In our lat­est ASUG Asks the Authors fea­ture, we sit down with Gairik Acharya, senior archi­tect at the IBM SAP S/4HANA Cen­ter of Excel­lence group in North Amer­i­ca, and a senior tech­ni­cal archi­tect and asso­ciate part­ner at IBM with 22+ years of IT expe­ri­ence; Govind Bajaj, an SAP busi­ness intel­li­gence solu­tion archi­tect with 15+ years of IT expe­ri­ence; Avi­jit Dhar, a senior con­sul­tant at IBM India with 15+ years of expe­ri­ence lead­ing the design and imple­men­ta­tion of large-scale imple­men­ta­tions, includ­ing in the SAP man­u­fac­tur­ing domain; Dr. Anup Ghosh, an SAP chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer at IBM Ser­vices Europe and direc­tor of enter­prise appli­ca­tion for the IBM Cloud Solu­tion Cen­ter; and Asid­hara Lahiri, an enter­prise archi­tect at SAP with 22+ years of expe­ri­ence with SAP technologies. 

Acharya, Bajaj, Dhar, Ghosh, and Lahiri are the co-authors of ​“Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment with SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form,” a recent SAP Press book that guides read­ers through build­ing cloud appli­ca­tions on SAP BTP by pre­sent­ing step-by-step exam­ples for devel­op­ing and oper­at­ing appli­ca­tions, detailed code exam­ples, and a big-pic­ture per­spec­tive on the pace of change for SAP BTP’s devel­op­ment environments. 

In this first part of our two-part con­ver­sa­tion, we dis­cuss the moti­va­tion behind this pub­li­ca­tion, the evolv­ing land­scape of appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment, and the over­ar­ch­ing phi­los­o­phy behind recent changes and innovations. 

This inter­view has been edit­ed and condensed.

Q: What was the ini­tial impe­tus for you all to write this book?

Asid­hara Lahiri: We wrote anoth­er book, ​“SAP Cloud Plat­form: Cloud-Native Devel­op­ment,” in 2018. SAP was still com­ing up with the idea for plat­form-as-a-ser­vice (PaaS). Our team had been involved in var­i­ous parts of SAP Cloud Plat­form, whether in archi­tec­ture, design, and devel­op­ment, so it made sense for us to pub­lish that book then. Between 2018 and 2021, so much devel­op­ment hap­pened on this plat­form, which then grew into the larg­er umbrel­la of SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP). That evo­lu­tion was quite drastic.

Tech­ni­cal­ly and prod­uct-wise, it was lucra­tive for the devel­op­ment com­mu­ni­ty to lever­age BTP; it became an enabler for any­one who want­ed to cre­ate their own SaaS solu­tions. RISE with SAP also came into the pic­ture, which gave us a fresh impe­tus to lever­age BTP from a com­mer­cial point of view. We thought it was high time that our team pitched in to help with a redesigned ver­sion of our book. The SAP ecosys­tem required it. We had the expe­ri­ence, we had done exper­i­men­ta­tions, and we had gath­ered enough knowl­edge that we decid­ed, ​“Let’s go.” 

Q: What busi­ness chal­lenges, pres­sures, and trans­for­ma­tions have emerged since 2018 that informed your approach?

Anup Ghosh: The last three years have been unprece­dent­ed. We expe­ri­enced major events: the pan­dem­ic, the cat­a­stroph­ic impact of glob­al warm­ing, lock­downs, dis­rupt­ed sup­ply chains, health issues, eco­nom­ic hard­ships, remote work, and so on. These events had a phe­nom­e­nal impact on busi­ness­es around us, the econ­o­my, and our social and per­son­al lives.

What we expe­ri­enced — what all of us lived through, dur­ing our day jobs work­ing with clients, and with­in our per­son­al ecosys­tems — made enter­pris­es real­ize that dig­i­ti­za­tion was not good enough. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion had been dis­cussed in the past, but events of the past three years showed that we must go beyond that. We need to not only auto­mate what­ev­er we can aggres­sive­ly, but also be aware of the envi­ron­ment, of the con­text around us, and get ahead of it. We must be flex­i­ble, to have the abil­i­ty to change quickly. 

Each one of us faced real-life exam­ples, while sup­port­ing clients, when this came to light. All of us had been work­ing with SAP for 20+ years, if not more, and we saw the need for flex­i­bil­i­ty and resilience, the need to be con­text-aware, to become intel­li­gent and make that intel­li­gence avail­able at all points of transaction. 

This intel­li­gence could not just sit in a report for board mem­bers; it had to be sent to the point of trans­ac­tion, pro­vid­ing sup­ply chain pro­fes­sion­als with the abil­i­ty to pre­dict and pin­point dis­rup­tion and to pre­scribe the best actions to opti­mize: through­puts and costs. We also had to be sen­si­tive to the need for a sus­tain­able world: no longer a nice-to-have, it became a neces­si­ty. Enter­pris­es need­ed to be active­ly man­ag­ing their green lines beyond their top- and bottom-lines. 

When you bring all of this togeth­er, it shows that enter­pris­es today need dif­fer­ent types of capa­bil­i­ties than in the past. Bring­ing capa­bil­i­ties togeth­er is where plat­forms can play a cru­cial role, and that’s what we want­ed to high­light in ​“Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment with SAP BTP.” 

It goes beyond inte­gra­tion and devel­op­ment. It’s about bring­ing togeth­er all the capa­bil­i­ties that enter­pris­es need to deal with and thrive with­in cur­rent mar­ket sit­u­a­tions. BTP is not just a col­lec­tion of tools or capa­bil­i­ties; it pro­vides a holis­tic view of what peo­ple need to under­stand, real­ize, bring forth, and apply to all spheres of their business. 

Q: How has this evolv­ing land­scape, and the chal­lenges SAP cus­tomers face, impact­ed the way they see customizations? 

Gairik Acharya: A few points, which are impor­tant: flex­i­bil­i­ty, resilien­cy, intel­li­gence, automa­tion, sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The chal­lenges bring oppor­tu­ni­ties to cus­tomers: to inno­vate faster, reduce total cost of own­er­ship, and achieve what tra­di­tion­al ERP sys­tems may not be able to pro­vide. The con­cept of ​“clean core” emerged in 2018. Today, SAP is inno­vat­ing BTP in a cloud-native way. This con­cept is more promi­nent, and cus­tomers are see­ing added flex­i­bil­i­ty, intel­li­gence, and automa­tion. Cus­tomers want to use BTP for their cus­tomiza­tion require­ments; they want to build out­side of and not in the core system. 

Q: How has the emer­gence of intel­li­gent sus­tain­able enter­pris­es changed the nature of appli­ca­tion development?

Anup Ghosh: It’s beyond tech­nol­o­gy. Tech­nol­o­gy was an enabler, but it’s a mind shift and also a shift in out­look and atti­tudes around us. I’ll share one anec­dote, on the sub­ject of flex­i­bil­i­ty and need­ing to turn the ship. We saw this when cus­tomers need­ed to quick­ly change the rules that they had built in the past. Of course, with our SAP expe­ri­ence, we’d tell them, ​“Why did you do cus­tom devel­op­ment? We always told you to stay vanil­la, and then you wouldn’t have faced this problem!” 

It’s impor­tant that every­one has their own dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, which is the main dri­ver for cus­tom devel­op­ment, but it has to be real­ized in a way that doesn’t impede their flex­i­bil­i­ty, their abil­i­ty to change quick­ly and be resilient. That’s the par­a­digm shift: it’s not that I would force every­one not to pur­sue dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, but I would chal­lenge them to find out how they can dif­fer­en­ti­ate in a way that sup­ports the need to change. That shift has accel­er­at­ed dur­ing these past few years: mov­ing from tra­di­tion­al Advanced Busi­ness Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming (ABAP) devel­op­ment into low code/​no code, hav­ing those dif­fer­en­ti­a­tions at a process lay­er ver­sus com­pos­ing via devel­op­ment, and so on. The fun­da­men­tal still is in think­ing about dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in a way that can with­stand pres­sures from the ecosys­tem, that is main­tain­able for the future. 

Lahiri: In order to dri­ve automa­tion or sup­port flex­i­bil­i­ty in busi­ness in an agile way, the appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment also has to be very much iter­a­tive. We can­not do every­thing; we used to have like nine months or year­long projects to com­plete and then test devel­op­ment. That doesn’t work any­more. It has to have its own life­cy­cle, ide­al­ly par­al­lel to and almost inde­pen­dent of back­ends. It’s more about con­sum­ing APIs, cre­at­ing on top of back­ends and at sep­a­rate lay­ers. It’s no longer just a report or a user inter­face. It is UI, trans­ac­tions, work­flows, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, mod­el con­sump­tion, and even ana­lyt­ics, all in one application. 

Avi­jit Dhar: In the post-COVID world, we are see­ing large enter­pris­es con­sid­er­ing go-to-mar­ket from a stand­point of reduc­ing dif­fi­cul­ty. We see the need for automa­tion across their busi­ness process­es, to make their oper­a­tions much more intel­li­gent with­in a very short time peri­od. Clients are look­ing for quick and intel­li­gent solu­tions, and that is where the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form ser­vices — know­ing about them and how they can be lever­aged to build and auto­mate busi­ness oper­a­tions — has become sig­nif­i­cant­ly more important. 

That is why we are see­ing con­tin­u­ous demand from var­i­ous clients, where peo­ple are look­ing for cloud-based solu­tions. Two to three years back, when we used to talk about cloud-based solu­tions, more clients were hap­py with what they had on-premis­es. Now, we are see­ing demand from cus­tomers who want to know how to trans­form their busi­ness using cloud-based oper­a­tions or cloud-based API. This is a change in mind­set. We are see­ing a rush across enter­pris­es to make things faster and cre­ate quick solutions.

We can­not deny that there is a huge skill gap across the world, in terms of appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment. In dis­cussing intel­li­gent solu­tions, the client is also look­ing for solu­tions that can be built in a low-code/no-code approach. SAP BTP brings val­ue in that sense. Work­flow man­age­ment was intro­duced one or two years back; now, peo­ple are tak­ing an inter­est. Peo­ple want to see how they can build intel­li­gent work­flows by lever­ag­ing ser­vices and bring­ing some great solu­tions into the cloud. 

Q: The book’s pref­ace notes that these chap­ters are intend­ed to help read­ers learn about changes and new inno­va­tions as well as help them ​“under­stand their phi­los­o­phy.” Why is this key to effec­tive­ly apply­ing innovations?

Ghosh: It is very impor­tant to know the tools and how to use them, but we need to see the big­ger pic­ture too. Why are the tools there? How did they fit togeth­er? Why are they in the shape and form they’re in? 

Slow­ly, we can under­stand and start to pre­dict the future vari­ant of these capa­bil­i­ties. We’re all wor­ried about the fast pace of change around us. Every­thing is chang­ing almost dai­ly; much of the nomen­cla­ture has changed, and new tools have been devel­oped. Things are mov­ing so fast that we had to make edits in the final ver­sions and after the book was pub­lished. With a rapid pace of change, how do I keep up? And from the client side, do I want to wait until it all stabilizes?

Today, there is more doc­u­men­ta­tion around tools and how to use them than ever before. That is not the chal­lenge. This book is not just about the tools but about how they come togeth­er and how they have been used in solv­ing real-life prob­lems. Beyond that, it’s about why these tools exist. That is what we want­ed to explore and share with a broad­er audi­ence. In the end, we are all try­ing to achieve some­thing, and we want to make it easy for every­body to under­stand what it is.

Q: What are some of the philoso­phies dri­ving appli­ca­tion development? 

Ghosh: These philoso­phies are less tran­sient in nature, less so than the tech­nolo­gies com­ing up and the tools using those tech­nolo­gies. If we look at the emer­gence of BTP, a cloud-based plat­form, we are pro­vid­ing busi­ness­es with the capa­bil­i­ties they need to thrive in giv­en sit­u­a­tions. As you look into the capa­bil­i­ties required over the years, you will see at a cer­tain lev­el those capa­bil­i­ties stay the same.

Ten years back, busi­ness­es want­ed to under­stand their cus­tomers as indi­vid­u­als, know their pref­er­ences, and pre­dict what they would want to buy ahead of time. Then, they could sat­is­fy those cus­tomers and keep them for­ev­er. That had been the need. Over the last 10 years, dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies have come up to achieve that objec­tive: how can I know a cus­tomer as an indi­vid­ual and go to the lev­el of their choice, maybe even pre­dict their choice?

Sim­i­lar­ly, if we look at the dif­fer­ent domains, the need will be the same. Whether you are an employ­ee, part­ner, cus­tomer, or main stake­hold­er of any enter­prise, what you want to do with these domains is dri­ven by core fun­da­men­tals. As we see some of these capa­bil­i­ties com­ing to light, the chances of reach­ing these goals are increasing. 

For indi­vid­ual enter­pris­es, with their tra­di­tion­al way of bring­ing those capa­bil­i­ties in, it would have been very dif­fi­cult. Think of it as try­ing to have all the pieces of soft­ware, license them, and have them installed in your data cen­ter or wher­ev­er. This would have tak­en ages. 

With a lot of these capa­bil­i­ties avail­able, I have to be able to con­sume them in an easy way. That is where this plat­form game start­ed, where plat­forms would pro­vide capa­bil­i­ties to the enter­pris­es as need­ed, at the pace needed. 

Solu­tion providers have been ask­ing for ages: ​“How do I pro­vide the capa­bil­i­ties to the enter­pris­es to be ahead of their com­pe­ti­tion?” Plat­forms are the future way of bring­ing these capa­bil­i­ties to enter­pris­es easily. 

If you look into indi­vid­ual capa­bil­i­ties for inte­gra­tion today, you can do the inte­gra­tion in 10 dif­fer­ent ways with­in SAP, between on-premis­es sys­tems and cloud, and so on. Right now, as you choose the right inte­gra­tion tech­nol­o­gy, you would know which one is going to stay here for the next five years ver­sus which is not, because you under­stand how the enter­pris­es want to con­sume those capabilities. 

If you go to the bot­tom-most lay­er, you will see almost noth­ing has changed. The fun­da­men­tals of busi­ness­es are still the same. A good busi­ness wants to cre­ate val­ue for their cus­tomers and for the world. And then as you go high­er, toward the imple­men­ta­tion lay­er, vari­a­tions happen.

How does SAP see its role as a provider of soft­ware to enter­pris­es? How should that trans­form? As con­sul­tants, as we take this to our cus­tomers and help them, we should align with that, so that cus­tomers can con­tin­ue to gain the ben­e­fits of these transfers. 

Once you under­stand the phi­los­o­phy, you can see the next shift coming. 

“Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment with SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form” is now avail­able from SAP Press.