&ever, formerly Farmers Cut, is a Germany-based company with a mission to transform the future of agriculture. Through technological innovation and agricultural digitalization, they aim to locally and sustainably grow delicious tasting salad vegetables without the use of harmful pesticides. It was founded in 2015 by Mark Korzilius and Isabel Molitor. The firm coined the term dryponic, the advanced cultivation technology implemented in their indoor farming system.

Dryponic Optimized with SAP HANA & SAP Cloud Platform 

The dryponic technology was envisioned to produce the freshest, highly-nutritional leafy greens with the roots intact and alive until consumption. This system—unlike hydroponic, aeroponic, and aquaponic—keeps the roots dry throughout by using a unique method where roots are exposed to higher amounts of oxygen vs. dissolved oxygen in water. This allows the indoor farm to use 90 percent less water than other traditional vertical farming systems and leads to overall better-growing conditions.

The process eliminates the risk of contamination due to algae growth. This also allows the firm the capability to ‘Harvest on Demand.’ With dryponic, they can produce the freshest salad vegetables by only harvesting them until the final moment of serving to customers. To ensure the highest quality, the produce is tasted directly from the growing trays by the &ever team.

Using this new cultivation technology, sustainable and continuous farming is made possible even in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert.

To fully automate and effectively control atmospheric conditions of the dryponic system, &ever turned to SAP partner IBSolution GmbH for support with SAP HANA and SAP Cloud Platform solutions. Utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT), data is collected from a number of sources in the farmhouse to monitor:

• seeding and germination
• CO2 levels
• atmosphere temperature
• humidity
• airflow

The collected data is then sent to SAP HANA’s in-memory database and analyzed on the SAP Cloud Platform to optimize production. With these technological solutions, &ever’s indoor farm can continuously produce up to 550 kilos of fresh greens and herbs a day.

With IBSolution’s SAP software implementation and development, plans are underway by &ever to expand its sustainable farms throughout Asia and Africa.

The Future of Agriculture

The agriculture technology innovation is set to become a US$700B market by 2030. This only means that like &ever, other agricultural businesses need to step up in delivering intelligent solutions that utilize AI and other technological advancements to produce sustainable and profitable food products. Supporting the future of agriculture is a mission that SAP Business solutions aim to address. Using SAP HANA, SAP Cloud Platform, and other disruptive technologies, SAP offers industry best practices and standards to prepare agribusinesses for the agriculture revolution by creating market valuation throughout the entire value chain.

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The independent German company—set to open offices in China and India this year—is dedicated to revolutionizing investments and asset management in the renewable energy sector by focusing on intelligent technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). The intellitech company’s mission is to achieve a greener future through smart solutions and to remove roadblocks to investment in the clean energy space to boost the global economy.

With ARISTOTELES, the company has leveraged the technology of SAP HANA analytics and SAP Leonardo to mobilize global investments to renewable energy at scale. The DAaaS platform is built on SAP Cloud Platform and relies on IoT, Smart Data Analytics, Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning capabilities from SAP Leonardo to:

• maximize asset and portfolio performance;
• minimize investment risks by creating the highest possible standards of transparency; and
• maximize monetary returns.

In a statement, Kaiserwetter CEO and Founder Hanno Schoklitsch said:

“We built this platform because when we thought about what was really needed to tackle climate change, the answer was capital.”

“Investors want less risk and strong returns. This platform delivers the transparency investors need to make confident decisions in renewable energies. It will foster universal access to affordable energy, which is especially needed in regions like Africa, Asia, and South America.”

The partnership between SAP and Kaiserwetter began in 2015 and culminated with the creation of ARISTOTELES in 2018 to unlock private capital investments in renewable energies, achieve the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement, drive success by creating transparency in the industry market and integrate technical and financial data in one solution.

The company utilizes SAP Hana predictive analytics in the executive-level platform to aggregate complex and unstructured technical, meteorological, and financial data from wind farms, solar parks, biomass, and hydropower stations and feed these continuously to learning algorithms. This process helps to detect energy asset failures before they occur so that operational issues can be resolved proactively, thereby allowing investors to make smarter decisions in managing the impact of reduced yields on assets and maximize return on investments.

Other Awards Received

Aside from SAP Innovation Awards, ARISTOTELES has won several other prestigious awards for its intelligent renewable energy asset management:

• Top 10 Asset Management Solution Providers USA 2019
• European CEO Awards 2019
• SAP Innovation Awards 2018
• Digital Leader Award 2018
• Best Renewable Energy Asset Manager – Germany 2018
• Top 100 Ideas of the Year

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SAP APJ President Scott Russell stated that India continues to be one of the fastest-growing markets for SAP, wherein Research and Development centres will receive further investments.

Here are the excerpts from The Hindu’s conversation with Deb Deep Sengupta, Managing Director of SAP India on the country’s Cloud growth, working with competitors and hyperscalers, IoT, Smart Cities, and future plans.

Tandem Growth

According to Sengupta, SAP Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) is growing together with India with its performance attributed mostly to the SAP in Cloud.

SAP APJ is on its 22nd consecutive quarter of growth, a commendable feat in a volatile and dynamic market in the APAC. The Managing Director expressed that the region continues to be the fastest-growing in the world for SAP in Cloud.

“I think that’s reflective of markets looking to consume and use technology in its simplest,” he said.

This translates to the point that markets are utilizing technology in its simplest yet purposeful design without the complexity of reordering their infrastructure. Also, he affirmed that the region has a large SME market that quickly adopted the Cloud. This contributed to the technology’s growth performance aside from the expected influence of established conglomerates in APAC. Leveraging the Cloud, SMEs are anticipated to manage growth in terms of new customer acquisition.

As a country, Sengupta said that India continues to be one of the fastest-growing and strongest businesses for SAP both globally and regionally. The country has shown laudable financial performance and progressive ways of utilizing technologies such as machine learning, AI, blockchain, and robotics. The trends on how the Indian customers leverage these technologies will positively drive change.

The Shape of Cloud

With regards to the massive growth of Cloud in India, he clarified that the growth is not because of spillage from saturated markets. The SAP India head confidently said that the Cloud is far from reaching its saturation point with mature and new markets steadfastly growing. Specifically, in India, the trend is on consumption-based technology wherein businesses need not own and run the asset. Instead, the objective is for businesses to consume and use it efficiently to get the maximum value out of it.

Partner/ Competitors

Sengupta emphasized that in an era where technology is constantly evolving, SAP’s strength stands out in solving complex business problems. The software and cloud giant builds, creates, designs, and delivers eloquent, simple, easy-to-use business solutions. Customers are given the liberty to choose from using these applications either on-premise or in the Cloud.

He considers their “competitors” such as Microsoft, GCP, and AWS as “partners” in terms of them helping businesses consume SAP’s technology. Sengupta cited the example of a company who wants to buy and consume, be it for fort he digital core of their business, supply chain, or financial management.

“They have the choice of whether to run on SAP Cloud or they would run on one of those hyperscalers. Either way, they are still leveraging SAP’s best-in-class applications. So, I don’t really see them as competition. It is more about giving our customers a choice,” he explained.

Partnering with these hyperscalers necessitates that the SAP applications will run natively on their infrastructure that is resident locally in markets such as India. This enables the company to address the constantly changing regulatory landscape around data sovereignty, data privacy, data privatization.

Emerging Technology in India

The Managing Director explained that typical use cases the company has got across the region are for solving predictive maintenance scenarios. Being able to predict downtime of a high performing asset in a factory with the use of IoT saves huge operational costs.

In India, Sengupta also identified the robust sector of agriculture as one of those industries who will gain from IoT. IoT can sensor information for moisture content, the ingredient in the soil, and conduct targeted fertilization across a field. He emphasized that SAP is using IoT in different business scenarios to be able to enhance upon the process, where IoT is not just used for the collection of the data but more importantly, for the data’s integration back within the process.

On Smart Cities and Digital India

Sengupta shared:

“If I step back, two or three things happened during this period… We all know that India has become the number one consumer of mobile Internet in the world. It may be due to policy, a company or due to just the market.”

SAP has seen significant growth in a few areas like smart utilities. He cited two events that boosted SAP’s business in the country through the government programmes Smart Cities and Digital India.

He specified that the first phase of APDRP (Accelerated Power Development and Reform Programme) followed by the second initiative of putting smart meters resulted in a significant amount of growth in digital business in the country.

To him, the automation of the entire public infrastructure had a greater impact on SAP’s numbers, not just the Smart Cities. At the moment, the company is doing automation for all the ports for Indian Ports Association through their partner Tech Mahindra and also the post offices which TCS. Sengupta said that Post offices are the next largest project in the world as it goes into banking and insurance.

With the investments in infrastructure, both by public and private participation, SAP has seen a significant amount of adoption of modern technology.

What Lies Ahead

 As one of the fastest and strongest markets for SAP, India will continue to be the company’s primary investment markets as software and cloud company continue to build its capability globally as stated by Sengupta. The company will continue to invest in its large R&D centres around the country. And as a domestic market, he has this to say:

“I haven’t got the GDP numbers but across Asia, it’s one of the key anchors as to why we grow faster than the global average on GDP… It is a strategic market in terms of the growth market”

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Even in this day and age of automation, the logistics and supply chain process of distributing surgical kits to hospitals remain a challenge. Since medical devices are manufactured and delivered across the globe, the turnaround time of delivery and sterility of products while in transit are always at high risk, usually incurring a cost.

Tata Consultancy Services, a global leader in IT services, consulting, technology and digital solutions based in Mumbai, India, has partnered with SAP to launch an Intelligent Field Inventory Management (iFIM) solution, powered by SAP Leonardo. Medical Device manufacturers can now streamline their logistics and supply chain management of surgical kits with iFIM solution that leverages the Internet of Things and blockchain. iFIM solution will utilize IoT in the traceability of inventory and blockchain for greater visibility.

Vikram Karakoti, Head, Life Sciences Business Group, TCS, has emphasized that they have been capitalizing on their deep domain and expertise in digital technologies in their partnerships in the medical devices and life sciences industry. In a Business 4.0 environment, TCS technologies help organizations reimagine key elements of their value chain and launch innovative products that give them competitive differentiation.

“The iFIM Solution leverages SAP’s intelligent enterprise portfolio to utilize IoT and blockchain to help our customers digitally transform their loaner and consignment kit business models and deliver superior outcomes for all stakeholders in their ecosystems”, said Karakoti.

TCS’ Business 4.0 provides an integrated and holistic framework to help customers address issues and focus on growth in an agile manner. The manufacturing industry is now transformed to “Smart Factories” with Industry 4.0, utilizing the Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems, cloud computing, and cognitive computing.

Akhilesh Tiwari, Global Head, Enterprise Application Services, TCS, said:

“TCS’ iFIM solution supports our life sciences customers in accelerating their Business 4.0 digital transformation journeys.”

He added that TCS partnership with SAP would strengthen their brand as a preferred innovation partner building innovative industry-specific solutions leveraging the power of new-age technologies.

From the perspective of SAP, Carol Mackenzie, Global Vice President, Life Science Industries, SAP SE, said:

“We are excited to partner with TCS on this solution for the medical device industry. By leveraging TCS’ industry expertise and commitment to quality delivery and customer focus, we are helping life science businesses make the transformational move to an intelligent enterprise.”

One of TCS’ life science offerings is the Life Sciences Innovation Lab, a part of TCS’ Co-Innovation Network (COIN), which enables their customers to foresee emerging trends, develop proofs of concept and co-innovate on industry-leading solutions.

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The agreement, which makes Fujitsu one of the first SAP global technology partners to collaborate on intelligent ERP services, calls for a combining of each company’s AI and IoT technologies based on SAP S/4HANA and the SAP Leonardo IoT platform.

In addition, Fujitsu will develop and deliver proprietary cloud services specifically designed to meet the needs of various industries, starting with manufacturing in the second half of 2017. The new services will run on Fujitsu Cloud Service K5, SAP Cloud Platform and SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, as well as on cloud services provided by other partners. Fujitsu will provide a single solution encompassing everything from service platform builds to application development and operations.

“I am delighted that SAP and Fujitsu will continue our many years of collaboration with even greater co-creation in this era of digital transformation,” said Norihiko Taniguchi, director and corporate executive officer, SEVP, head of business lines and global services integration business, Fujitsu Limited.

“We look forward to deepening our partnership with Fujitsu to drive digital transformation globally,” said Arlen Shenkman, EVP, global business development and ecosystems, SAP.

As a customer of the system Fujitsu built based on SAP’s ERP solutions, Tamio Ishibashi, executive vice president, Daiwa House said that his company welcomes the enhanced collaboration and expects the combination of strengths to further accelerate his company’s digital transformation.

The post SAP and Fujitsu set to accelerate digital transformation with AI and IoT appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

The new services include support for virtual machines, prebuilt integrations for Ariba Cloud Integration Gateway, beta versions of workflow and business rules services as well as smart data streaming for high-speed Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios.

According to SAP, these features enable enterprises to bridge on-premise and cloud landscapes, extend existing technology investments to deliver channels such as mobile and IoT and drive new digital transformation initiatives.

“The new business services can help our customers to fully embrace their innovation agenda at development speed and deployment flexibility that they have never seen from SAP before, making our SAP HANA Cloud Platform even more attractive to enterprises on their digital transformation journey,” said Bjoern Goerke, president, SAP HANA cloud platform, SAP.

The new business services include beta versions of SAP HANA Cloud Platform workflow service and business rule functionality, designed to facilitate connections between business functions and users, and allow business process changes without downtime, as well as SAP Data Quality Management microservices for location data, which allows validation and enrichment for addresses and geocodes.

Other new capabilities include smart data streaming, predictive analytics delivery and the SAP Smart Business service, providing access to and management of key performance indicators in real time.

Apple partnership bears fruit

SAP and Apple have also completed the first deliverables of their partnership, designed to provide early adopters with access to critical enterprise data and processes to enable them to take immediate action using their iPhone and iPad.

These programs include the new SAP HANA Cloud Platform SDK for iOS and SAP Academy for iOS, which provides education, training and tools for developers.

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