By integrating Amazon Web Services' Bedrock generative artificial intelligence in its AI Core, SAP SE said Wednesday it aims to improve the performance and efficiency of enterprise workloads running in the cloud and embed genAI into clients' business-critical applications.

In addition to enabling its customers to access foundational and large language models through SAP platforms, the enterprise platform vendor said it will also use AWS chips to train and deploy future AI offerings and Amazon's next-generation memory to support expanded SAP database requirements.

WHY IT MATTERS

To modernize key business processes built on SAP, the enterprise applications vendor announced that secure access to a broad range of LLMs may be easily integrated into SAP business applications through its expanded partnership with AWS.

By integrating with foundation models in Amazon Bedrock, SAP enterprise customers can leverage generative AI-driven insights to streamline manual processes.

The tools can be used in embedded use cases within RISE with SAP and the intelligent scenario lifecycle management functionality as an integration component or side-by-side directly on the SAP Business Technology Platform, according to the announcement. 

Companies like Siemens Healthineers use RISE with SAP and other tools to migrate to the cloud and streamline their data sources to standardize processes and improve their developmental agility.

In October, Stefan Henkel, chief information officer of Siemens Healthineers, said the healthcare-technology vendor used SAP to reduce complexity.

"This migration to the cloud is especially important for us as we continue to invest in technology to support our continued growth," said a previous announcement by SAP.

AWS and SAP plan to expand the Bedrock capabilities in the genAI hub to include additional use cases in finance and product life cycle management.

"Partnerships like this collaboration with AWS are critical as we embed generative AI solutions across our ERP applications so that customers can drive innovation at an accelerated pace," said Christian Klein, SAP's chief executive officer.

For large, complex database implementations, RISE with SAP users also benefit from the performance of Amazon EC2 High Memory U7i, which offers up to 32TiB of memory in a single instance.

The partners are also working to improve sustainability in advanced computing. Based on its success using Graviton3-based Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances, SAP and AWS are collaborating on the next generation of Graviton4. 

SAP said it realized up to 30% better computing power for analytical workloads and an estimated 45% reduction in carbon footprint for its HANA Cloud. The company added it would also use AWS Trainium and AWS Inferentia chips for training and deploying its future business AI offerings.

THE LARGER TREND

For more than six years, developers have been actively working with AI to add capabilities to ERP software and better integrate applications. 

Earlier this month, NVIDIA Healthcare announced an integration with AWS for NIM, a suite of 25 cloud-agnostic microservices that leverage foundational models for drug discovery, medical imaging and genomics.

"Easy access to NIM will enable the thousands of healthcare and life sciences companies already using AWS to deploy generative AI more quickly, without the complexities of model development and packaging for production," NVIDIA said.

Through a partnership with Johnson & Johnson MedTech, NVIDIA's AI technology enhances real-time analyses and broadens the application of AI algorithms in surgical procedures.

ON THE RECORD

"AWS was the first cloud provider certified to support the SAP portfolio and today, thousands of enterprise companies run SAP solutions on AWS to get the most out of their mission-critical applications," said Matt Garman, incoming CEO at AWS

“In addition to delivering modern cloud ERP to our joint customers, we are excited to support Amazon on their own transformation journey as they adopt RISE with SAP for pioneering areas," Klein added.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.