SAP Expands Low Code Tooling with Build Suite, Partners with Coursera

SAP TECHED — SAP kicked off its annual TechEd event with the introduction of SAP Build, an integrated low-code development suite. The new SAP Build, unveiled on Tuesday, promises to enable partners and power users to create and enhance business applications.

Also, at SAP’s TechEd conference in Las Vegas, the company announced a partnership with learning platform provider Coursera. According to SAP, the new partnership will expand the company’s partners’ free training and learning options. Further, SAP previewed pre-built integrations, a new user experience for SAP Analytics Cloud and 10 use cases.

But SAP is emphasizing the new Build tool as its principal TechEd announcement. The low-code tool suite will allow partners and power users to build and modify business processes. It can use the application logic and data associated with the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).

SAP’s Sid Misra

“SAP Build is the marquee announcement,” said SAP VP of marketing and solutions Sid Misra.

Enhanced Low-Code

SAP Build combines three of the company’s development tools for BTP with enhanced low-code capabilities. The suite combines SAP’s AppGyver development environment, now the SAP Build Apps development environment, SAP Process Automation solution and SAP Work Zone.

Providing low-code tools has become a requirement among major providers of infrastructure and application platforms. Misra acknowledged that Build has many properties Microsoft offers with its popular Power Platform.

“Instead of having plain vanilla solutions, we offer industry-specific templates, and lines of business templates are starting points,” Misra said. “And that is a huge differentiator. Somebody in customer service or in HR can build something really quickly and then enhance an application and really accelerate onboarding.”

Build will enable partners to build and manage business processes for customers, Misra said. But partners can also train customers’ power users to implement it. For example, Misra said one large global customer used Build to automate manual processes around remote working.

SAP Build Tools

With SAP Build Apps, partners can use the visualization tool to build serverless application business logic and data models. Because they don’t have to touch the underlying data, partners who aren’t developers can assemble the business logic.

The suite also includes SAP Signavio, which provides automat continuous process automation. The new integration between SAP Signavio Process Intelligence solution and SAP Build provides more than 135 automation recommendations. It derives those recommendations from analysis if the process, allowing for optimization.

According to SAP, Signavio includes 275,000 business process reference points provided by 4,000 customers. It also includes 1,300 specific workflows and automations based on specific use cases. SAP Build also works with non-SAP applications.

SAP Build Process Automation uses AI to extract documents. It lets users automate Google Workspace applications. It can also transcribe handwritten documents using Google Vertex AI. And SAP Build Work Zone, combined with the SAP Launchpad service, provides a low-code development tool for building websites. SAP Build Work Zone, standard edition, is now available in early access. The advanced version of SAP Build Work Zone now generally available.

SAP Build also enables secure application integration with SAP and third-party solutions to connect data without stripping its context.

Coursera Learning Partnership

Misra also noted that SAP’s partnership with Coursera will provide enhanced learning options for partners.

“This opens up a new channel for us to further expand the SAP ecosystem, to find the right developers, for us, for our customers and for our partners,” he said.

The Coursera partnership aims to help SAP meet its goal of enhancing the skills of 2 million developers globally by 2025. SAP said it would have 23 different “innovation areas.” according to SAP, the company is expanding 3x its free learning options provided on the SAP Learning site.

Since launching the learning site last year, SAP claims 300,000 people have utilized it. Also, SAP has added a new careers group in its SAP Community. The group, which has over 3 million partners and customers, offers career planning for those in the SAP ecosystem.