The analyst firm Gartner assumes that agent-based AI will independently make 15 percent of all daily decisions in everyday work by 2028 – compared to practically zero percent today. Gartner also predicts that agent-based AI will be available in 33 percent of all enterprise applications.

The demand for professionals who can develop, control and coordinate AI agents is increasing faster than the number of candidates to fill these positions. That's why university graduates with practical experience in developing agents are currently in high demand on the job market.

This year, at the SAP Sapphire customer conference, SAP presented its vision for the autonomous enterprise, in which AI agents consistently control and execute business processes. This raises an important question for universities: How do graduates prepare for a world where AI agents are part of everyday workflows?

SAP offers new free offerings and resources for universities that give faculty and students practical access to tools for AI agent development, process management, and architecture. The aim is to help universities keep pace with the rapid advances in agent-based AI in industry and prepare future graduates for a changing job market.

Preparing future developers for agent-based AI

SAP has put together a series of new offerings and resources to help universities incorporate agent-based AI concepts and technologies into their curricula in practical ways. Three offerings, each covering a very specific aspect of agent-based AI, are now available free of charge to lecturers and their students:

• SAP Signavio for lecturers and students: In order to develop an agent, it is necessary to understand how it works. The SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite offers teachers and their students access to functions for evaluating, modeling and transforming processes. This allows them to model and analyze existing processes, identify inefficiencies and design optimized workflows that use AI agents. In addition, students and teaching staff can now test process modeling with SAP Signavio Process Modeler themselves as part of the Student Edition of the SAP Learning Hub.
• SAP LeanIX for lecturers: This tool gives students the opportunity to understand the function of agents within a company's IT landscape. SAP LeanIX is available free of charge for university teachers as part of the Student Edition of the SAP Learning Hub. With SAP LeanIX, students can model enterprise architectures and understand how the introduction of AI agents affects an existing system landscape.
• Resources to get you started developing agents: Educators and students have the opportunity to access an SAP agent design environment and use various training resources. They can learn more about configuring and building an AI agent by being guided through the process using demos or by applying their knowledge in practice in a productive system.

What makes these offerings so special is the way they complement each other. Students can use SAP solutions to learn about various aspects of agent-based AI. You will learn that developing an agent is only part of the overall process, and that it is equally important to understand the importance of the process context, architecture and governance principles.

Collaboration with educational institutions around the world

Additionally, SAP is increasingly committed to integrating agent-based AI into curricula, working with faculty from over ten universities worldwide, including the following:

• Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
• Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
• Hasso Plattner Institute
• HEC Montreal, Canada
• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
• National University of Singapore Business Analytics Centre, Singapore
• Institute of Technological and Advanced Studies Monterrey, Mexico
• Technical University of Munich
• Tongji University, China
• Technical University of Dresden
• University of California, Irvine, USA

Facilities will receive exclusive early access to the latest capabilities of the SAP agent development platform. Students also benefit from comprehensive exchange with SAP experts as well as the opportunity to formulate their academic requirements for the practical teaching of agent-based AI concepts to SAP.

“We want the students to work with the same tools and scenarios that are currently common in companies,” says Dr. Katharina Schäfer, Head of Academic Partnerships at SAP. “With free access to our resources in the area of ​​agent development, lecturers can easily incorporate these practical examples into their courses. Students who design AI agents based on real company processes during their studies have a decisive advantage when entering the job market.”

Practical relevance is an important factor for teaching staff: Students not only learn about AI agents from textbooks, but can also develop them themselves – using real systems and with real limitations.

“I was thrilled that this new platform gives students the opportunity to work with business-grade tools,” reported Prof. Jesús Aguilar-Gonzalez from the Institute for Technological and Advanced Studies in Monterrey. “Students in our School of Engineering & Sciences design agents based on real business processes and have to think about the architecture and governance aspects. This is far more true to the reality of starting a career than any textbook exercise.”

What distinguishes this concept is the business context: agent-based AI is taught in connection with business processes and the associated system landscape. Students learn how AI can be integrated into real processes instead of experimenting on their own.

Skilled workers for the future

As part of the program SAP University Alliances For decades, SAP has partnered with more than 2,800 educational institutions to enable students to learn, research, and innovate using enterprise applications and technologies. Supported with these offers SAP students in building useful SAP skills and helping them qualify for career opportunities around the world.

Want to make agent-based AI part of your curriculum? Visit the SAP University Alliances website at sap.com or contact universityalliances@sap.com.