shindig in Orlando this week by pulling the sheets off of AI features for its popular enterprise application platform, but failed to impress analysts attending. The 52-year-old software company launched its GenAI copilot Joule last autumn and made it available for the SAP SuccessFactors HR application. …

[Pascal Monett]

"pulling the sheets off of AI features"

Holy shit. One of the most complicated, consultant-heavy, difficult-to-configure application sthat has ever been invented and marketed to the clueless CEOs is now touting AI as ahmm, benefit ?

Yeah. Sure. Companies who have paid through the nose for a never-ending "configuration process" are now supposed to believe that "AI" is going to make everything work ?

So they can get rid of those SAP consultants who have been leeching their bloodline since forever ?

Methinks this strategy is a bit of the gun-meet-foot variety.

[Lonpfrb]

Re: "pulling the sheets off of AI features"

Configuration of a flexible application for the use cases of business value for customers does not change much from new use cases enabled by machine learning. For example, partner products have been learning about vendor invoices and populating SAP for decades, requiring a stable API to do so.

Many customers don't want to invest in process and functionality Configuration specialists, preferring a project and responsible vendor to take that on. Scope, cost and time being what purchasing people are comfortable to manage.

So AI can enable functions and features that don't get done by the standard application but are not required to make standard work.

Because much of AI is new, the proof points are needed yet competitive advantage suggests should not be given away as though they are worthless..

Will that mean less temporary help is needed?

I doubt that.

[Korev]

A joule is a unit of energy. One joule would power a one-watt bulb for one second.

Watt?