SAP, which has been in business for 52 years, is a corporation that created the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. It has been 30 years since the company entered Korea. It has prepared various support measures in line with the Korean government's expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) investment.
Irpan Khan, SAP's chief product officer (president of data and analytics), said this while meeting with reporters on the 15th. Khan, who visited Korea to attend the 'SAP Now AI Tour Korea' event held at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas in Gangnam, noted, "We will reduce our clients' time through the release of SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) in Korea this month."
SAP's flagship product is ERP software that can perform tasks such as finance, HR, and customer management. It has secured 98 clients among the world's top 100 corporations. In Korea, over 150 corporations, including Samsung Electronics and KT, are using SAP solutions.
SAP is entering a 'second heyday' by integrating AI and cloud into its ERP. The AI assistant 'Joule', launched in October 2023, has become a turning point. Joule is optimized for finding information desired by users based on internal ERP information. SAP stated that using Joule can reduce information search time by up to 1 hour and 30 minutes a day, potentially increasing client employee productivity by 80%.
Since the launch of Joule, SAP has emerged as a leading AI corporation in Europe. Its stock price has surged, securing its position as the 'most valuable corporation' in Europe in March. SAP's market capitalization currently stands at $350.7 billion (approximately 484.4 trillion won), significantly surpassing the semiconductor company ASML in second place, which has a market cap of $317.3 billion (approximately 438.2 trillion won) by over 40 trillion won.
Following the release of Joule, SAP is strengthening its AI-related products with the launch of the data integration platform BDC in February. It is characterized by the ability to manage all SAP applications and external data as one. Khan emphasized, "82% of corporations are spending considerable time on data management regarding governance, security, and access methods," and he noted, "To achieve business innovation, companies must be able to actually utilize data, but many corporations are struggling with data issues, making AI adoption challenging."
Khan stressed that BDC can help solve these issues. He said, "By supporting a business-context layer that includes data context and zero-copy (a technology that allows the CPU to send and process data directly without copying), corporations can reduce the time spent on data management," adding, "You can also use Joule by integrating SAP and non-SAP data."
Khan stated that the Korean market holds significant importance for SAP. He mentioned, "Korea has a very high understanding of technology, so there is considerable demand for cloud transition," and he emphasized that they would expand their business by launching BDC in Korea and continue to provide technical support through their AI lab, which has been operating for 20 years. He added, "SAP is constantly changing and evolving in the age of AI."
On this day, SAP also demonstrated solutions that can be applied to the manufacturing-centric domestic industrial structure. The piece picking equipment developed in collaboration with the domestic robotics corporation CMES automatically selects and collects items in a warehouse using AI vision technology, delivering them to the desired location. SAP supported the advancement of inventory management systems.