SAP enters vector database fray with new AI capabilities for HANA Cloud

Another 'AI everywhere' announcement

German software giant SAP has announced a vector data store for its SAP HANA Cloud, to be available in the first quarter of 2024.

Vector stores are a critical part of AI applications, retrieving data and context and feeding it to LLMs, so they can answer queries accurately.

"With this announcement, we get closer to the holy grail of generative AI where you can combine the strength of large language models with accurate real time company data," said CTO Juergen Mueller on an analyst call on Monday.

Mueller said the new data store will give SAP HANA Cloud users more context about financial, supply chain, logistics, HR, consumer, and customer experience data. This, he claimed, will see "significantly enhanced developer productivity" due to better generative AI results.

"We are helping developers to combine all this rich structured data in SAP systems with unstructured data and with natural language modelling capabilities," Mueller added.

The new vector store will be fully integrated with HANA Cloud rather than existing as a standalone database, and is already being used internally by the company in 130 applications.

Other announcements in the AI-heavy briefing included infusing the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP, formerly SAP Cloud Platform) with generative AI capabilities. Other additions to BTP include the new vector search, enhanced graph capabilities and a centralised logging and observability service.

A third topic was AI Foundation on SAP BTP, billed as a "one-stop-shop for developers to create AI- and generative AI-powered extensions and applications on SAP BTP". This is part of SAP's platform strategy, allowing customers to build and monetise their own applications on its cloud.

Related was a mention of SAP Build Code for generative AI-powered application development optimised for Java and JavaScript and promising to support collaborative "fusion" efforts by professional and lo-code "citizen" developers.

SAP's new generative AI copilot Joule, announced in September, will be embedded into applications across SAP's portfolio to provide insights by analysing data across systems.

"The notion of digital assistants and copilots is now on steroids," commented Thomas Saueressig, executive board member for SAP Product Engineering. "I believe it will completely reshape the user experience with all the capabilities we have in mind."

Generative AI is also finding its way into SAP Build Process Automation, SAP Signavio and the SAP Integration Suite.

RISE with SAP, the company's programme to support customers migrating to the cloud, now includes a reward programme for RISE customers who run SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition with ERP clean core.

There was also mention of a solution for the oil and gas industry developed in partnership with Wipro, and other industry specific solutions.

Finally, the company announced new role-based certification and free learning resources aimed at upskilling developers, especially in the areas of ABAP Cloud and back end development.

The announcements follow several recent AI-focused proclamations from the likes of Microsoft and Amazon. SAP's core pitch is that customers store a vast amount of business data on its systems and can use AI to contextualise it in combination with data from other sources.