As fast as the spread of the lethal COVID-19 worldwide, there is also the widespread dissemination of information and misinformation happening daily with almost everyone having digital access to news. “Fake News” laws in most countries are rigorously acted upon these days so as not to cause panic, violence, and confusion in the community.

Recognising the timely need to address the nagging concern on fake news surrounding the pandemic, SAP and Qualtrics have broken new ground with Bridge-IT, an app that would provide employees and customers accurate real-time facts on COVID-19 and personalised guidance on how to cope with the virus. 

Launched by SAP APJ Innovation Office, the Bridge-IT app is accessible as a webpage or as an Apple iOS application. SAP Global Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital Labs, Global Health Management, HR and Qualtrics teams worked together to design and develop the app. 

Scott Russell, President, SAP APJ shared:

“This app is one of several ways SAP is helping to fight COVID-19 across Asia.”

“The volume of important information on the pandemic from a huge variety of sources – including employers, the government and health authorities – can make it hard to keep up. Bridge-IT is designed to help guard against COVID-19 misinformation and help people stay on top of important updates in the simplest way possible, so they can focus on their health, happiness, and wellbeing,” he further explained.

The app aims to support employees and provide reliable information amidst COVID-19. Bridge-IT is intended to provide localised information for users by consolidating specific country data, local government guidance, travel information and relevant company policies with pertinent information gathered from trustworthy and ethical sources like The World Health Organisation (WHO). In line with the global initiative of SAP to alleviate the difficulties in the new work environment of the SAP community due to COVID-19, the app will also be available at no cost to all SAP employees and any customers globally who have an SAP Cloud Platform Enterprise Agreement.

Damien Bueno, President and Managing Director, SAP ANZ, said: 

“I’m very proud of our APJ Innovation Office – led by a team in Melbourne – for harnessing the power of data and developing a one-stop tool to provide as accurate, corroborated, trustworthy information as possible.” 

 “We hope that the app will do the hard work for you and deliver the information you need to know, when you need to know it,” Bueno added.

Bridge-IT App Features

·       Data Platform –The data platform powered by SAP Cloud Platform bridges information from trustworthy global and local sources including specific country, government and company data to provide as accurate information as possible, in real-time

·       Chatbot – The chatbot powered by SAP Conversational AI technology provides a user-friendly tool for questions and access to company-specific FAQs or healthcare guidance

·       Automated Guidance Tools –These are personalised surveys powered by Qualtrics span a range of topics for respondents to input their situation and be routed to appropriate resources based on their needs. This includes a COVID-19 symptoms survey, which provides tailored healthcare guidance and resources based on users’ answers about symptoms displayed.

·       Dashboard – It provides visualisations of real-time data, such as impacts of COVID-19 on supply and customer-based data, including public sentiment on SAP Analytics Cloud.

A standard set of data such as company policies, travel information, COVID-19 case numbers, health resources, and legislative updates are incorporated in the app and can be adapted to add specific data or information as needed. A Digital Boardroom is also due to come out soon as an additional app functionality.

Currently, a multinational pharmaceutical firm, which is one of the first SAP customers to leverage Bridge-IT, has rolled out the app for staff. It included bespoke data on the number of COVID-19 cases searchable by hospital location that would enable employees forecast product demand and supply accordingly.

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Asia One reported via ACN Newswire that Fujitsu Limited announced the launch of the “Fujitsu Application for ETO(1) on SAP Cloud Platform” on December 6. The Fujitsu Application is an SAP solution that supports mass customisation in engineer-to-order production. The launch is expected to benefit manufacturers who receive orders for individual specification products. Some advantages include the improvement of the efficiency of operations, which involves the arrangement of materials after receipt of orders, issuance of production orders, and specification estimates.

Development Background

Prior to the development, BOM(2) information that is required for manufacturing needs to be entered into the system in advance. This is used as the master information to quote, give instructions, and order materials. Product manufacturers are often facing challenges with this process because each product will have individual specifications. Also, the number of master registrations for product configurations ranges from hundreds to thousands a month.

This led to problems such as delays, inconsistent specification combinations, and challenges in communication. It has also impacted manufacturing sites negatively because workers need to accurately reflect the changes in bills in the system for each business.

Features of the Fujitsu Limited application

Fujitsu introduced a new solution using the SAP Cloud Platform that offers certain functionalities that will help improve on-site system usability by leveraging the standard function of SAP S/4 HANA on the SAP Cloud Platform. By using the SAP Cloud Platform development method, this minimises the impact caused by upgrades to SAP S/4 HANA.

One of the features offered by the solution is reduced lead time while ensuring prompt sharing of information regarding specification changes and accelerating the communication across departments such as design, manufacturing, and sales.

Another feature is that it minimizes operations by utilising a navigator consolidating essential business information on a single screen. The navigator shows order information for individual product configurations, which contains details like procured materials and instructions to factories. This makes it possible to check comprehensive information and to register business information as quickly as possible.

The new solution also lessens the burden and reduces the cycle for work estimates and arrangements by using a configurator. The configurator determines the consistency of specification combinations during the sales process. This helps realise the individual specification estimation in the sales process; however, it can be a time-consuming process. Fujitsu’s new solution can reduce the staff-hours required for communication with the design department. It is also expected to improve operations by utilising excel tools during the master registration and maintenance process.

Plans and application launches

Meanwhile, Fujitsu Limited said that it would continue to provide the manufacturing industry with solutions that will support the customers’ digital manufacturing business on a global scale. The application will be available starting December 23, 2019. The solution will be launched in countries such as China, Germany, and the U.S. by March 2020.

SAP and Fujitsu had established a global partnership since 1999 when they became the first global Technology Partner for the German software company. To date, the two companies have more than four decades of cooperation. Fujitsu is responsible for more than 2,500 SAP systems, and 330,000+ licences. They also have more than 25 S/4 HANA systems with extensive experience in the use of the platform.

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Recently, SAP Cloud Solutions SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Cloud Platform are made available on Alibaba Cloud, China’s largest provider of public cloud services and the data intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group. Apart from providing seamless integration of world-class SaaS, PaaS and IaaS solutions, this development enables Chinese enterprises to easily adopt SAP’s world-leading enterprise cloud solutions on the powerful Alibaba Cloud infrastructure.

Stefan Wagner, Global Senior Vice President of SAP, shared that the German software giant’s close partnership with Alibaba led to the deployment of SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Cloud Platform on the leading IaaS platform in China to help Chinese enterprises speed up their migration to the Cloud and kickstart their innovation and transformation. He added:

“Delivering on our strategy ‘in China for China’, SAP runs several co-engineering activities with Alibaba, combining our strengths to deliver solutions tailored to the Chinese market,” said Stefan Wagner, Global Senior Vice President of SAP.

Recognising the unique needs of Chinese enterprises, Alibaba Group and SAP will be designing local solutions that would help accelerate their digital transformation, which includes co-innovating in the areas of Internet-of-Things, Artificial Intelligence, and enterprise-level Big Data applications.

“The integration of SAP’s world-leading enterprise solution with Alibaba Cloud’s advanced intelligent platform will bring great value to customers, and help them to accelerate their digital transformation with much better experience. The partnership with SAP is an important practice for Alibaba Cloud to implement its ‘to be integrated‘ and globalization strategy,” explained Ken Shen, President of Global Ecosystem of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, fully built on the in-memory platform SAP HANA, is designed for business and provides an instant insight by using a single source of truth, real-time processes, dynamic planning, and analysis. Known as the digital core suite-of-choice to run a successful business in the cloud, SAP S/4HANA Cloud enables companies to migrate vital business processes in a cost-effective manner, experience faster deployment and shortened return on investment time.

SAP Cloud Platform is an open business platform designed to innovate, integrate and extend applications with agility, flexibility, and choice. As SAP’s in-memory platform-as-a-service (PaaS), Alibaba Cloud’s customers will now be able to extend their current business solutions, build new applications, and integrate with third-party technologies efficiently.

Last year, Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang has stated:

“The availability of SAP’s globally renowned ERP system S/4HANA Cloud on Alibaba Cloud is yet another milestone in our globalisation strategy, and exemplary of our mission to make it easy to do business anywhere. We have formed a close collaboration with SAP in the part, and it is exciting for us to expand our partnership.”

As the plans of SAP and Alibaba Group to integrate their cloud technologies have come to fruition, the Chinese market can now take advantage of a versatile, all-inclusive cloud-computing environment.

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SAP Cloud Platform services’ tier 1 vendors have been focusing on the Asia Pacific region, eyeing the opportunities with significant growth across various industries including BFSI, consumer goods, IT & telecom and manufacturing. This was one of the key findings in Fact.MR’s assessment of the SAP Cloud Platform services market for the period of 2018-2028.

Top IT companies SAP, Accenture Plc, Infosys Limited, and IBM Corporation have collectively contributed over 30{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} to the platform’s market, and, consequently, significant revenue shares.

With the huge distribution infrastructure and geographical reach in the cloud services marketplace along with their alliances in the Asia Pacific, these tech global leaders are forecasted to contribute to SAP Cloud Platform services’ sales growth. The recent activities from some of the Top 4 companies demonstrate the potential of the platforms’ services in the region.

Take the recent development of Infosys Limited as an example. The technology services & consulting firm announced its recent expansion plans in the Asia Pacific by initiating a joint venture with Temasek, a Singapore based company. This joint venture adds another sales funnel to the SAP Cloud Platform services portfolio by facilitating the expansion of IBM in Southeast Asia in the software services marketplace.

Similarly, the multi-zone cluster strategy of key vendors can also increase the SAP cloud platform services sales just like in the case of IBM Corporation. The IT goliath continues to expand its cloud footprint across Sydney and Tokyo in the Asia Pacific and other regions including the UK, Germany, Dallas, Washington DC, and Texas.

SAP Cloud Platform Services in demand

SAP Cloud Platform services have been receiving increased popularity in the market due to its capability in regulating processes under disruptive business models.

·     Facilitating digital transformation and offers flexible software that enables quick adaptation

·     Scalability in processes without altering existing software

·     Real-time business data along with agility in application development that can enhance business proficiency and profitability

Other key findings

·     Well-established companies, startups, developers and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) have been utilizing SAP cloud platform services to achieve faster ROI and profitability. This has been demonstrated in the cases of Pacific Drilling and the National Football League.

Pacific Drilling, an industry-leading offshore drilling company that delivers prototypes to end-users, utilized SAP Cloud Platform services enhancing app creation by around 75 {aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}.

After adopting SAP cloud platform services (HANA) to provide statistics and figures to enthusiasts along with player analysis, the NFL’s site achieved 45{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} growth in terms of usage and content consumption.

·      SAP cloud platform services market is expected to witness significant growth with its robust cloud architecture linking enterprise applications with next-gen technologies including machine learning, IoT and blockchain.

About Fact.MR

Fact.MR is an independent, pure-play market intelligence firm incorporated to deliver high quality, customized market research solutions that help its clients successfully go to the market equipped with actionable insights capable of impacting crucial business decisions. The company has 600+ dedicated analysts supported by an exclusive global network of data providers to gather data on more than 30,000 niche markets. Fact.MR has offices in Ireland, the US, and India.

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“China has been SAP’s second home for more than two decades,” said SAP chief executive officer Bill McDermott, who announced the move alongside Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang. “Alibaba and SAP’s growing partnership expands our ability to empower digital China by building intelligent enterprises. SAP embraces the China Dream as we prepare for substantial expansion here in the years ahead.”

Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud is China’s largest provider of public cloud services, and according to Gartner figures, the company is also among the world’s top three IaaS providers. The partnership makes S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Cloud Platform available via all top public clouds globally. As part of the agreement, SAP will continue to employ Alibaba Cloud’s technology, while Alibaba will adopt S/4HANA for its own innovation and new business model.

“We are pleased our partnership with SAP reached new heights today,” said Zhang. “The availablility of SAP’s globally renowned ERP system S/4HANA Cloud on Alibaba Cloud is yet another milestone in our globalisation strategy, and exemplary of our mission to make it easy to do business anywhere. We have formed a close collaboration with SAP in the part, and it is exciting for us to expand our partnership.”

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The new offerings include SAP Conversational AI, a service which includes an end-to-end toolkit for training, building and monitoring intelligent chatbots, which could be integrated with SAP and non-SAP systems; and SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain, a new blockchain as a service, enabling enterprises to easily build and extend business solutions with blockchain technologies, such as Hyperledger Fabric and MultiChain.

SAP announced that SAP Leonardo Machine Learning capabilities are embedded in applications across the SAP portfolio, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP C/4HANA and SAP Ariba solutions; and five new services from SAP Leonardo Machine Learning Foundation, including object detection, text recognition in images and text classification.

SAP has also released Leonardo-based innovation kits for specific industries, including retail, life sciences, manufacturing and automotive, and launched the SAP Leonardo Partner Medallion Initiative, an SAP partner service that has more than doubled the number of Leonardo embedded industry solutions.

SAP’s multicloud strategy for the Cloud Platform has taken another step forwards with the general availability of SAP Cloud Platform on Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure – meaning it is now available on all major hyper scale cloud infrastructure providers.

The company disclosed plans to release a private cloud deployment of SAP Cloud Platform on the IBM Cloud – allowing clients in regulated industries such as banking, healthcare and transportation to have flexibility, speed and agility for data management via a private cloud. For Android users, SAP has also now released the Cloud Platform SDK to develop apps for Android or Chrome devices.

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The consumption-based commercial model provides customers with flexible and metered access to SAP Cloud Platform services, enabling simpler access and use of the services. The commercial model provides customers with usage information for each service, through metering, reporting, and detailed accounting analytics. On one site, customers can explore, test, price, and estimate SAP Cloud Platform usage for any project.

“The new consumption-based commercial model for SAP Cloud Platform makes it even easier for our customers and partners to build and extend innovative solutions utilising our increasing portfolio of platform and business services,” said Björn Goerke, president and chief technology officer, SAP Cloud Platform.

The SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS enables customers to extend enterprise apps and processes to mobile devices, providing new controls and tighter integration with the development environment. The platform also enables mobile app users to access SAP Leonardo services such as image recognition as well as to take advantage of real-time data analytics and visualisations from SAP S/4HANA, SAP Cloud Platform Big Data Services, and the SAP HANA business data platform.

The SAP Insurance Sales Assistant and SAP Asset Manager extend mobile access to two new areas. The Assistant app provides insurance agents with access to a 360-degree customer view and an overview of performance KPIs to manage all sales activities, while the Manager app enables customers to leverage the digital core with SAP S/4HANA and SAP Cloud Platform as the Internet of Things (IoT) platform for managing work orders, notifications, condition monitoring, material consumption, time management, and failure analysis.

“Innovations in mobile delivery with consumer-grade experiences via our new SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS give organisations more freedom and agility to create and reinvent their businesses,” said Goerke.

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The solutions include:

• SAP Leonardo IoT Bridge, a configurable role-based digital command centre giving operations managers visibility and the ability to act in real time;
• SAP Global Track and Trace, a cloud-based offering for unified, end to end tracking, monitoring and reporting of objects and business processes across supply chain networks;
• SAP Edge Services to bring compute, storage and business semantics via the cloud to intelligence devices outside of the data centre;
• SAP Digital Manufacturing Insights, a centralised, cloud-based manufacturing performance management solution that provides comprehensive visibility into manufacturing enabling process optimisation, and
• SAP Asset Manager, a cloud-based iOS mobile app for managing asset health, inventory, maintenance and safety.

Solutions such as SAP Leonardo IoT Bridge and SAP Global Track and Trace are intended to integrate with SAP’s logistics portfolio, including SAP Connected Goods and SAP Vehicle Insights, to provide command centres and operations leads with visibility on exactly where a shipment is in transit, what is in the shipment, and the condition and performance of the vehicle.

SAP is co-innovating on digital logistics with companies such as The Bosch Group, on scenarios for delivery track and trace via cloud-to-cloud integration with Bosch IoT Cloud.

“By using sensors, we digitalise logistics,” said Matthias Huelsmann, vice president of connected logistics at Bosch. “In particular, we provide data services based on real-time location, auto-ID and condition data such as temperature and shock. This creates more transparency and new value-added services. In doing so jointly with SAP, we help transform our customers’ supply chains even faster.”

Also at the event, SAP announced a range of new digital innovation services and tools for SAP Leonardo, including new accelerators for the chemical, travel and transportation and utilities industries, extended tools for the rapid prototyping solution SAP Build, and new Cloud Foundry packages for SAP Cloud Platform for partners.

“More than 70 per cent of global CEOs think the next three years will be more critical than the last 50 years, yet only 5 per cent feel they have mastered digital innovation as a competitive advantage,” said Mala Anand, executive vice president and president of SAP Leonardo, data and insights at SAP.

“We’re helping customers drive business model and process changes by building innovative capabilities that integrate with our core business applications, making it easier for customers to quickly realise the value of digital transformation and at reasonable cost.”

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“With our expanded definition of SAP Leonardo, we now have all the ingredients to not only explore innovations in IoT, blockchain, machine learning, and analytics, but also to scale our ideas with design thinking and new innovation services that enable real digital business transformation,” said Dr Tanja Rueckert, president of IoT and Digital Supply Chain, SAP.

“The expanded SAP Leonardo portfolio enables companies to analyse and take real-time action from the massive volumes of data that are created by IoT and innovate with new technologies.”

SAP will enable customers to access Leonardo by either industry accelerators, aligned to specific use cases with fixed prices and timelines, or a flexible approach. Its capabilities will be integrated into its existing applications, and will offer services for developers and partners to build custom applications supported by SAP Leonardo Centres, to be based initially in New York, Paris, São Leopoldo and Bangalore.

Other new developments include the establishment of the SAP Leonardo Machine Learning Foundation; a set of new machine learning-enabled applications from invoicing to customer service and retention; and an SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain service for building application extensions and solutions using distributed ledger technology.

Under the Leonardo banner, SAP launched its new digital twin solution and new services to optimise asset management with the IoT, as well as a new collaboration with Deloitte to deliver digital solutions for finance, supply chain and software-as-a-service for industry.

New certifications on Google Cloud Platform

SAP and Google have expanded their co-innovation partnership announced earlier this year, to include additional certification of SAP technology and applications on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and global availability of SAP Cloud Platform on GCP.

The SAP NetWeaver technology platform is now certified on GCP, as is the SAP HANA database on GCP for larger instances, and a data connector for the SAP Analytics Cloud solution for Google Big Query.

Google and SAP also plan to accelerate digital transformation through innovations such as conversational apps which combine SAP business process expertise with Google’s machine learning services and open source library, to guide users through complex workflows and transactions.

SAP Cloud Platform options extended

Customers can now run apps with a choice for infrastructure providers for the SAP Cloud Platform, including multicloud support through SAP, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, managed via a new cockpit. The SAP App Centre now also offers online discovery so users can try, purchase and use partner apps directly from the centre, while hundreds of new APIs for SAP S/4HANA, SAP Hybris solutions, and SAP Ariba solutions have been added to the SAP API Business Hub.

According to SAP, other new value-added services for SAP Cloud Platform such as the IoT service general availability and big data services to support apps powered by SAP Leonardo, as well as new mobile services and SAP Fiori Cloud app development and deployment services will provide customers with a digital edge.

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