Originating in 2008 when it was first invented for bitcoin cryptocurrency mechanisms, Blockchain technology can apply to a whole lot of different industries and use cases: everything that can be assigned a value or rights, and be part of a transactional record. It is based on a distributed ledger, which is a database consisting of transactional records – blocks, stored in a chronological order – a chain. The database is controlled by algorithms, not the content itself, which means that every participant or user can access, verify and accept or reject the object of transaction.

SAP has developed and offers products that are based on a blockchain, and has acquired customers ready to use it in different areas, from asset management and audits, public administration to disaster management.

SAP Blockchain Solutions are concentrated around the SAP Leonardo system, which consists of a number of innovative technologies, including Machine Learning, Design Thinking or Internet of Things. Based on the HANA database model, this platform can leverage the capabilities of Big Data storage, analysis and processing. SAP Leonardo is currently offered as a SaaS (Software as a Service) model, delivered in the SAP Cloud.

With great effort from the whole Sapmatics Team (special thanks to Pawel Jakubik for being Solution Architect and Head of Development), we have finally gone live with the SAP Knowledge Base 1.0. The whole concept, which was initially defined as an internal project, has been divided into two phases, and next one is about to be started.

Some of the key deliveries so far include:
• Setup of the infrastructure, including migration to the new server
• Installation of MySQL database (will later be replaced with PostgreSQL)
• Developer IDE and workplace setup, including Docker
• Creation of a number of reusable standard APIs for data exchange
• User Management, including Admin panel and account setup
• Categorization and Intelligent Search
• Interaction and Hot topics function
• Dynamic css, color management and user setttings
• Printing to PDF

During our last project delivery, which is coming to a successful end, we came across a new concept of docker, which helped us a lot with build and deployment of our applications.

Docker is a tool designed to make it easier to create, deploy, and run applications with the help of containers. Containers allow developers to package up an application with all of the parts it needs, such as libraries and other dependencies including code, runtime, system tools, system libraries, database – anything that can be installed on a server, and ship it all out as one package. Docker containers:
• Have everything that is needed to run application
• Are created from image
• When container starts to run, a new layer on image is created.

For more information, including sharing last presentations, feel free to contact Pawel - pawel@sapmatics.com

Wishing all SAP Community and everybody to slow down and have some rest during the Christmas holiday. May the New Year 2017 bring you joy and fulfilment of all the goals that you have set on both professional and private grounds.

Our plans for next year, aside from regular project work that keep our key account happy, include going live with the internal project called Knowledge Base, which is scheduled early 2017. Product development has been carried out in the last few months and the beta version has been evaluated beginning December. We are in the process of incorporating valuable feedback into the design, fixing a few issue that were observed, and optimising the search engine that is key part of the solution. We will be disclosing more details very soon.

SAP Chief Innovation Officer Juergen Mueller at the SAP TechEd, held last month in Barcelona: “SAP has a clear way to deliver business value with machine learning”. Machine learning prototypes demonstrated at SAPPHIRE NOW in May, available as applications in 2017, are one of those ongoing initiatives which prove that the outlined strategy is actually put into practice. This initial set of application will cover time-consuming problems in the following areas:

• Accounts Receivable: matching incoming payments by learning from accountants’ past actions, and automatically processing future payments on their behalf.
• Detecting logos in high-definition video: this new technology, called computer vision, lets brand owners understand the ROI for advertising spend more quickly and precisely - by identifying where and when branded material appears in televised events.
• Customer Service: by classifying and clustering tickets as well as evaluating historical activities, system can learn how to propose solutions and accelerate response times.

Machine learning enables computers to learn from large amounts of data without being explicitly programmed to do so. Machine learning gives rise to new intelligent applications, from self-driving cars to intelligent assistants on smartphones. With the analytical capabilities of HANA database, SAP has a lot to offer in this area by leveraging existing programming models (R and Python), used so far primarily in the SAP Predictive Analytics and data mining solutions.