With SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG (Sep­tem­ber 9 – 11, 2024, Fontainebleau Mia­mi Beach) upon us, hear from Michael Sul­li­van, Nation­al Vice Pres­i­dent – Renew­able Ener­gy & Util­i­ties at SAP, on the trends he’s observ­ing in the util­i­ties space today. 

As util­i­ties con­tin­ue to tran­si­tion toward a clean­er ener­gy sup­ply chain, grow­ing renew­able gen­er­a­tion and stor­age capac­i­ty, hard­en­ing the grid, trans­mis­sion build out, and trans­form­ing tra­di­tion­al pow­er gen­er­a­tion are all key com­po­nents of the strat­e­gy to reduce emis­sions relat­ed to pow­er pro­duc­tion, trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion. Indus­try lead­ers are increas­ing­ly think­ing and plan­ning dif­fer­ent­ly to address the chal­lenges that accom­pa­ny such a transition.

Adopt­ing new tech­nol­o­gy along with orga­ni­za­tion­al growth strate­gies will be essen­tial to deliv­er­ing pow­er that is sus­tain­able, reli­able and afford­able. A com­bi­na­tion of data-dri­ven deci­sion-mak­ing, strate­gic part­ner­ships, and invest­ment in cloud ERP is nec­es­sary to keep util­i­ties on the cut­ting edge of innovation.

The chal­lenges faced by today’s util­i­ties are high­ly com­plex and inter­con­nect­ed. As impacts of extreme weath­er events increase, the pres­sure is on for com­pa­nies to reduce emis­sions and meet net-zero goals while invest­ing in hard­en­ing the grid, inte­grat­ing dis­trib­uted ener­gy resources and improv­ing oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies. As elec­tric­i­ty demand accel­er­ates, includ­ing from data cen­ters sup­port­ing AI and new cloud tech­nolo­gies, new tools and strate­gies will be required with­in enter­prise resource plan­ning sys­tems and inte­gra­tion with oth­er enter­prise sys­tems (e.g. ADMS, GIS, CIS) for util­i­ties to keep up.

The nuance and com­plex­i­ty of these chal­lenges and oth­ers is not lost on Michael Sul­li­van, Nation­al Vice Pres­i­dent – Renew­able Ener­gy & Util­i­ties at SAP, who believes that adop­tion of cloud ERP will play a piv­otal role in accel­er­at­ing trans­for­ma­tion strate­gies, reliev­ing the decades of tech­ni­cal debt present in this sec­tor, and sim­pli­fy­ing the process of integration.

Ahead of this year’s SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG con­fer­ence (Sep­tem­ber 9 – 11, 2024, Fontainebleau Mia­mi Beach), at which he will deliv­er the open­ing keynote, Sul­li­van sat down with ASUG to dis­cuss the ener­gy tran­si­tion, cloud adop­tion, grid inter­con­nec­tion, sig­nif­i­cant load growth, and oth­er chal­lenges that SAP and its part­ners will col­lab­o­rate with util­i­ty indus­try lead­ers to solve in the near- and long-term future.

This inter­view has been edit­ed and condensed.

At last year’s SAP for Util­i­ties con­fer­ence, you spoke about the ener­gy tran­si­tion and specif­i­cal­ly pow­er gen­er­a­tion and ener­gy con­sump­tion shift­ing toward renew­ables and elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. A year lat­er, what has changed?

The ener­gy tran­si­tion is only accel­er­at­ing, and util­i­ties are active­ly address­ing emer­gent chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties span­ning all facets of their busi­ness­es, from asset man­age­ment to cus­tomer oper­a­tions. One theme emerg­ing from recent con­ver­sa­tions with North Amer­i­can util­i­ties is that, while renew­able gen­er­a­tion capac­i­ty is expand­ing, it is not mov­ing as rapid­ly as it could because the elec­tric gen­er­a­tion inter­con­nect process — get­ting those projects approved, built, and tied to the grid— is lagging.

The vision is there, but the exe­cu­tion is run­ning up against a process that was devel­oped and cre­at­ed for tra­di­tion­al gen­er­a­tion projects. Renew­able projects are more agile, much faster, and the pace at which they’re evolv­ing… In 2024, near­ly 25% of elec­tric gen­er­a­tion in North Amer­i­ca will be through renew­able sources. That’s how quick­ly it’s evolved.

This is one of many exam­ples. For SAP, the ques­tion is how the core SAP solu­tions — around cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and asset man­age­ment, for instance — will adapt, and how we’ll extend upon what we already do well to encom­pass the adja­cen­cies emerg­ing as a part of ener­gy transition.

At this year’s con­fer­ence, you’ll address a new chal­lenge in sig­nif­i­cant load growth, which gen­er­a­tive AI, cryp­to min­ing, and elec­tric vehi­cles have con­tributed to. Tell us more about this chal­lenge and what it says about the state of the ener­gy transition.

At a macro lev­el, the ener­gy tran­si­tion is about the decar­boniza­tion of the econ­o­my. That’s a lofty, ambi­tious, multi­gen­er­a­tional project; mak­ing this hap­pen will take decades. But it’s also clear that indus­try is lin­ing up behind that ambi­tion, despite any debates around how fast we need to do it and the con­se­quences of not doing it fast enough. The momen­tum is clear. We’re mov­ing toward this.

From a util­i­ty per­spec­tive, the load growth we’re expe­ri­enc­ing as a result is unprece­dent­ed in recent decades and relates to new tech­nolo­gies which have come online rapid­ly and con­tin­ue to expand quick­ly – such as cloud com­put­ing, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, cryp­to, heat pumps and elec­tric vehi­cles. While there may be some ques­tions regard­ing shape and pace of adop­tion curves, such as for elec­tric vehi­cles (EV) which were hock­ey-stick­ing up but have lev­eled out, the fact is there is a still a steady growth rate.

Load growth was flat for years, and now all of the ISOs, in the var­i­ous regions in the coun­try are mod­i­fy­ing their load growth pro­jec­tions at sig­nif­i­cant rates. Such load growth cre­ates chal­lenges for util­i­ties in terms of gen­er­at­ing capac­i­ty, as well as around whether their trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion grids are able to han­dle it. Add to that the com­plex­i­ty of dis­trib­uted resources com­ing online, since it’s not as if all these gen­er­a­tion assets are going to be utility-owned.

The util­i­ty cus­tomer has gone from being a rate pay­er to a pro­sumer to what’s being called an omnisumer by many. Util­i­ties still must man­age the cus­tomer as a recip­i­ent of ser­vices, but they are also installing tech­nolo­gies in their homes that need to be inte­grat­ed into the oper­a­tional mod­el the util­i­ty runs. We’re see­ing sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment from SAP in think­ing about what we need to build and where we need to part­ner in order to help util­i­ties nav­i­gate that tran­si­tion. In response, SAP is map­ping out and devel­op­ing a plat­form for dis­trib­uted ener­gy resources.

With that elec­tric­i­ty demand increas­ing after two decades of essen­tial­ly flat load growth, util­i­ties now pre­dict load growth dou­bling with­in the next decade. From a tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness per­spec­tive, can you elab­o­rate on how SAP is mov­ing to sup­port util­i­ties in meet­ing that demand?

On this year’s keynote pan­els, we have rep­re­sen­ta­tion from a num­ber of con­trib­u­tors to load growth, includ­ing cryp­to min­ing and major data-cen­ter providers, and we’ll be dis­cussing their impact and role in the ener­gy tran­si­tion. From a busi­ness mod­el per­spec­tive, there’s a con­stant con­ver­sa­tion between util­i­ties and large data cen­ter providers in terms of syn­er­gies and oppor­tu­ni­ties; how can they con­struct and locate their facil­i­ties in opti­mal areas and be build­ing in the right areas to con­sume load?

From those in cryp­to min­ing, we’ve learned they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly care where their data cen­ters are locat­ed. As such, there are dia­logues regard­ing how they can poten­tial­ly help bal­ance load by putting their needs in areas where capac­i­ty is avail­able, where they won’t over­load con­sump­tion, as opposed to just build­ing any­where. There’s a busi­ness-mod­el and coor­di­na­tion prob­lem with all of this. This fun­da­men­tal shift goes across mul­ti­ple play­ers in the indus­try, and it’s forc­ing dia­logue and con­ver­sa­tion that nev­er hap­pened before, across a broad­er val­ue chain. That said, there are clear needs for is tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions to help man­age this.

Think about the dis­trib­uted ener­gy resource man­age­ment plat­form that SAP is envi­sion­ing. One thing SAP has his­tor­i­cal­ly done very well for util­i­ties is meter-to-cash oper­a­tions. We know who the cus­tomer is. We know the his­to­ry of the cus­tomer’s con­sump­tion. We man­age the process of billing that cus­tomer over time. That’s evolved to where we’re man­ag­ing the process of pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al ser­vices to that cus­tomer, facil­i­tat­ing the evo­lu­tion of the util­i­ty call cen­ter into a team of ener­gy pro­fes­sion­als who can man­age ener­gy rela­tion­ships with the cus­tomer. That con­tin­u­um con­tin­ues to move to the right, where we need to build plat­form and inno­va­tion capa­bil­i­ties that allow the util­i­ty to engage those cus­tomers as gen­er­a­tors and work with them to facil­i­tate the inter­con­nec­tion between cus­tomer-owned assets and grid operations.

One of the impli­ca­tions of load growth is that util­i­ties, at times, hit capac­i­ty and need to man­age load-shed­ding events. We’ve all wit­nessed rolling black­outs and brownouts that have hap­pened his­tor­i­cal­ly. In the new world, we’ve got cus­tomers, whether large com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al cus­tomers or even res­i­den­tial cus­tomers that have bat­tery stor­age facil­i­ties in their prop­er­ties or man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties, with solar-gen­er­at­ing capa­bil­i­ties on the roof. Those cus­tomers become an asset to the util­i­ty in terms of man­ag­ing load, because those cus­tomers can go off-grid on demand. But they have to agree to that, and that’s part of the rela­tion­ship SAP manages.

The com­pa­nies that pro­vide soft­ware solu­tions to man­age the oper­a­tions of the grid, the flow of the elec­trons, need a rela­tion­ship to the end cus­tomer. That’s what SAP does. We have this abil­i­ty to pro­vide pro­grams and ser­vices to cus­tomers, to have them sign up to be part of load-shed­ding pro­grams. Then, we as a sys­tem need to be able to com­mu­ni­cate to the grid oper­at­ing sys­tems that this sub­set of cus­tomers has cer­tain assets, which have this much capac­i­ty, and so that much capac­i­ty is there­fore avail­able; in the event of the need for a load shed­ding event, these cus­tomers have already signed up and con­sent­ed to being part of these pro­grams. Here are the con­straints, the times of day, what these cus­tomers need to be will­ing to do this. You cre­ate this full loop between grid oper­a­tions and the cus­tomer rela­tion­ship. That’s one exam­ple of what we’re try­ing to solve with this dis­trib­uted ener­gy resource platform.

As util­i­ties seek to speed up the inter­con­nec­tion of clean ener­gy onto the nation’s trans­mis­sion grid, giv­en the back­log of solar, wind, and bat­tery projects wait­ing to be built, the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy has devel­oped a roadmap out­lin­ing near- and long-term solu­tions for chal­lenges in trans­mis­sion sys­tem inter­con­nec­tion, as part of its Inter­con­nec­tion Inno­va­tion e‑Xchange (i2X) pro­gram. It’s a com­plex puz­zle to solve. What dis­tin­guish­es the util­i­ties suc­ceed­ing in con­nect­ing their clean ener­gy projects to the grid?

Util­i­ties are in the midst of push­ing to solve this, and there’s a lot of com­plex­i­ty around it. Those util­i­ties that pri­or­i­tize col­lab­o­ra­tion with SAP and their ven­dor ecosys­tem are lead­ing the way. Many of the larg­er util­i­ties in North Amer­i­ca that run SAP to main­tain their assets are already lever­ag­ing SAP to solve this prob­lem, but they had to build cus­tom capa­bil­i­ty around it. When you think about where SAP sits in the puz­zle, we’ve got a new gen­er­at­ing asset that’s going to come online. There’s the mat­ter of man­ag­ing the appli­ca­tion process, the actu­al esti­mat­ing and cost­ing of those projects, the impact on the util­i­ty and the grid.

Much of that data sits with­in SAP; much of it sits out­side of SAP. That’s why we’re see­ing these as col­lab­o­ra­tive prob­lems that we need to solve as an indus­try, but we’re work­ing close­ly with util­i­ties, based on what they’ve done his­tor­i­cal­ly with SAP, to take that ground­work and cre­ate stan­dard­ized process­es around that.

Fun­da­men­tal­ly, SAP focus­es on process opti­miza­tion. How do we opti­mize? How do we look for laten­cy in the process that exists today, to look for those touch points where SAP can solve per­haps not the entire prob­lem — because the entire prob­lem does­n’t sit with­in our domain — but at least solve for the chal­lenges we touch. Col­lab­o­ra­tion and part­ner­ship here will be crit­i­cal and differentiating.

Util­i­ties in the SAP com­mu­ni­ty need to focus on both max­i­miz­ing cur­rent tech­nolo­gies and migrat­ing to SAP S/4HANA. Can you speak about the unique posi­tion, chal­lenge, and oppor­tu­ni­ty for util­i­ties with regard to the ongo­ing glob­al shift to SAP S/4HANA?

If we think about SAP S/4HANA and the tran­si­tion to cloud, this con­nects to the prob­lems we’ve been dis­cussing and prob­lems sur­round­ing both cur­rent and future inno­va­tions like arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI). Over the last 50 years, SAP has built a series of sys­tems that encour­aged the use of stan­dard process­es as much as pos­si­ble. If we’re using a set of stan­dard process­es, by def­i­n­i­tion, we end up with a set of stan­dard­ized data that facil­i­tates inter­op­er­abil­i­ty. But the real­i­ty is: the adop­tion of that stan­dard didn’t always hap­pen, for a vari­ety of reasons.

If we look at SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA projects, one of the biggest chal­lenges is how util­i­ties assess every­thing that they’ve built, deter­mine what they can retire and move to stan­dard, and opti­mize the approach to deliv­er­ing any crit­i­cal devel­op­ments to achieve tru­ly sus­tain­able sys­tems as they move to the cloud. Many util­i­ties built cus­tom appli­ca­tions in SAP to help solve spe­cif­ic prob­lems, like the inter­con­nect chal­lenges we already dis­cussed, but if we’re main­tain­ing those as cus­tom appli­ca­tions going for­ward into S/4HANA, we’re cre­at­ing more com­plex­i­ty to man­age, as well as incon­sis­ten­cy from util­i­ty to utility.

In a world where more inter­op­er­abil­i­ty is going to be required to solve com­plex prob­lems, that is a chal­lenge. One fun­da­men­tal oppor­tu­ni­ty with the shift to S/4HANA in the cloud is for util­i­ties to pri­or­i­tize this notion of fit-to-stan­dard, to achieve what SAP calls clean core. In the util­i­ties indus­try, where many exist­ing SAP sys­tems were first deployed in the mid-90s, it’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-exam­ine how those sys­tems are con­fig­ured to oper­ate. The move towards a fit-to-stan­dard mod­el facil­i­tates and cre­ates greater con­sis­ten­cy across these fun­da­men­tal datasets, which then becomes crit­i­cal to solv­ing inter­op­er­abil­i­ty problems.

Mod­ern­iz­ing these process­es, as well, will set util­i­ties up to lever­age tech­nolo­gies still emerg­ing, from car­bon account­ing to intel­li­gent asset man­age­ment — inno­va­tions that require util­i­ties to think about busi­ness oper­a­tions in a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent way.

If you look at the state of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and all that’s hap­pened with gen­er­a­tive AI, busi­ness­es are start­ing to look at the state of AI, and they’re ask­ing, ​“Are we get­ting busi­ness ben­e­fit? Are we get­ting the val­ue we thought we’d be get­ting out of this?” In gen­er­al, the answers are mixed.

We have seen some tech-focused AI projects and pilots sput­ter, but we believe this is tied to that sub­tle, age-old trap of tech­nol­o­gy for technology’s sake; in con­trast, SAP’s fun­da­men­tal belief and con­vic­tion is that the val­ue to be extract­ed from AI — whether it’s more com­pu­ta­tion­al AI like tra­di­tion­al machine-learn­ing algo­rithms, or whether it’s some of the new gen­er­a­tive capa­bil­i­ties — is only present if AI is embed­ded with­in busi­ness process­es lever­ag­ing busi­ness data.

We’re zeroed in on how to deliv­er AI capa­bil­i­ties embed­ded with­in the con­text of these process­es. That then goes back to the con­ver­sa­tion about the shift to the cloud, and the rea­son why it’s so imper­a­tive that we take our util­i­ties to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud, and that we are dialed in on the need for that S/4HANA envi­ron­ment to be fit-to-stan­dard and clean core. The more we move away from those stan­dard process­es, the more we are going to break these var­i­ous AI mod­els we’re try­ing to oper­a­tional­ize the busi­ness val­ue out of. There’s a lot of down­stream impli­ca­tion to cre­at­ing bespoke and cus­tom systems.

In the past, we’ve got­ten away with it, because every­body was very much iso­lat­ed, almost like a node on a net­work unto them­selves, and they could deal with their process­es. Now, we don’t exist in that envi­ron­ment. Whether it’s the infu­sion of new tech, like AI, or whether it’s how we dri­ve to stan­dard­ize com­plex process­es, such as an inter­con­nect that’s going to go out­side of the walls of the util­i­ty and tie into mul­ti­ple oth­er enter­pris­es and demand a lev­el of data inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and con­nec­tiv­i­ty, the imper­a­tive to dri­ve toward stan­dard in these areas is key. The solu­tions have matured suf­fi­cient­ly to allow for that.

30 years ago, the mantra of fit-to-stan­dard exist­ed, but the solu­tions weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly to the point where they pro­vid­ed every­thing the util­i­ty need­ed. The solu­tions have matured; of course, we’re still going to find areas where we may need to expand and enhance, but SAP is build­ing capa­bil­i­ty sets through SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form to allow for nuances in process­es, such as local­iza­tion dri­ven by reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments, with­out impact­ing the core. Fas­ci­nat­ing­ly, with a few major projects we’re see­ing now, busi­ness lead­ers at the top of the orga­ni­za­tion are say­ing they want zero cus­tomiza­tion. Fit-to-stan­dard is their goal, because if they can tru­ly stan­dard­ize, they can ful­ly scale, dri­ve costs out of oper­a­tions, and be ready to accom­mo­date the change coming.

It’s been excit­ing to see the tech­nol­o­gy to do these exten­sions rapid­ly mature in a way that allows us to keep the core SAP S/4HANA sys­tem clean and for SAP to be able to man­age and upgrade that solu­tion in the cloud for our cus­tomers, as-a-ser­vice. The adop­tion rate around ERP as-a-ser­vice, or RISE with SAP, has soared in the util­i­ties space over the last cou­ple of years. It is very rare that we’re talk­ing about a new project where they’re not envi­sion­ing ERP in the cloud.

Cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is anoth­er core focus area for those in the util­i­ties space. What have you seen, in your role, of the cur­rent chal­lenge that util­i­ties face in fine-tun­ing sys­tems and invest­ing in CX ahead of migration?

We’ve been talk­ing about this shift for a while, from a rate pay­er to a con­sumer, and so the tools and the tech­nol­o­gy have sought to accom­mo­date that over time. The oper­a­tional mod­el of util­i­ties, too, has sought to incor­po­rate that over time. The for­ward-look­ing shift comes back to what you and I were talk­ing about ear­li­er, around dis­trib­uted ener­gy resources. The cus­tomer is now embed­ded or will be embed­ded in the util­i­ty operation.

That’s a very dif­fer­ent view of the world than before. It’s not that it’s the vast major­i­ty yet at all, but we envi­sion a world where there is decen­tral­ized gen­er­a­tion hap­pen­ing across both util­i­ty-owned assets and across this cus­tomer base. The need to view even how a util­i­ty engages the cus­tomer, as the util­i­ty is more of an ener­gy part­ner to the cus­tomer, has added to want­i­ng to enable cus­tomers to sign up for new pro­grams and ser­vices that allow them to active­ly par­tic­i­pate in man­age­ment of their ener­gy consumption.

The next gen­er­a­tion of con­sumers and busi­ness lead­ers is very con­cerned with ener­gy con­sump­tion; this is going to fol­low a demo­graph­ic pat­tern as well, but that pat­tern is accel­er­at­ing. We see the need to pro­vide a set of tools to util­i­ties that allow them to man­age that entire life­cy­cle with the util­i­ty itself becom­ing an advi­sor to cus­tomers, a part­ner to these cus­tomers around their man­age­ment, con­sump­tion, and gen­er­a­tion of energy.

SAP is increas­ing­ly invest­ing in self-ser­vice capa­bil­i­ties, and in vir­tu­al agents, but even shift­ing to a cloud ERP sys­tem that effec­tive­ly scale oper­a­tions can be trans­for­ma­tive as well for tra­di­tion­al cus­tomer care centers.

The nature of what we expect self-ser­vice agents and chat­bots to be able to do has changed, as has what we expect out of agents direct­ly man­ag­ing cus­tomer calls in the call cen­ter. It’s very rare that we encounter util­i­ties that don’t have mature and well-deployed self-ser­vice capa­bil­i­ties. Now, we’re mov­ing to the next gen­er­a­tion; pre­vi­ous­ly, we’d been focused on how we offload calls from the call cen­ter, as a cost reduc­tion move. How do we give a cus­tomer access to their bill? How do we allow them to pay their bill on time and online? How does this help us man­age our cash flows, to aug­ment and shift calls away from a call center?

The men­tal­i­ty has fun­da­men­tal­ly shift­ed. We’re mov­ing to a next-gen­er­a­tion self-ser­vice par­a­digm which asks how we’re going to enable this con­sumer to man­age ener­gy resources in their home, whether that’s the EV, a Pow­er­wall, or their heat pump. How are we going to serve them in an ener­gy advi­so­ry capac­i­ty, how do we involve them, and how do we moti­vate them to become active? Some peo­ple are going to nat­u­ral­ly default to this. That’ll be their default mode set­ting: ​“I care about the envi­ron­ment, I care about the impact I’m hav­ing, and I’m going to proac­tive­ly man­age this.” Across the entire cus­tomer base, there is a wide spec­trum of behav­ioral pat­terns, though. New cus­tomer engage­ment plat­forms are focused on gam­i­fy­ing this, incen­tiviz­ing peo­ple to becom­ing ener­gy pro­sumers, right? We want to enable end-to-end ener­gy consumers.

The ever-increas­ing com­plex­i­ty in inte­gra­tion can be a dif­fi­cult chal­lenge for util­i­ties to over­come amid migra­tion. What have you observed of this pain point? And what dif­fer­en­ti­ates those util­i­ties solv­ing this issue from those that con­tin­ue to struggle?

As SAP has moved all of our assets to the cloud, we’ve got cus­tomers who are run­ning SAP S/4HANA, but many of those same cus­tomers are also run­ning cloud ser­vices from SAP for human resources, for pro­cure­ment, for trav­el and expense, for sup­ply chain inte­gra­tion, etc.

Part of SAP’s push towards the core ERP need­ing to move to the cloud, such that we can con­tin­u­ous­ly update it for our cus­tomers, is that this solves inter­op­er­abil­i­ty and inte­gra­tion chal­lenges that may have exist­ed with­in the SAP land­scape. Through our cloud suite strat­e­gy, SAP owns the inte­gra­tion bur­den so that our cus­tomers don’t need to. Piv­otal at this point is cloud ERP, because all of these sys­tems tie into that as a hub. If we’re able to con­stant­ly update that and man­age those inte­grat­ed process­es for our cus­tomers, we can make that seamless.

SAP has also real­ly matured the cloud inte­gra­tion suite capa­bil­i­ties for exter­nal sys­tems that exist with­in our busi­ness tech­nol­o­gy plat­form, such that we’re see­ing cus­tomers stan­dard­ize on BTP as a cen­tral­ized way to man­age process inte­gra­tion, inbound and out­bound, to SAP through a sin­gle capa­bil­i­ty set. With the matu­ri­ty of that plat­form comes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to opti­mize and sim­pli­fy those inte­gra­tions; as cus­tomers are mov­ing to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud, we’re see­ing a lot of them also take on the projects of dri­ving sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of those inter­faces to depen­dent and exter­nal sys­tems. That’s process integration.

Also, con­sid­er­ing data inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, this is anoth­er mas­sive area of invest­ment as well as mat­u­ra­tion that SAP has gone through. I’m excit­ed about the capa­bil­i­ties that exist with­in SAP Data­s­phere. For cus­tomers that have his­tor­i­cal­ly worked with SAP, with SAP Busi­ness Ware­house (BW), it was a very SAP-cen­tric view of the world. And SAP has real­ly opened up, with SAP HANA Cloud and SAP Data­s­phere, the abil­i­ty to have access to SAP data and allow that data to be exposed to and inter­op­er­a­ble with oth­er sys­tems and oth­er tech­nolo­gies, to fed­er­ate data from mul­ti­ple sources togeth­er, to get that holis­tic view. That capa­bil­i­ty set has matured tremen­dous­ly and is best-in-class at this point, and the cus­tomers we’re see­ing adopt that are extract­ing tremen­dous amount of val­ue from that holis­tic view of how their data ties together.

Any part­ing words for the util­i­ties com­mu­ni­ty before we head to SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG in Miami?

I need to express my appre­ci­a­tion for the part­ner­ship and the col­lab­o­ra­tion that we see across the indus­try — and that ASUG is clear­ly a part of help­ing to facil­i­tate. You and I have touched on the fact that some of these prob­lems are real­ly com­plex; they require a degree of inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, a degree of stan­dard­iza­tion. Those ini­tia­tives are hard to dri­ve in high­ly com­pet­i­tive indus­tries. We’re for­tu­nate that this par­tic­u­lar indus­try is one that val­ues this col­lab­o­ra­tion. More than any­thing else, there’s a sense of appre­ci­a­tion on my part, for the degree to which util­i­ties are embrac­ing strate­gic shifts from SAP as a way to help dri­ve sim­plic­i­ty and opti­miza­tion of process­es, and also to help solve for major problems.

The ener­gy tran­si­tion is rife with chal­lenges, at both a macro and a micro lev­el, that need to be solved. I see SAP’s com­mit­ment to work­ing with our util­i­ty part­ners to help solve that. I’m even more encour­aged by the degree to which we’re see­ing util­i­ties step into this and chal­lenge us to get bet­ter in cer­tain areas, and also allow us to chal­lenge them in cer­tain areas, like clean core, like fit-to-stan­dard. The extent of open­ness to that chal­lenge has been encour­ag­ing. We’re going to be able to solve these prob­lems; it’s impor­tant that we tack­le them together.

For more from Michael Sul­li­van, Nation­al Vice Pres­i­dent – Renew­able Ener­gy & Util­i­ties at SAP, read our recap of the SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG conference’s top­ics.