By utilising IBM Watson capabilities, SAP is anticipated to power its digital assistant in SAP Start, which offers a unified entry point for cloud solutions from SAP

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SAP to embed IBM Watson technology into its solutions to offer new AI-driven insights and automation. (Credit: SAP SE)

German technology major SAP has announced plans to embed IBM Watson technology into the former’s solutions to offer new artificial intelligence (AI)-driven insights and automation.

The integration is expected to help speed up innovation and generate more efficient and effective user experiences across the German firm’s solution portfolio.

By leveraging IBM Watson capabilities, SAP is anticipated to power its digital assistant in SAP Start, which offers a unified entry point for cloud solutions from SAP.

SAP Start helps users to search, launch, and engage interactively with apps offered in cloud solutions from SAP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

With IBM Watson AI solutions, new AI capabilities will be created in SAP Start to help users improve productivity with natural language capabilities and predictive insights.

SAP CEO and executive board member Christian Klein said: “This milestone collaboration with IBM aims to provide SAP customers a better user experience, faster decision-making and greater insights to help transform their business processes.

“Working together to incorporate additional AI, machine learning and other intelligent technologies into SAP solutions can lead to better business outcomes for our joint customers.”

Currently, the firms are also supporting customers with 25 joint intelligent industry solutions that utilise IBM Watson capabilities supported by SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).

The industry solutions are expected to support customers across industries including retail, manufacturing, and utilities to expedite business transformation and use of data to drive more informed decisions.

IBM chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna said: “IBM and SAP are joining forces to give businesses new and exciting ways to harness the transformative power of AI and use it as a source of competitive advantage.

“With this announcement, we are infusing IBM Watson’s powerful, enterprise-grade AI capabilities into SAP’s leading ERP platform to help businesses reimagine customer experiences, boost productivity and fuel growth.”

SAP and IBM also announced their partnership on generative AI and large language models to offer consistent learning and automation based on SAP’s mission-critical application suite.