Celebrating the software giant’s 30th anniversary in Korea, Klein announced plans to extend SAP’s AI assistant to the Korean market with bold pronouncements about user productivity.
At a press conference held in Seoul on March 20, SAP CEO Christian Klein personally introduced the Korean market to SAP’s AI-specific services, describing how SAP’s AI vision can help Korean companies realize theirs.
“Samsung, LG, and other top 10 conglomerates in Korea are SAP customers, and many excellent customers in Korea are using SAP to enhance their global competitiveness,” said Klein. “Korean customers are actively asking questions about how AI can support their business, grow their business, and utilize new technologies. That shows how much interest there is in AI in Korea.”
The products that Klein particularly emphasized at this roundtable were SAP Business Data Cloud and Joule. Business Data Cloud, released in February, is designed to integrate and manage SAP data and external data not stored in SAP to enhance AI and advanced analytics. SAP has established a partnership with Databricks for third-party data integration.
“In just two weeks since the launch of Business Data Cloud, a pipeline of $650 million has been formed,” Klein said. “This is an unprecedented level of customer interest.”
Regarding the partnership with Databricks, Klein said, “Databricks has the best technology in the field of data engineering, and SAP has the best technology in the field of mission-critical data management platform, so we saw that it would create perfect synergy. We decided to collaborate after seeing that over 1,000 customers have already contacted us about utilizing the two companies’ data platforms together.”
SAP expects Business Data Cloud will go beyond simple data integration and build the foundation necessary for the AI era.
“Many companies are realizing that LLM alone does not create enough value,” Klein said. “A strong data foundation is essential to maximize the effects of AI adoption, and the Business Data Cloud will provide that foundation.”
Business data also contributed to improving the performance of SAP’s Joule, an AI assistant first released in 2023. Klein predicted that “within the next two years, SAP software users will no longer be manually entering data, and all tasks will be processed with natural language commands,” and “companies that have adopted Joule will see a minimum 30% to 40% increase in productivity.”
According to Klein, 800 million people worldwide are using SAP cloud-based software, and they analyzed their behavior patterns and time usage data. They applied this information to Joule and developed technology that reduces manual work for customers and identifies unnecessary work.
“SAP has now deployed more than 130 AI use cases across its portfolio, including HR, finance, and supply chain, all built on a foundation of trusted data that delivers virtually 100% accurate results,” Klein said. He added that to make AI more secure, only authorized people can access the data and only authorized AI use cases can use it.
Finally, Klein stated that “Korea has one of the highest cloud usage rates in the world,” and that the business data cloud will be available in Korean data centers within four months, and the Korean version of Joule is scheduled to be developed in March and officially released in the second quarter of this year.
