It’s been just over a year since the enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy space was for­ev­er changed by the arrival of Chat­G­PT. OpenAI’s ground­break­ing chat­bot has since come to sym­bol­ize a par­a­digm shift in tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment, ush­er­ing in the era of gen­er­a­tive AI. 

Back then, indus­try ana­lysts, sea­soned busi­ness exec­u­tives, and tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers around the world react­ed with a com­bi­na­tion of fear and awe, and the tech indus­try was near-instant­ly engaged in, if not out­right con­sumed by, spir­it­ed dia­logue around this technology’s game-chang­ing potential. 

The hype and hys­te­ria of a year ago has since been replaced by a more con­struc­tive line of dis­cus­sion, as tech­nol­o­gy part­ners and enter­prise exec­u­tives explore real-world appli­ca­tions for har­ness­ing the poten­tial of this tech­nol­o­gy. One point is clear: its impact is both incred­i­bly wide­spread and profound. 

It’s been par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing to see the effect of gen­er­a­tive AI on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al and enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy in par­tic­u­lar. Com­pa­nies in all indus­tries, and gov­ern­ments world­wide, have rushed to form task forces and devel­op­ment teams to explore pos­si­ble appli­ca­tions for this unfa­mil­iar but unde­ni­ably pow­er­ful tech­nol­o­gy. In June, for exam­ple, the White House Office of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Pol­i­cy (OSTP) and the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion (NSF) formed the Nation­al AI Research Task Force to estab­lish a roadmap that will pro­mote AI inno­va­tion and research. 

With­in a cal­en­dar quar­ter of gen­er­a­tive AI enter­ing the cor­po­rate zeit­geist, major play­ers in the enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy space announced major ini­tia­tives involv­ing the tech­nol­o­gy. SAP was no excep­tion. At SAP Sap­phire, the company’s sig­na­ture event in Orlan­do, Thomas Sauer­es­sig, head of SAP prod­uct engi­neer­ing and a mem­ber of the SAP exec­u­tive board, declared that SAP was doing much more than mak­ing bets on gen­er­a­tive AI. ​“SAP is an AI com­pa­ny,” he declared. ​“SAP’s AI is built into our sys­tems, which pow­er your busi­ness.” On stage, Chris­t­ian Klein, CEO and mem­ber of the SAP exec­u­tive board, announced plans to inte­grate AI that’s ​“built for busi­ness” across its port­fo­lio while expand­ing AI part­ner­ships with Microsoft, Google, and IBM. 

Fast for­ward to the fall of 2023. In late Sep­tem­ber, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty, along with ASUG’s lead­er­ship team and a few of our board mem­bers, to vis­it SAP head­quar­ters in Wall­dorf, Ger­many, and sit down with sev­er­al of the company’s senior exec­u­tives. While on cam­pus, I attend­ed an SAP press con­fer­ence that fea­tured Philipp Herzig, SVP, Head of Cross Prod­uct Engi­neer­ing & Expe­ri­ence at SAP, along­side oth­er SAP executives. 

While the press cov­ered RISE with SAP, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and oth­er impor­tant devel­op­ments for the SAP prod­uct port­fo­lio, AI was also front and cen­ter. The con­fer­ence made clear SAP’s inten­tion to lever­age gen­er­a­tive AI to meet cus­tomers’ needs while align­ing with cur­rent and emerg­ing stan­dards and reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments. Key to the company’s busi­ness AI strat­e­gy is Joule, a nat­ur­al-lan­guage, gen­er­a­tive AI copi­lot that — as announced dur­ing our vis­it to Wall­dorf — will be embed­ded through­out SAP’s cloud enter­prise portfolio.

It was remark­able to see, less than a year into the gen­er­a­tive AI era, the extent to which SAP exec­u­tives have moved to inte­grate AI into core prod­ucts and emerg­ing ini­tia­tives. Weeks lat­er, that momen­tum was com­pound­ed by a num­ber of AI announce­ments at SAP TechEd, includ­ing SAP Build Code solu­tions, which include AI-pow­ered devel­op­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tools opti­mized for Java and JavaScript devel­op­ment.

Before gen­er­a­tive AI, cloud was the new fron­tier tak­ing enter­prise com­put­ing by storm. While cloud tech­nolo­gies today per­me­ate just about every aspect of enter­prise com­put­ing, it took over a decade for it to achieve its cur­rent main­stream sta­tus. Gen­er­a­tive AI reached and per­haps even sur­passed the same lev­el of inter­est in just 12 months.

Man­ag­ing risk

While the speed with which gen­er­a­tive AI has estab­lished itself across the busi­ness land­scape is exhil­a­rat­ing, this community’s rapid embrace has also led many to urge cau­tion and restraint, and everyone’s ask­ing essen­tial, mis­sion-crit­i­cal ques­tions. How will gen­er­a­tive AI impact our indus­tries, com­pa­nies, and ecosys­tems in the short and long term? What does respon­si­ble AI look like, and how can com­pa­nies lever­age this excit­ing tech­nol­o­gy while mit­i­gat­ing any risks that could result from doing so? 

Bal­anc­ing the con­cerns and oppor­tu­ni­ties asso­ci­at­ed with gen­er­a­tive AI requires the com­mu­ni­ty of inter­est — which is to say all of us — to invest as much in devel­op­ing effec­tive guardrails as in rolling out new innovations. 

For his part, Herzig explained that SAP close­ly observes inter­na­tion­al stan­dards and reg­u­la­tions, includ­ing those still emerg­ing, such as the Euro­pean Union (EU)’s AI Act and the pro­posed Blue­print for an AI Bill of Rights from the White House’s OSTP. In Novem­ber, SAP announced it had joined the Stan­ford Human-Cen­tered Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (HAI) Cor­po­rate Affil­i­ate pro­gram; the com­pa­ny said it will com­mit exper­tise and resources to sup­port new research areas and explore the oppor­tu­ni­ties, prob­lems, and solu­tions ahead for gen­er­a­tive AI in business. 

These efforts com­ple­ment SAP’s own com­pre­hen­sive AI ethics pol­i­cy, cre­at­ed over the last decade to gov­ern the devel­op­ment, deploy­ment, use, and sale of AI sys­tems at SAP. The com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to evolve its AI ethics pol­i­cy as new reg­u­la­tions emerge, and all the AI use cas­es SAP devel­ops will con­tin­ue to be assessed with respect to this pol­i­cy, Herzig noted.

Look­ing ahead

While there is no way to pre­cise­ly project the eco­nom­ic impact that gen­er­a­tive AI will have on the busi­ness land­scape, Bloomberg Intel­li­gence pre­dicts the gen­er­a­tive AI mar­ket will grow to $1.3 tril­lion over the next 10 years. The ris­ing demand for gen­er­a­tive AI prod­ucts could add about $280 bil­lion of new soft­ware rev­enue, dri­ven by spe­cial­ized assis­tants, new infra­struc­ture prod­ucts, and copi­lots that accel­er­ate cod­ing, accord­ing to that team. 

What does this mean for our ASUG community? 

At a min­i­mum, it means that we ignore the impli­ca­tions of gen­er­a­tive AI, both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive, at our per­il. The pace at which this tech­nol­o­gy is evolv­ing will like­ly require each of us to devel­op a stronger under­stand­ing of what gen­er­a­tive AI can do, and of the impact it will have on every­thing from strate­gic plan­ning and oper­a­tional exe­cu­tion to finan­cial pro­jec­tions and tech­nol­o­gy deployments. 

It’s incum­bent upon each of us to inte­grate gen­er­a­tive AI con­sid­er­a­tions into our organization’s gov­er­nance, change man­age­ment, and risk mit­i­ga­tion cal­cu­la­tions. Bloomberg may have pro­vid­ed a glimpse into the poten­tial upside of AI, but it will be up to us to make sure that we have strong over­sight func­tions in place to guard against the poten­tial downside. 

The good news is that we are not alone. We have each oth­er. As par­tic­i­pants in the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty, we can and must tap into the wealth of expe­ri­ence and exper­tise that exists with­in our mem­ber­ship. ASUG’s First Five newslet­ter, dis­trib­uted week­ly to all ASUG mem­bers, is avail­able for you to share your adven­tures in AI-enabled trans­for­ma­tion. So, reach out to us at news@​asug.​com, sug­gest sto­ries, and let us know if you have a case study that needs to be told or a use case that needs to be shared. 

And rest assured that we will be close­ly fol­low­ing the sto­ry of gen­er­a­tive AI as it con­tin­ues to unfold across 2024, at our in-per­son and vir­tu­al events — and through all our con­tent, research, and edi­to­r­i­al chan­nels — as part of our promise to deliv­er val­ue to you, the SAP community.

Patri­cia Brown is ASUG’s Edi­to­r­i­al Director.