SAP Leonardo: Connect Live Business with People and Process

We are developing an Automotive and Logistics on demand tools in the space of IoT. SAP Leonardo is one of the component used in our IoT tool. Thought of sharing this valuable information for potential customers and my connections.

1.  What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?

Here’s what I mean when I say people never think big enough! Anything starting with Internet it resembles IT. As usual, for most of the companies, IT budget is overhead and corporates assume they can live without it. Let me tell you, this isn’t just about monetary savings. It’s not about machines, bridges, and it’s not about cities. This is a huge and fundamental shift. When we start making things intelligent, it’s going to be a major engine for creating new products and new services. The "Internet of things" (IoT) is becoming a growing topic of conversation both in the workplace and personal life. It's a concept that not only has the potential to impact how we live, but also how we work. Of all the technology trends that are taking place right now, perhaps the biggest one is the Internet of Things, it’s the one that’s going to give us the most disruptions as well as the most opportunities over the next few years.

Lots of technical and policy-related conversations are being had, but many people are still just trying to grasp the foundation of what the heck these conversations are about. Let me put the concept in laymans word, this is the concept of basically connecting any device with an on and off switch to the Internet (and/or to each other). This includes everything from cell phones, coffee makers, washing machines, headphones, laptops, lamps, any wearable devices and almost anything else you can think of. This also applies to components of machine, for example the drill of an oil rig, jet engine of an airplane etc. In nutshell, the IoT is a giant network of connected "things" (which also includes people). The relationship will be between people-people, people-things, and things-things.

Being a techie, let me also give you the technical definition, “The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction”.

2. SAP Innovation on IoT

Initially, IoT applications were limited for operational activities on shop floor and data was not leveraged for enterprise use. With the evolution of Industry and industrial Internet, customers are looking to leverage this Big Data and develop responsive and intelligent applications for line-of-business and industry-specific end-to-end processes.

The Internet of Things is on top of the agenda for most companies. While technology has existed for several decades, it was limited to operational use. Most of the big partners have their own products around IoT space and growth in these area is enormous. Currently companies like AWS, ARC, AT& T, IBM are leading the IoT space.

In late 2015, SAP started focussing more in this area looking into the future growth prospects. To get stronger in IoT space, SAP acquired PLAT.ONE (PLAT.ONE a complete enterprise grade application platform). In early 2016, SAP started focussing on IoT and started coming up with various dimension and framework. Lately they announced $ 2.2 billion investments in next five years in the area of IoT space (includes SAP Leonardo). It's definitely an integral piece of the portfolio that's needed to get customer knowledge and adoption up to a level that SAP wants it to be at, because customer and end-user knowledge in the market is extremely low at the moment. Still a long way to go as compared to IBM Watson or Amazon Alexa, however SAP Leonardo is a good start in the IoT space by SAP.

3. What is SAP Leonardo?

SAP packaged all IoT portfolios and called it Leonardo – the name actually relates to Leonardo Di Vinci – standing for innovation and changing the way people are thinking. SAP Leonardo is an innovation portfolio of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, that enables companies to realize the digital transformation of existing end-to-end business processes and to evolve new business models to run digitally.

With Leonardo, SAP has introduced a portfolio that is structured to cover the Internet of Everything. Broadly there are three categories in this portfolio focused on industrial IoT – connected products, connected assets and connected fleets.

4. SAP Leonardo Innovation Portfolio

We are working on Leonardo portfolios and find not all the portfolio can be introduced to customers looking into its maturity level.

These are the innovation portfolios of SAP Leonardo released as of now:

• SAP Leonardo Bridge combines real-time information from connected things with business processes, to turn extended supply chains into live supply chain environments.
• A range of packaged enterprise end-to-end solutions, for connected things from products to people, across line-of-business and industry use cases, addressing the following areas:
• Connected products-To generate new insights into lifecycle management, sourcing, response and supply, and digital supply networks. In addition, handle the design, manufacturing and delivery of smart, connected products across all industries.
• Connected assets-To track, monitor and analyse fixed assets. Manufacturing and maintenance business processes are in scope as well. This will help to reduce costs and increase equipment uptime of these assets.
• Connected fleet-To enable businesses and public service organizations owning moving assets to improve services and safety, visibility to logistics and service quality. Examples for moving assets are vehicles, robots, fork lifts and autonomous vehicles.
• Connected infrastructure-For a new digital operational intelligence that enables improved service, efficient operations and compliance and risk mitigation. For physical-infrastructure systems, construction and energy grids.
• Connected markets -To enable new production and business models of local relevance and with the right timing for customer and marketing insights, digital agribusiness, smart ports and smart cities.
• Connected people-for more insightful, collaborative work roles, health management and smart home environments. The intention is to connect people and communities and to provide better, more personalized lifestyle experiences.
• SAP Leonardo foundation includes both best-of-breed business services that enable users to rapidly build IoT applications by creating digital twins, reusable application services, and applying predictive algorithms; and core technical services to process a high velocity of data with the ability to stream analytics and run predictive scenarios.
• SAP Leonardo for Edge computing ingests data irrespective of connectivity, latency, device protocols concern, and (at the same time) delivers intelligent edge applications.

SAP has provided customers to build Internet of Things solutions of a consistent framework:

• SAP Cloud Platform is the key strategic platform-as-a-service infrastructure that provides the framework for SAP Leonardo. Additionally, SAP Cloud Platform provides end-to-end micro services for machine learning, analytics, Big Data, security, user experience, user management, and backend integration application program interfaces.
• SAP Leonardo includes best-of-breed business services that enable users to rapidly build Internet of Things applications, allowing them to develop digital twins, create reusable application services, and apply predictive algorithms. These core technical services offer opportunities for users to process a high velocity of data, with the ability to stream analytics and run predictive scenarios. This is all delivered on the next-generation SAP Cloud Platform, which is connected to millions of devices.
• SAP Leonardo for edge computing ingests data regardless of connectivity, latency, or device protocol concerns, all while delivering intelligent edge applications.

5. Connected Products using SAP Leonardo

Briefly these are the connected products where Leonardo have a presence. I will not go into details of each connected products, however will provide you the successful products from portfolios which SAP implemented successfully to customers:

• Connected Products - Goods and Equipment, Product Insights, Supply Networks
• Connected Assets - Fixed Asset Insights, Manufacturing Execution, Manufacturing Networks
• Connected Fleet - Mobile Asset Insights, Logistics Safety, Logistics Networks
• Connected Infrastructure - Building Insights, Construction, Energy Grids
• Connected Markets - Market Insights, Rural Areas, Urban Areas
• Connected People - People and Work, People and Health, People and Homes
• SAP Vehicle Insight Solution Clusters
• Connected Fleet -Logistics Networks
• Connected Products –Goods & Equipment

6. Jump-start SAP Leonardo Initiative

A massive business value can be created by connecting “things” to interact directly with business processes using SAP Leonardo.

As mentioned in section 4, based on usage, customers can choose one of the framework to use IoT. SAP started Leonardo jump-start program, a pre-packaged, consultative offering with us and other partners to help customers prioritize innovation opportunities and deliver competitive advantage with an Internet of Things-enabled digital transformation.

Pre-packaged solution available for the customers as mentioned in section 5. Customers can choose one of them with help of their partners and rapidly deploy to get the benefits of IoT.

The SAP Leonardo jump-start program comprises of the following three phases:

Explore: Executive IoT design thinking session to understand the impact of IoT on the business, to discuss core business processes and new business models, and to identify the area for innovation.

Prototype: Rapid IoT prototyping workshop to narrow down on one core business process, to redesign the business process/model on real data and to create a rapid prototype to demonstrate the vision

Implement: Perform Sprint Zero to realize the former prototype as live pilot project (integrated into one business scenario, software provided as a service for a limited time) and to define your IoT roadmap for next processes and your full-scale IoT strategy.

Many success stories are available for SAP Leonardo in IoT space. You can explore SAP Leonardo trial version which provides the feel of IoT. To know more in this space, get in touch with me on mail id [email protected]