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Introduction
In the era of Industry 4.0, the ability to respond to real-time events from industrial equipment is crucial for operational efficiency. This blog outlines a proof of concept (PoC) that demonstrates how to integrate events from AWS IoT SiteWise with SAP S/4HANA using SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and the Gen AI Hub. The solution leverages an event-driven architecture to automate business processes based on equipment anomalies detected in real-time.
This architecture is highly repeatable and can be applied not only for plant maintenance but also for broader SAP scenarios such as purchase requisitions, inventory updates, and more. Leveraging IoT SiteWise reference architecture, enterprises can scale these integrations seamlessly across different business processes.
This post focuses on a joint SAP + AWS industrial IoT scenario. Ganesh's blog on Power Utility Monitoring and Maintenance provides a very detailed perspective on the business problem and value proposition. In continuation, this blog dives deeper into the technical implementation of the PoC, providing step-by-step insights into how AWS IoT SiteWise integrates with SAP S/4HANA using SAP BTP and Gen AI Hub.
Engagement
The outcome described in this article was facilitated by an engagement between SAP and Amazon Web Services, which resulted in the creation and validation of a joint reference architecture use cases and PoC. Teams from PVN PavanKumar (SAP Labs India) and Soulath Khan (Amazon Web Services) have participated in this engagement.
Business Scenario
Consider a smart factory where machines continuously stream telemetry data—vibration, pressure, and temperature—into AWS IoT SiteWise. A sudden spike in vibration could indicate early signs of mechanical failure.
Wouldn’t it be powerful if such events could automatically trigger downstream actions like
Creating a maintenance notification in SAP S/4HANA
Routing the issue to a workflow for triage and approval
Summarizing the incident using generative AI and notifying responsible personnel
This PoC showcases how we made that happen.
Technical Implementation
This architecture leverages key components across SAP BTP, AWS, and Gen AI Hub to create a scalable event-to-action pipeline. The Solution Architecture is illustrated in Figure 1, and the important components along with their connectivity are explained below:
Event Source: AWS IoT SiteWise + Amazon S3
AWS IoT SiteWise collects real-time equipment data and sends processed events to Amazon S3.
A Lambda function monitors the bucket and forwards the relevant events to SAP Integration Suite, Advanced Event Mesh.
Event Transport: SAP Integration Suite, advanced event mesh
The Lambda publishes events to SAP Integration Suite, advanced event mesh (AEM), over an encrypted channel.
AEM is configured with topics and queues to ensure event durability and decoupled consumption.
Event Processing: Events-to-Business-Actions Framework
This is the core of the application, built using Node.js and deployed on the SAP BTP Cloud Foundry Environment.
Responsibilities include parsing event payloads from AEM queues, triggering decision logic, and business APIs. It also enables business action configuration options, empowering users to specify downstream processes.
SAP Build Process Automation (Decision Capability)
Event payloads are routed through SAP Build Process Automation, where decision logic is modeled to determine the corresponding business action that needs to be taken —e.g., create plant maintenance notification, material purchase requisition, log alert, or ignore.
Gen AI Hub: Human-Readable Event Summary via Amazon Bedrock
The framework integrates with SAP AI Core to call a deployed Amazon Bedrock Claude 3 Sonnet model.
This model takes raw, hard-to-read incoming IoT events and generates easy-to-read summaries of the event payload, which are then populated in the maintenance notification description for enhanced clarity.
Business Action: SAP S/4HANA
As we have identified and processed the incoming event for Plant Maintenance Notification business action, the Events-to-Business-Actions CAP app then calls the S/4HANA Maintenance Notification API which creates the notification and returns the ID of the notification created.
As both SAP BTP and SAP S/4HANA were on AWS , we have used the SAP Private Link Service and AWS Private Link Service to securely connect them.
Developer Insights
As a developer building this PoC, a few key learnings stand out:
Loose coupling using AEM and queues ensures resiliency and scalability.
Gen AI Hub integration was seamless and added instant value for summarization use cases.
Decision capability in SAP Build allowed us to externalize complex logic from the app code, making it easier to maintain and extend.
Using SAP BTP Destinations and Service Bindings helped standardize secure backend access across environments.
Deployment Steps
Follow this GitHub documentation for detailed steps for configuration and deployment.
Closing Remarks
By combining event-driven architecture with Generative AI and SAP process automation, we’ve shown how enterprises can respond to physical-world events with business actions. We encourage you to explore the GitHub Repository, experiment with your own IoT events, and extend this foundation to fit your enterprise use case.
Note: This blog is based on a proof of concept and is intended for educational purposes. For production implementations, additional considerations such as security, scalability, and error handling should be addressed.
On the SAP side, many thanks to Anbazhagan Uma from SAP for driving this topic by collaborating with all the stakeholders involved in the engagement; Praveen Kumar Padegal and Ajit Kumar Panda for supporting the development of this solution, Madankumar Pichamuthu for enabling collaboration, and finally Anirban Majumdar , PVN Pavan Kumar , Sivakumar N for leadership support for this project.
On the Amazon AWS side, many thanks to Soulat Khan, Ganesh Suryanarayanan, Sunny Patwari, Renga Sridharan, Aiyappa Machanda, Abhik Ray, Suresh Pulivarthi, Krishnakumar Ramadoss and the SAP APN Partner Innovation team for their support in this project.
To learn more about SAP BTP, see the learning journey on SAP Learning called Discover SAP Business Technology Platform, a great introduction to BTP and the Intelligent Enterprise strategy, to see what it’s all about for free.
As part of the global partnership between SAP and AWS, we have jointly developed an SAP Learning Journey titled “Build Resilient Applications on SAP BTP with Amazon Web Services"
By joining this free openSAP course, you will delve into multiple Joint Reference Architecture patterns, gain in-depth knowledge of the architectural patterns, and have the opportunity to enhance your skills through hands-on exercises.
To learn more about Amazon AWS, visit AWS training
For more information about this topic or to ask a question, please contact us at paa_india@sap.com
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