SAP Kyma Runtime (SKR) for Partners

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In the past four years I had spent a considerable amount of time advising software partners that embed SAP technology into their Partner Solutions. During this four-year tenure I could observe a growing pace of adoption of cloud native technologies by partners and been a witness to the recent uptake of kubernetes. And when it comes to SAP technology, my focus has gradually shifted towards SAP Business Technology platform runtimes and services with a special attention to SKR.

In this regard, SAP managed kubernetes cluster - SKR - offers an unprecedented opportunity to mix and match partners bespoke technology platforms and solutions with SAP’s BTP selection of runtimes and a treasure trove of services.

Let’s see how this story unfolds based on selected use cases...

Good to know:

• SKR runtime is available via SAP Gardener shoot clusters on both Azure and AWS infrastructures.


• SKR cluster can dynamically upscale/downscale to accommodate for both scheduled and unforeseen activity peaks.


• The SKR cluster is fully managed by SAP which means all the Kyma and related software components upgrades and/or updates (Istio, ORY etc) are managed.


• Commercial and free trial availability:
  
  
  
  • SKR runtime is available to SAP Partners and Customers via a variety of commercial agreements. Please contact your SAP sales representative for more information.
  
  
  • SKR runtime is accessible to all, free of charge, on SAP BTP trial accounts (albeit limited to a single node) (Please note: with trial accounts the SKR cluster content may not be persisted across the trial account hibernations)
  
  
  
  

Selected use cases.

Using Kyma functions for micro-services development alongside with other BTP services and runtimes.

Kyma brings the support of functions that allow for fast-tracked development of micro-services without the need of having to explicitly create containers.

Moreover the functions are server-less meaning they are lightweight and asynchronously executed by a managed Express (for nodejs functions) or Python based server. For instance:	Bring your self-made user JWT with Keycloak OIDC. AzureAD as an OpenID Connect (OIDC) and OAuth provider Keyclock as an OpenID Connect (OIDC) provider.
You can also use functions to create your own APIs and then use SAP API Management to expose them to business users for consumption with LCNC productivity tools of the likes of Appgyver or Mendix....	Blueprinting LOB extensions with SAP BTP services and API Management

 

Using Kyma to host and orchestrate containerised application workloads.

 

A growing number of software solutions are provided as containers. One can easily find container libraries that offer ready to deploy k8s workloads, for instance:	Keycloak. An open source IAS with SAP BTP, Kyma runtime.
Likewise, you could have created a library of containers for your own bespoke workloads, for instance:	Building extensions to SAP Analytics with Kyma runtime and kubernetes. Live Universe connection.

But what if some part of your IT landscape cannot be containerised ?

• In this case you could opt for having a digital twin run on SKR with the connectivity proxy towards your on-premise workload.

 

Conclusion

Just think of k8s as of a cloud native operating systems where all you need to do is to yaml-describe how you want it to run your application workloads.

Additionally, with SKR you get access to a catalog of SAP BTP native services with the likes of XSUAA, Connectivity Proxy and Destination services...

(And the list of catalog services that can be natively consumed from Kyma side is ever growing.)

Regardless, any SAP BTP or foreign service can be consumed on Kyma side via service keys access mechanism (or its equivalent).

Last but not least, you can also bring your own services to the catalog...

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There is plenty of resources out there to make it easy to start with kyma environment and the SAP kyma community is a vibrant one.

So please make use of our community resources, developer tutorials and a kyma community slack channel to get help from SAP Community Kyma experts.

Additional resources

• Featured Kyma Community Resources


• SAP BTP, Kyma runtime


• Install Gardener on Rancher | SAP Blogs