Lemongrass betting on AI for enterprise value creation

MSP extracting structured data to AI models, while prototyping end-to-end process automation

MSP Lemongrass is focusing its medium AI efforts on both classic foundation models and in-house data structures.

According to Eamonn O'Neill, co-founder, director and CTO, speaking to CRN, there are two winning AI strategies for an MSP of Lemongrass's size.

"We see two sides to this. One side is the classic foundation models that have been around for a couple of years.

"But there's also the more custom, in-house AI development, where people want to get started with a public foundation model and then build structure around that for their own data, whether structured or unstructured."

Many of Lemongrass's customers are intrigued by training their own custom foundation model on SAP.

"We're working closely with the vendor to understand their plans and upcoming releases.

"For us, we see an opportunity to offer customers that AI capability from SAP, but also show how we can extend it into the non-SAP areas that are still crucial to the enterprise landscape."

Step one: use your existing data

These are the medium-term priorities, but in the immediate, Lemongrass is focusing on helping customers make the most of their existing data.

O'Neill explains how Lemongrass is tackling this: "What we're doing straightaway is helping customers leverage their structured enterprise data, like SAP transaction data.

"We've built a tool to extract that data into cloud analytics platforms like BigQuery or Redshift with a pre-built data model.

"We then connect our AI service to effectively pass the metadata model into the prompt for large language models.

"This allows the AI to write SQL queries against that structured data without exposing the raw data.

This strategy enables chatbots to answer business questions by querying the customer's SAP data on demand.

"It lets end users rapidly iterate on their analytical requirements in conversation, rather than the traditional back-and-forth with analysts."

A second area of value creation is unstructured data, which makes up approximately 80 per cent of the total volume of data in existence, according to IBM.

"Companies are embedding documents, PDFs, policies, etc. into private language models they can query.

"One customer did this themselves in just four weeks to make all their documentation searchable via natural language for employees. It also flagged outdated content for updating."

Looking ahead, O'Neill points to AI agents that can execute entire processes autonomously as a disruptive development.

"We're prototyping this for software development workflows - having an agent create requirements, code, tests, and handle the full SDLC from a prompt.

"When you envision applying that to any business process, you can see the potential disruption."

Growth and partner relationships

Lemongrass is a US-based MSP with a strong UK presence, it was first established in 2008 as an SAP specialist, but has since expanded to partner with AWS, Google Cloud and more.

The MSP targets large enterprises all over the world and has been on a steep growth curve of late.

"A key factor for growth for us has been expanding beyond just SAP to being multi-cloud," O'Neill says.

"As we engage with larger, leading enterprises, the deal sizes naturally grow.

"We also see SAP's RISE strategy driving strong demand that fits our expertise well.

"If execution remains strong, I believe we can sustain this growth trajectory, though hiring enough top talent is always a constraint."

He adds that as partnerships expand some of the most common requests they are making to vendors are around providing more long-term roadmap visibility where possible.

He argues that is one of biggest challenges and would give large enterprise customers more confidence in committing to a platform.

Moving forward, he also says M&A isn't a major strategic focus for them, but historically, acquisitions have been very targeted for specific IP, capabilities or teams versus just bulking up.

"We believe we can grow organically into this massive opportunity, but remain open-minded to the right strategic acquisitions."