While 80 percent of the customers who use SAP’s business applications in the cloud use the “lift and shift” method for moving software from one computing location to another, Google engineering seeks to expand on the base capabilities of cloud through advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, providing a more robust and useful cloud experience, according to Paul Young (pictured), director of SAP Go to Market at Google. Young spent 19 years with SAP.

“We’re doing a ton of work in engineering on our own and with SAP right now to make that a much more valuable journey for the customers,” Young said.

To discuss these latest capabilities, Young visited with Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor), principal at The CTO Advisor, during the SAP Sapphire Now event held in Orlando, Florida. They discussed how Google is using its own capabilities and third-party tools to build new ways for clients to use and interface in the cloud. (* Disclosure below.)

End-to-end data entry that extends far beyond OCR

Google built a model where it taught AI to process invoices in SAP. Rather than simply using optical character recognition or interface mapping across the fields, it taught the AI to imagine it is an accounts payable processor, and from using the available data to figure out how to enter an invoice on its own, Young explained. Initially, the AI made many errors as it learned its way around the different data fields. But the AI eventually learned how to enter an invoice; as it processed more and more invoices, it continued to learn. Eventually, it learned how to perform complete data entry.

“That’s a future world where your entire accounts payable department is a Gmail inbox,” Young said.

Working with TensorFlow, an open-source machine learning tool, Google trained cameras to read the information on pharmaceutical boxes, making certain that the product, the count, and the product strength were correct. It can also discern if a box is damaged, and if so, it can reject that box and remove it from production.

“That level of technology, where we can monitor all of your production lines and give you guaranteed quality in pharmaceuticals … tell me, six months ago [if] anyone even imagined that was possible. We’re doing that right now … because it’s integrated with SAP,” Young explained.

Velostrata, an SAP migration tool recently purchased by Google, provides a plug into VMware that analyzes workloads and suggests optimal size capacity and configurations. A customer can choose a configuration, log in with Google, and Velostrata will automatically build the application servers and security and start the migration. Depending on the size, the migration will take anywhere between 30 minutes to two hours to complete.

“Basically, it’s a little bit of magic. … It knows what’s the minimum amount of data we need to ship across through SAP, it knows where all the data is hidden on the box, on the disk [that] SAP needs to run … it just ships that first and then it fills in the gaps afterwards,” Young stated.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the SAP Sapphire Now event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SAP Sapphire Now. Neither NetApp Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE