In a crucial announcement at the 2019 Mobile World Congress venue, the German-based enterprise software conglomerate SAP unveiled its SAP Leonardo IoT capabilities, which according to the tech giant is “an all-encompassing technology that generates and drives digital transformation for Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0”. Alongside, SAP announced Leonardo IoT’s cloud-to-cloud interoperability with Microsoft Azure IoT Hub. This provides customers a combination of connectivity and device management.

How it benefits businesses?

Leonardo will facilitate enterprise innovation by allowing customers to leverage their business processes using data-driven intelligence and operational context from machines, products, supply chains, consumers and partners. Merging IoT data with business processes help customers increase their productivity, redefine their customer experiences, and grow their revenue streams. By embedding Internet of Things (IoT) into their line-of-business (LoB), customers can enhance their enterprise applications and build novel business models based on the new data generated by the IoT solution.

According to an official press release from SAP, it will offer three ways to innovate, based on the specific business needs of the customer:

• Combining IoT data with business process data: To support IoT-embedded business applications and accelerate their adoption among customers. Thus, customers gain the ability to innovate quickly from within their business applications.

• Upgrading existing SAP IoT applications: To improve business value

• Building new intelligent IoT solutions: By using SAP Leonardo to create and deliver unique offerings.

Leonardo IoT and Azure IoT Hub: How Interoperability Works?

As part of the collaboration, SAP will offer its customers the opportunity to use Microsoft Azure IoT Hub as the connectivity and device management layer for IoT telemetry data. This will be relayed seamlessly to Leonardo. Besides, SAP Leonardo IoT Edge will offer an option to extend support for business processes locally on top of Microsoft Azure IoT Edge runtime. Essential Business Function (EBF) modules based on SAP Leonardo IoT Edge are also planned to run in containers on Microsoft Azure IoT Edge. This will reduce customers’ dependency on latency, bandwidth and connectivity.

SAP said it plans to offer the same interoperability with other partners in the future, and is committed to working with its ecosystem to help companies exceed their own customers’ expectations and maintain a competitive edge. Leonardo IoT is one such step from the software creator to shape the intelligent enterprise of the future.