SAP is dou­bling down on gen­er­a­tive arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) with the debut of Joule, its new dig­i­tal assis­tant.

Announc­ing plans to embed the ​“nat­ur­al-lan­guage, gen­er­a­tive AI copi­lot” through­out the entire SAP cloud port­fo­lio, start­ing lat­er this year, SAP says Joule is designed to deliv­er proac­tive, con­tex­tu­al­ized insights from across its entire suite of cloud ser­vices as well as third-par­ty systems. 

In a Sept. 26 announce­ment — deliv­ered through SAP’s Rise into the Future broad­cast and a simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sched­uled press con­fer­ence — SAP explained that Joule will be embed­ded into SAP appli­ca­tions from HR to finance, sup­ply chain, pro­cure­ment, and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, as well as into SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP), which brings togeth­er appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment, data man­age­ment, ana­lyt­ics and plan­ning, inte­gra­tion, and AI capa­bil­i­ties into one uni­fied envi­ron­ment opti­mized for SAP applications. 

SAP announced plans to first make Joule avail­able with SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors solu­tions and SAP Start lat­er this year, then with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion ear­ly next year. SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence, SAP Ari­ba solu­tions, and SAP BTP will follow.

“At the Nexus of Busi­ness and Technology”

“We’re rapid­ly mov­ing past the hype cycle into mean­ing­ful adop­tion of AI to deliv­er real val­ue,” said Julia White, SAP Chief Mar­ket­ing & Solu­tions Offi­cer and a mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board of SAP SE, in a press brief­ing. ​“As we look ahead, AI will be the engine pow­er­ing every aspect of our technology.” 

While access to the Joule inter­face will be rolled out one appli­ca­tion at a time with­in exist­ing SAP soft­ware license agree­ments, gen­er­a­tive AI use cas­es of the appli­ca­tions that Joule calls upon will be ​“unique­ly” priced based on busi­ness val­ue, said White, promis­ing more infor­ma­tion on this front in the com­ing weeks. 

“With almost 300 mil­lion enter­prise users around the world work­ing reg­u­lar­ly with cloud solu­tions from SAP, Joule has the pow­er to rede­fine the way busi­ness­es – and the peo­ple who pow­er them – work,” said Chris­t­ian Klein, CEO and mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board of SAP SE in an offi­cial state­ment. ​“Joule draws on SAP’s unique posi­tion at the nexus of busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy and builds on our rel­e­vant, reli­able, respon­si­ble approach to Busi­ness AI. Joule will know what you mean, not just what you say.”

By draw­ing upon the breadth of busi­ness data across the SAP port­fo­lio while retain­ing busi­ness con­text, the copi­lot will help cus­tomers get work done faster and dri­ve bet­ter busi­ness out­comes, accord­ing to SAP. The copi­lot ​“serves to ener­gize the busi­ness out­comes pos­si­ble for our cus­tomers using SAP solu­tions,” said White, not­ing that its name was select­ed to reflect an ​“ener­gy force” that can assist and aug­ment cus­tomers’ efforts.

Com­pat­i­ble appli­ca­tions will allow SAP cloud cus­tomers to open up Joule’s inter­face, input nat­ur­al-lan­guage requests or nav­i­gate through AI-gen­er­at­ed prompts, and receive respons­es from Joule in the form of text, graph­ics, and tables derived from SAP or exter­nal data sources; Joule can also pro­vide links to rel­e­vant SAP appli­ca­tions and work­flows. Use cas­es out­lined by SAP includ­ed, for HR, help writ­ing unbi­ased job descrip­tions and rel­e­vant inter­view ques­tions; and for man­u­fac­tur­ing, help with bet­ter under­stand­ing sales performance

SAP Busi­ness AI Approach

SAP cre­at­ed an exter­nal AI ethics advi­so­ry pan­el in 2018, becom­ing the first Euro­pean tech com­pa­ny to do so; this pan­el eval­u­ates every AI use case at SAP, accord­ing to Thomas Sauer­es­sig, a mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board of SAP SE for SAP Prod­uct Engi­neer­ing. In the call, Sauer­es­sig reit­er­at­ed the com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to ethics and secu­ri­ty around AI.

SAP will not use exist­ing cus­tomer data to train exter­nal foun­da­tion­al AI mod­els that will be avail­able to oth­er cus­tomers, accord­ing to Bharat Sand­hu, SVP of Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment, Automa­tion and AI, at SAP. Instead, SAP will host the asso­ci­at­ed large lan­guage mod­els (LLMs) in its own data cen­ters when pos­si­ble, mask­ing and anonymiz­ing any data that is sent out to exter­nal LLMs for processing.

Joule is one of three main lay­ers in SAP’s AI strat­e­gy, said Sand­hu, with the foun­da­tion­al lay­er for orches­tra­tion embed­ded in SAP BTP and a sec­ond lay­er involv­ing AI capa­bil­i­ties embed­ded in SAP’s indi­vid­ual appli­ca­tions. Joule’s inter­face will ulti­mate­ly sit on top of the entire SAP suite and serve as a com­mon point of engage­ment for users, though it will be rolled out gradually.

SAP’s announce­ment of Joule builds on its pre­vi­ous launch of SAP Busi­ness AI tools and an AI-cen­tric SAP Sap­phire con­fer­ence in May. The reveal comes on the heels of sim­i­lar AI-copi­lot announce­ments from major enter­prise soft­ware ven­dors includ­ing Microsoft, Sales­force, Ora­cle, and ServiceNow. 

With SAP prepar­ing for its Suc­cess­Con­nect event (Octo­ber 2 – 4), SAP Spend Con­nect Live (Octo­ber 9 – 11), SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Live (Octo­ber 25), the SAP TechEd con­fer­ence (Novem­ber 2 – 3), and ASUG Tech Con­nect (Novem­ber 7 – 9), expect more announce­ments in the com­ing weeks sur­round­ing SAP Busi­ness AI and details of pre­mi­um edi­tions of RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP offerings.