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MichaelBeining
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In the first blog "The way to the SAP Cloud – EP to CP transition (part 1)" of my EP to CP transition blog series I have covered the motivation, the basics of the SAP Cloud Platform (Portal) and a suggestion for a potential transition approach.

In the second part I will cover the following topics:

  • Feature comparision of the individual building blocks (SAP EP vs SAP CP)

  • Overview of potential transition paths from EP to CP


Transition Options of Important Portal Functions


In principle, the transition is customer-specific, but transition recommendations/alternatives can be made for the main functions and data types of the SAP Enterprise Portal (EP).

The following overview table is intended to provide a rough overview of the feature mapping. For each feature category, the core functions of the EP are mapped to the respective alternatives on the SAP Cloud Platform:

User Experience


The user experience capabilities are in general quite similar. The EP and the SAP CP support both the Fiori user experience and the possibility to implement custom designs. Concerning the Fiori 3 adaption (delivery of UI innovation) the SAP CP has quite an advantage.











SAP ENTERPRISE PORTAL SAP CLOUD PLATFORM


  • Ajax Framework Page

  • Fiori Framework Page

  • Custom Design




  • SAP Freestyle Sitetemplates

  • SAP Fiori Launchpad

  • Custom Design



Application Integration


The SAP Cloud Platform Portal already covers the majority of the rich capabilities of the SAP EP.











SAP ENTERPRISE PORTAL SAP CLOUD PLATFORM


  • Supports the integration of all common SAP UI technologies




  • Supports the integration of the most common SAP UI technologies SAP GUI for Windows, CRM Web UI FW and BI iViews can "only" be integrated via the EP as content provider
    can be integrated.



Application Development Technologies


The SAP Cloud Platform provides all modern development technologies, except the legacy ones of the SAP EP. If you still have custom apps developed in HTMLB or Web Dynpro Java you should plan to migrate them to a modern development technology, like SAPUI5.











SAP ENTERPRISE PORTAL SAP CLOUD PLATFORM


  • HTMLB

  • Web Dynpro Java

  • SAPUI5

  • Java

  • Custom Web Technologies




  • SAPUI5

  • Custom Web Technologies

  • Java

  • Node.js



Document Management


The SAP EP has a very feature rich and wide adopted Document Management system, the so called Knowledge Management (KM). A similar solution is not provided by SAP on the SAP Cloud Platform, only lightweight document services, like the Document Service / Document Center on Neo and the Object Store which is coming from the IaaS providers, like AWS, Azure, Google, Alibaba on Multi-Cloud. If your use cases require a state of the art document management system, please check out the SAP Partner Egnyte. Next to a SAP CP integration they provide a migration tooling for transfering the SAP KM repositories to the Egnyte Cloud.











SAP ENTERPRISE PORTAL SAP CLOUD PLATFORM


  • Knowledge
    Management (KM)




  • Egnyte

  • Document Service / Document Center

  • Object Store



Content Management


(Web) Content Management is neither on SAP EP nor on CP the strength/focus area of SAP. On both platforms SAP provides a basic content management solution and recommends partner solutions, if the customer use cases require them. Basically you can choose between add-on extensions or the integration of classic/modern web content management systems.











SAP ENTERPRISE PORTAL SAP CLOUD PLATFORM


  • SAP Web Page Composer

  • VANTAiO Portal Manager

  • External Web Content Management systems, such as FirstSpirit





Collaboration


The SAP EP lacks out-of-the box collaboration capabilities. The SAP CP has much more to offer here.  The Social Collaboration Tool SAP Jam is already available. Furthermore SAP will launch a new product, a so called SAP Business Workplace, which will have tightly integrated collaboration features.











SAP ENTERPRISE PORTAL SAP CLOUD PLATFORM


  • Wikis & Forums




  • SAP Jam

  • SAP Business Workplace*



Single-Sign-On (SSO)


With both environments one can achieve Single-Sign-On to SAP and Non-SAP backends. The SAP Cloud Platform has the advantage, that one can also achieve Single-Sign-On between Cloud and On-Premise solutions quite easily via the SAP Cloud Connector.











SAP ENTERPRISE PORTAL SAP CLOUD PLATFORM


  • SAP Logon Tickets

  • SAML




  • SAML

  • Principal Propagation (X.509)

  • OAuth



Search


The search is currently in the SAP Cloud Platform the biggest missing feature under development. In the future one can replace SAP TREX based search scenarios via the SAP Cloud Platform Central Search, which is planned to be available on SAP CP Multi-Cloud.











SAP ENTERPRISE PORTAL SAP CLOUD PLATFORM


  • SAP TREX




  • SAP Cloud Platform Central Search (Multi-Cloud)*



Workflow


The SAP EP has no own workflow engine, only a Universal Worklist (UWL) to aggregate all workflows from the SAP backend systems. The UWL has already two successors. The Fiori Inbox based on SAP Gateway and the coming inbox technology which will be the new Central Inbox on the SAP Multi-Cloud environment, the so called SAP One Inbox. It is currently available via Beta shipment. Furthermore the SAP CP offers a workflow service, which can be used to build custom workflows.











SAP ENTERPRISE PORTAL SAP CLOUD PLATFORM


  • Universal Worklist (UWL)




  • Custom Inbox

  • Fiori Inbox

  • SAP Cloud Platform Workflow

  • SAP One Inbox (Multi-Cloud)*



User Management


The SAP EP provides with the User Management Engine (UME) an integrated user store, which can connect to ABAP user stores and/or LDAPs, like MS Active Directory. SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication service is a cloud service for secure authentication and user management in SAP cloud and on-premise applications. Aditionally one can use the SAP Cloud Platform Identity Provisioning service to provision identities and their authorizations to various cloud and on-premise business applications.











SAP ENTERPRISE PORTAL SAP CLOUD PLATFORM


  • User Management Engine (UME): DB, ABAP, LDAP




  • SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication Service (IAS)

  • SAP Cloud Platform Identity Provisioning Service



*SAP services planned or under development (as of March 2020)

Overview of potential transition paths


As I stated in my first transition blog the transition path is quite customer specific. First you have to check where you are currently. Than you can figure out, based on your (future) requirements, to which solution/scenario you should transition to.

Potential User Experience on SAP EP (Initial Situation)


Following you will find the most common initial situations of SAP EP customers:

Portal Classic: User Experience (SAP)

This is the default Admin User Exerience for the SAP Enterprise Portal, but some customers may still use it as enduser framework.



Freestyle (Custom)

This is just an example/representative of a custom-freestyle portal framework we built ages ago... this was the time were one built pixel perfect layouts optimized for a specific screen resolution 🙂



Freestyle (VANTAiO Partner solution)

This is our latest, responsive SAP EP framework which is running on an SAP Enterprise Portal 7.3, 7.4 and 7.5.



Fiori Style / Fiori Launchpad (SAP)

This is the Fiori 2.0 User Experience running on an SAP Enterprise Portal 7.5.


Potential User Experience on SAP CP (Target Situation)


Based on your initial situation and your requirements you have the following potential target solutions  from SAP, were you can migrate/transition to on the SAP Cloud Platform:

SAP Central Fiori Launchpad (cFLP) on SAP CP Multi-Cloud - Already publicly available

If you are coming from an Application Portal Use Case this is probably a good fit for your transition project. In the screenshot you can already see the outlook of the SAPUI5 Cards integration:



 

SAP Business Workplace on SAP CP Multi-Cloud - Product Launch Is Planned for SAPPHIRE 2020

If you have additional requirements, like Social Collaboration, Freestyle Experience, Native Mobile Clients, Intelligent Modules, and the need for an Office 365/Teams integration the coming SAP product could be a great fit for you. Here you find a visionary outlook which was shown at SAP Teched 2019 in Barcelona


Various Transition Options: There is no general right way, only the right way for your use case


Based on the initial situation and the potential target solutions we have created a transition matrix.

On the vertical axis you can find the Technology / Platform and on the horizontal axis you can find the User Experience / Solution Style. Based on that you can see potential migration paths:



Based on our initial situation and requirements sometimes an intermediate step could also make sense.

Let us assume a customer is operating an application portal on the SAP Enterprise Portal with the Portal Classic User Experience.

He has now the opportunity to just modernize the UX of the application portal with the activation of the Fiori Framework Page on SAP EP (transition path A) or he could directly transition to the cFLP on the SAP Cloud Platform (transition path C) and leverage the added functionaliy of the cFLP, like the central access to multiple systems and the Fiori Cards integration and more to come...

Conclusion


I hope the provided input motivates you to kickstart/initiate your SAP EP transition journey.

If you have any questions or need support, feel free to reach out to me.

Best regards,

Michael Beining - VANTAiO
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