In January 2021, SAP introduced a unique and powerful solution offering called SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). SAP BTP is the technical foundation of entire SAP ecosystem and plays a crucial role for all SAP customers and partners.
In this blog, we will understand what SAP BTP is from a beginner’s perspective.
Anyone who is completely new to SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and want to get a crystal-clear understanding of what it is and what problems it solves.
This blog is targeted for people who are looking for a simple explanation of SAP BTP.
In this blog, we will learn:
It's good to have a clear understanding of basic cloud technical terms like Hyperscaler, Multi-Cloud, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS etc.
I will recommend you to spend 2 minutes reading my blog Important Cloud Terminologies for Beginners
Let’s start!
Let s try to understand SAP BTP using 2 example scenarios.
Scenario 1
There is an organization (whether an existing SAP customer or new to SAP ecosystem) who wants to build a cloud solution or a mobile solution. In this solution, they need to integrate multiple systems, automate complex business processes, incorporate new-age technologies (like IoT, Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning etc.).
Scenario 2
An existing SAP customer wants to build a cloud solution to extend SAP systems ( e.g. S/4HANA, SuccessFactors). The customer need services for seamless integration between systems and application. They also need to have independence in managing downtime, scalability, and lifecycle management.
In both the scenarios, organizations want to build the solution with minimal effort, low cost and have faster time to market. They don’t prefer to spend money and time on things like landscape setup, system installation, configuration, and maintenance.
SAP BTP is an offering from SAP which fulfil all these requirements. SAP BTP is a portfolio of SAP solutions and services that are brought under one umbrella. These services, and solutions helps organizations build a new cloud solution or extend SAP systems.
In other words – SAP BTP is a bundle of many, many different services. Some of those services can be used for innovation and application development, some services are purely for monitoring, some are databases as a service, and some are runtimes as a service. BTP platform gives you access to all these services.
SAP BTP provides all the necessary resources to create a cloud solution. It allows you to focus on business logics, while BTP takes care of the technical aspects behind the scenes.
To understand SAP BTP, let’s take a real-life analogy.
Imagine you're starting a new business and you want to open a restaurant (similar to an organization building a new cloud solution or extending existing SAP solution). You have a clear vision of the type of food you want to serve and the atmosphere you want to create.
While you want to open a new-age, world class restaurant and have lots of creative ideas, there are 3 important criteria you have:
To achieve such goal, first thing that will come to our mind is, find a shop on rent, find a job consultancy firm which can help you hire good chefs, contact a vendor to procure tools and equipment for your kitchen, search another vendor to help you with interior of restaurant etc.
But imagine the hustle you will feel to manage all these vendors and providers. What if there is a company called SAP (Start-up Assistance Provider), which provides everything you need to open your restaurant. This company gives you an umbrella of services (equivalent to SAP BTP), which bundles everything you need, such as:
The company SAP (Start-up Assistance Provider) does not require you to pay all the money up-front. But provide an easy Pay-as-you-go model (equivalent to Pay-As-You-Go model in SAP BTP) where you pay very minimal amount in beginning to start your business. As and when you need more service, you can pay accordingly.
Just like this unique service helps people open a world class restaurant by focusing only on core business: cooking and serving delicious food, SAP BTP helps organizations build world-class cloud solution by focusing only on their core business.
|
Now, let’s wear a developer’s hat and understand technical aspects of SAP BTP.
Developers understand technical terms better such as coding, program, language, runtime, database, and API.
Let's decode SAP BTP for developers.
Assume you are a developer at a SAP partner or customer and have been given responsibility to build a new cloud solution and extend an existing SAP solution. Let's make a wishlist of developers to fulfil this requirement and see how SAP BTP addresses that.
1. To start the project immediately, you need a Platform-as-a-Service which helps you to build and deploy cloud solutions without any local installation . The platform should allow you choose any programming language of your choice.
--> Technically, SAP Business Technology Platform can be considered as a Platform-as-as-a-Service. SAP BTP provides 3 environments - Cloud Foundry, ABAP and Kyma. All these environments gives you options to choose any programming language in the world, gives you ready-made platform to build and deploy any cloud solution.
2. As a developer you need a ready-made development environment where all the plugins (e.g. CLI tools, build tools, test tools etc.) are preinstalled.
--> SAP BTP provides a service called SAP Business Application Studio, which gives you a ready-made development environment. You can start coding for your solution in no time. No need to install or configure anything.
3. As a developer, you wish for a setup where all the builds and deployments can be done in one click.
--> SAP Business Application Studio along with MTA Build Tool (MBT), BTP CLI etc. simplifies all the build and deployment. No need to spend hours in building and deploying your code.
4. One of the major requirement of a cloud solution is a Database-as-a-Service which fulfil all data related requirement - Be it storing huge amount of data or processing structured as well as unstructured data or provide real-time access to data from multiple source.
--> SAP BTP provide a cloud effective variant of SAP HANA database called "SAP HANA Cloud". One service to solve all your data related requirement.
5. Developers love to focus on solving complex business requirements and writing best algorithm.
--> SAP BTP provides frameworks like "SAP Cloud Application Programming Model" which minimizes developers job. It literally helps developer focus only on business logic and take care of everything else.
SAP BTP services and solutions can be broadly categorized in 5 pillars, which are:
Below image summarizes major services falling under each pillar.
You can go to SAP Discovery Center to know more about each services.
In SAP BTP, “environments” refer to the actual platform-as-a-service offering of SAP BTP that enables us to develop, run, and manage our applications and services.
Think of BTP environment as different playgrounds, each designed for specific types of tasks and technologies. They provide a suitable space for different kinds of software development and operations.
Each environment comes equipped with specific tools, technologies, and runtimes that you need to build applications.
SAP BTP offers 3 major environments – Cloud Foundry, ABAP and Kyma. SAP BTP offers one more environment as well called Neo, which is going to sunset.
To get a detail explanation on SAP BTP environments and a comparison of Cloud Foundry Vs ABAP Vs Kyma, check the blog SAP BTP Environments – Cloud Foundry Vs ABAP Vs Kyma
Although SAP BTP offering is relatively new, it consists of solutions that have been around for years, and some of the BTP components go back quite a way.
The Application Development and Integration pillar of SAP BTP can trace its lineage back to SAP NetWeaver Cloud (Neo) - SAP's first Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering.
Below image shows brief timeline.
Note: At this point, you may not understand terms like Cloud Foundry, Kyma etc. That’s perfectly ok. We will learn these in our next blog.
2012: SAP entered the PaaS market with "SAP NetWeaver Cloud". The code name Neo, short for NetWeaver On-Demand.
2013: SAP NetWeaver Cloud renamed to "SAP HANA Cloud Platform"
2017: Cloud Foundry environment got added along with Neo
2017: The term “HANA” was dropped from the name. New name: "SAP Cloud Platform". So far, it was a PaaS offering by SAP to create new applications or extend existing SAP applications in a secure cloud environment.
2018: ABAP environment got added in SAP Cloud Platform
2020: Kyma environment got added in SAP Cloud Platform
2021: SAP Cloud Platform brand was officially retired to support SAP’s One Platform Strategy. SAP BTP was introduced as new brand name. SAP BTP provides extended functionality; however, the core is still equivalent to what is formerly known as SAP Cloud Platform.
SAP BTP is not a 1:1 replacement of SAP Cloud Platform. SAP Cloud Platform makes up only the
application development and integration pillar of SAP BTP.
Imagine you have a store selling different kinds of candies. Over time, you notice that customers prefer more than just candies; they also want different types of treats like chocolates and cookies. So, to better serve your customers and reflect the variety of products you offer, you decide to rebrand your store with a new name that includes "Treats" in it. This way, people will understand that your store has expanded beyond just candies.
Similarly, SAP Cloud Platform was originally focused on providing cloud-based services for businesses. However, as time went on, SAP realized that their platform was offering more than just cloud services. It also included technologies for application development, integration, analytics, and more.
To better represent the broader range of offerings and show that it's not just about the cloud, SAP decided to rebrand their platform as SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).
This new name helps customers understand that the platform is not limited to the cloud but also includes various technologies to help businesses with their overall technology needs.
To summarize, SAP rebranded SAP Cloud Platform to SAP BTP to better reflect that it's not just about cloud services anymore. It's a comprehensive platform that provides various tools and services for businesses to build, integrate, and run all kinds of digital solutions, like mobile apps, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and more.
There are 3 major benefits of SAP BTP, which makes it different and unique solution offering for organizations.
To meet customer demand for a more intuitive, simple platform, SAP BTP offers a unified experience that spans a wide variety of scenarios around integration, creation of value from data, and extensibility for processes in 25 key industries.
Capabilities in SAP BTP support a simplified user experience and enable functional inter-operability between SAP applications and technology.
SAP BTP is designed for business transformation and not just technology transformation or optimization. SAP BTP features are focused on improving the business outcomes companies can achieve.
The platform offers process- and data-specific tooling that helps organizations rapidly build and extend SAP applications. Business services and prepackaged content help users meet domain-specific requirements and develop focused data analysis scenarios.
Companies need flexibility when it comes to how they deploy and run business processes and IT systems. Because SAP BTP is open, organizations can choose how to build and extend – on a hyperscaler cloud infrastructure, in SAP data centers, or on their own premises.
Generative AI provides us with a whole new toolbox that opens so many opportunities to simplify and improve our work. SAP BTP acts as the enabler for SAP and partner applications to leverage generative AI capabilities in an SAP context. Generative AI capabilities in SAP BTP will improve the developer experience, how integrations are done, the process automation space, analytics and holistic planning activities, as well as simplify administrative tasks.
There has been many announcements on this area. For more information, see:
Unleash the Power of Business AI with SAP Business Technology Platform
Supercharging Developer Productivity with SAP Build Code
SAP Turns Every Developer Into a Generative AI Developer at SAP TechEd in 2023
If you are looking for a super simple explanation of AI, Ml and Generative AI, refer to my blog How I Explained AI, Machine Learning and Generative AI to My 5 Year-old Kid
SAP’s Official reference architectures for SAP BTP are available in the Reference Architecture section at SAP Discovery Center. This provides ready-to-use templates for building enterprise applications.
Check Reference Architecture section at SAP Discovery Center
If you are looking for best practices to plan, set up, build and run your applications on SAP BTP, check this Best Practices for SAP BTP document. It contains best practices and recommendations for planning development projects – from setting up the correct organizational structure to creating an account and security model, to developing and operating applications.
You may also look at SAP BTP Guidance Framework, an one-stop shop for all SAP BTP professionals to build and run enterprise-grade solutions on SAP BTP.
There is also an SAP BTP Developer’s Guide available which explains the building blocks for developing, delivering, and integrating business applications.
I have created a comprehensive learning path for SAP BTP customized for various job profiles such Developer, Architect, Consultant, Administrator, Citizen Developer and DevOps Engineer -
Learning Path for SAP BTP – Customized for Developer, Architect, Consultant and Administrator
I hope by now, you will have a clear understanding of SAP BTP.
Whether you’re learning SAP BTP to boost your skills or getting ready for a job change with it, getting certified is like adding the perfect finishing touch.
If you need a guide to choose the right certification one based on your role and expertise, check this blog A Comprehensive Guide to SAP BTP Certifications
Here are some other important blogs to learn SAP BTP:
10 “Hello World” Apps on SAP BTP in Different Languages
SAP BTP Environments – Cloud Foundry Vs ABAP Vs Kyma
Fundamentals of Multitenancy in SAP BTP
Fundamentals of Security in SAP BTP
How to Become Expert in SAP BTP Security– A Complete Learning Journey
Demystifying SAP Build for Beginners
Demystifying DevOps with SAP BTP
Join me on LinkedIn for more such insights on SAP and AI!
Happy Learning!
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.
User | Count |
---|---|
32 | |
14 | |
13 | |
13 | |
11 | |
8 | |
8 | |
7 | |
7 | |
6 |