In our lat­est ASUG Asks the Authors fea­ture, we sat down with Smitha Ban­da, a Senior Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­ag­er at SAP who leads the SAP BTP prac­tice for North Amer­i­ca; Shiba­ji Chan­dra, a sea­soned Con­sult­ing Archi­tect at SAP who has in-depth knowl­edge and exper­tise in SAP BTP; and Chun Aun Gooi, an SAP BTP Archi­tect and Devel­op­er. All three are the authors of ​“SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form: An Intro­duc­tion,” from SAP Press. 

In this sec­ond part of our con­ver­sa­tion, we con­sid­er take­aways from dis­cussing BTP at recent con­fer­ences, such as last fall’s ASUG & SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) Sum­mit, as well as com­mon mis­con­cep­tions around BTP and the impor­tance of inte­gra­tions to SAP technology.

Q. SAP host­ed a BTP Sum­mit last fall in New­town Square, the first focused pri­mar­i­ly on the plat­form. Anoth­er con­fer­ence, ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA® and SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP), is sched­uled for March. What can you say about the val­ue cus­tomers unlock through dis­cussing BTP in these settings?

Chan­dra: BTP was, of course, at cen­ter stage at the BTP Sum­mit, from Ker­ri Ten­brun­sel bring­ing it into her keynote to a pletho­ra of great ses­sions. I inter­act­ed with many cus­tomers who had spe­cif­ic or prod­uct strat­e­gy ques­tions. ​“I’m going on the S/4HANA trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney, so how can I lever­age BTP?” ​“How can I achieve clean code by lever­ag­ing BTP?” Those ques­tions came direct­ly from cus­tomers, which is a good sign. 

With­in BTP itself, we see more ques­tions about SAP Inte­gra­tion Suite. That’s the fron­trun­ner. Apart from that, peo­ple are very inter­est­ed in SAP Process Automa­tion and the low-code, no-code offer­ings in our suite. I have per­son­al­ly inter­act­ed with cus­tomers who had already uti­lized BTP and brought in issues they encoun­tered, par­tic­u­lar­ly around inte­gra­tion, data ware­hous­ing, ana­lyt­ics, and appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment. They want­ed guid­ance with spe­cif­ic kinds of sce­nar­ios. But, over­all, that reflects a shift toward greater adoption.

Mul­ti­ple cus­tomers I inter­act­ed with said that, for ana­lyt­ics, their main choice is SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud. That’s the ana­lyt­ics and plan­ning solu­tion with­in the BTP port­fo­lio. For cus­tom report devel­op­ment, they are not going into SAP S/4HANA to build a cus­tom devel­op­ment but rather going into SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, per­haps extend­ing a data mod­el on BTP then lever­ag­ing SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud on top of that. Three or four years back, peo­ple debat­ed oth­er options, like extract­ing all data from SAP, putting it into a data lake, and then using anoth­er ana­lyt­i­cal tool. Many cus­tomers are now see­ing the val­ue of SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, espe­cial­ly with a live data con­nec­tion to S/4HANA sys­tems and over­all ease of use.

Q. How would you char­ac­ter­ize the evo­lu­tion of the SAP BTP prac­tice in recent years? What do cus­tomers under­stand about the plat­form now that they did not at the time of its ini­tial rollout?

Ban­da: BTP is the tech­nol­o­gy plat­form on which we build and extend our busi­ness. I have always said, and I want to empha­size, that we should not approach it from a tech­nol­o­gy stand­point. We have to approach it from a busi­ness stand­point. We need to first iden­ti­fy what busi­ness val­ue we want to bring, what busi­ness out­comes or gaps we have, and then look at how tech­nol­o­gy can help the busi­ness. The ques­tion has to always come from the busi­ness side ver­sus the tech­nol­o­gy side. 

Chan­dra: Five years ago, we were ask­ing whether cus­tomers under­stood that. Now, I see that tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers, such as IT direc­tors and CIOs, are well aware of BTP and ask­ing ques­tions. I’m hop­ing that, with­in the next few years, C‑suite exec­u­tives will come up with require­ments which BTP will direct­ly ful­fill. We have a pletho­ra of mate­ri­als lined up, and we’re pur­su­ing that direction.

Q. The impor­tance of inte­gra­tions to cus­tomers has come to the fore in recent years. Giv­en that SAP BTP sup­ports both SAP and non-SAP inte­gra­tions, I want­ed to ask for your per­spec­tive on the grow­ing rel­e­vance of inte­gra­tions to BTP. 

Ban­da: I’ll get to why Cloud inte­gra­tion is impor­tant in a moment, but inte­gra­tion is impor­tant in gen­er­al because we don’t oper­ate in silos. SAP deals with very com­plex land­scapes and cus­tomers. Many cus­tomers of SAP are very, very large enter­pris­es, and no orga­ni­za­tion works in silos. They have SAP and non-SAP appli­ca­tions, on-premis­es and cloud appli­ca­tions, and they all have to talk to each oth­er for obvi­ous rea­sons. Data resides in dif­fer­ent places; inte­gra­tion is impor­tant for these appli­ca­tions to talk, for data, for processes… 

Why is Cloud or BTP Inte­gra­tion Suite impor­tant, and how does it help cus­tomers? SAP has invest­ed tremen­dous­ly in build­ing out-of-the-box solu­tions. Even for non-SAP appli­ca­tions or prod­ucts, SAP has built out-of-the-box con­nec­tors and inte­gra­tions that cus­tomers can use as is. So, I think that is the big val­ue BTP Cloud inte­gra­tion pro­vides to cus­tomers, and that’s a huge differentiator.

Chan­dra: In addi­tion, the busi­ness con­tent is the main key. If you look at the Cloud inte­gra­tion port­fo­lio with­in BTP Inte­gra­tion Suite, we have over 2,500 stan­dard inte­gra­tion flows: SAP to SAP, SAP to non-SAP, non-SAP to non-SAP. That’s all pre­built. At least 70 – 80% of inte­gra­tion is already done; you just con­fig­ure and deploy it. When cus­tomers see that they’re get­ting a lead­ing-class Cloud inte­gra­tion plat­form and that we have con­tent rel­e­vant to their needs, why would they not choose BTP? 

Q. What are some of the pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tions around BTP that you sought to clear up with ​“BTP: An Intro­duc­tion,” your book?

Ban­da: I don’t know if it’s a mis­con­cep­tion, but I don’t want peo­ple to be afraid of BTP. When you first look at it, BTP has a lot of prod­ucts, ser­vices, and tools under it. I encour­age every­one, from busi­ness­peo­ple to tech­nol­o­gists, not to get overwhelmed. 

From a busi­ness stand­point, look at the prob­lem state­ment at hand; don’t wor­ry about tech­nol­o­gy. Just look at what you want for your busi­ness, define that, and then start think­ing about how tech­nol­o­gy can sup­port your chal­lenge or your vision of how you want to take your business. 

From a tech­nol­o­gy stand­point, don’t get over­whelmed by look­ing at the num­ber of ser­vices that are avail­able to you to use. Start small. If I’m an archi­tect, I need to under­stand what ser­vices are avail­able for con­sump­tion and what pur­pose they have, right? Then, I can archi­tect the solu­tion as a devel­op­er. But I can total­ly get over­whelmed: ​“Where do I start? What do I learn?” You can’t call your­self a BTP devel­op­er sim­ply because there is not one solu­tion. There’s SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, SAP Inte­gra­tion Suite, SAP Appli­ca­tion Devel­op­ment and Automa­tion, the Cloud Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming Mod­el (CAP), the ABAP Rest­ful Pro­gram­ming Mod­el, SAP Process Automa­tion, SAP Work­flow Management… 

I would say start small. That’s what we did with­in our teams. For exam­ple, we have a UI5 Fiori devel­op­er who has expand­ed their skills into CAP. I have on-premis­es work­flow devel­op­ers, who extend­ed their skill sets into Cloud work­flow and Process Automa­tion, and AAP devel­op­ers ramp­ing up in Rapid Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming (RAP). Start with your cur­rent skill set, see what’s most rel­e­vant, and expand into that and beyond. Don’t get over­whelmed. Don’t be afraid. Take it one step at a time.

Q. Any oth­er misconceptions?

Chan­dra: To address anoth­er mis­con­cep­tion, many cus­tomers think that BTP is syn­ony­mous with Cloud Plat­form Inte­gra­tion (CPI) because they start­ed their BTP jour­ney with CPI and think that’s it. But it’s not. BTP extends beyond CPI as an inte­grat­ed suite and a vast platform. 

Ban­da: I agree. BTP is not sim­ply CPI. And sim­i­lar­ly, SAC cus­tomers think that BTP is SAC, but it is not. BTP is, in fact, a col­lec­tion of mul­ti­ple ser­vices and prod­ucts. If you are imple­ment­ing CPI or SAC, you can still think beyond that and think beyond your SAP land­scape because you can build inde­pen­dent appli­ca­tions on BTP that do not have SAP back­ing. It could be an inde­pen­dent appli­ca­tion using your S/4HANA data­base or any oth­er data­base you have.

Addi­tion­al­ly, if you are a non-ABAP cus­tomer, BTP has an envi­ron­ment where you can build using lan­guages oth­er than ABAP. And if you are an ABAP cus­tomer, SAP now has ABAP in the Cloud so that you can lever­age your ABAP skills to build, extend, or inter­face. You have both options with BTP.

Gooi: One mis­con­cep­tion that I encounter with cus­tomers is that they are reluc­tant to on-board BTP, based on the fact that they see SAP chang­ing its tech­nol­o­gy fre­quent­ly. Obvi­ous­ly, in the cloud, noth­ing is sta­t­ic; every­thing keeps chang­ing. That’s called inno­va­tion. But they might come and say, ​“I’ll wait a few more years for it to mature.” That is a very wrong mis­con­cep­tion because by that time, you will already be late to the game. BTP is a tech­nol­o­gy plat­form, so it will keep chang­ing. We have to keep learn­ing along with it. That’s how we work, and that’s what it means to work in the Cloud.

Ban­da: We very clear­ly describe that in the book as well. In the intro­duc­tion, when we talk about the dif­fer­ent ser­vices and prod­ucts BTP offers or that are cat­e­go­rized under the BTP umbrel­la, we say, ​“Don’t get hung up on the fact that BTP has a set num­ber of ser­vices.” Today, there might be 10 sets of ser­vices. Tomor­row, that set of 10 might grow to 20, with some addi­tions and dele­tions. You need to under­stand: ​“How am I bring­ing these ser­vices and this tech­nol­o­gy togeth­er to solve a busi­ness challenge?” 

I think the focus has to be on that rather than the prod­uct itself or the tech­nol­o­gy from an archi­tec­tur­al stand­point. If I, as a cus­tomer, am imple­ment­ing SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, then I’ll only focus on SAC, of course. But then, I’m not think­ing about the oth­er ser­vices, which also means that I’m not lever­ag­ing the full poten­tial of BTP. The full poten­tial of BTP is in con­sum­ing more than one ser­vice and stitch­ing those ser­vices togeth­er to make that big, beau­ti­ful quilt

“SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form: An Intro­duc­tion” is now avail­able from SAP Press.