The fol­low­ing Ama­zon Web Ser­vices + ASUG Part­ner Insight was authored by Soulat Khan, WW Senior Man­ag­er, Part­ner Solu­tion Archi­tec­ture, SAP’s Tech­ni­cal Alliance and Inno­va­tion, Ama­zon Web Ser­vices (AWS).

In today’s rapid­ly evolv­ing dig­i­tal land­scape, cus­tomers are embrac­ing the RISE with SAP offer­ing to dri­ve inno­va­tion, agili­ty, and competitiveness. 

As orga­ni­za­tions tran­si­tion from tra­di­tion­al SAP land­scapes to mod­ern, cloud-based archi­tec­tures, SAP devel­op­ers are at the fore­front of this trans­for­ma­tion. Lever­ag­ing SAP ABAP exper­tise, their jour­ney involves embrac­ing clean core strate­gies, inte­grat­ing seam­less­ly with cloud ser­vices, and build­ing on their exist­ing trans­ac­tion­al knowl­edge to dri­ve busi­ness val­ue through inno­va­tion offered by SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP).

Let’s explore this jour­ney in detail and dive into a few exam­ples of how SAP devel­op­ers can nav­i­gate the RISE era effectively.

Embrac­ing SAP ABAP Exper­tise for Busi­ness Val­ue with RISE 

In the RISE era, SAP devel­op­ers have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to evolve beyond their tech­ni­cal roles and become busi­ness experts. By gain­ing deep insights into their orga­ni­za­tions’ indus­try-spe­cif­ic chal­lenges, cus­tomer needs, and strate­gic objec­tives, SAP devel­op­ers can con­tribute to dri­ving com­pa­ny-wide busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion and deliv­er­ing val­ue-added solu­tions with RISE.

As orga­ni­za­tions tran­si­tion to RISE, SAP devel­op­ers are unique­ly posi­tioned to bridge the gap between tech­ni­cal require­ments and busi­ness out­comes. By under­stand­ing busi­ness process­es, indus­try trends, and cus­tomer pain points, SAP devel­op­ers can design solu­tions that not only meet tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions but also deliv­er tan­gi­ble busi­ness val­ue. For exam­ple, by col­lab­o­rat­ing close­ly with busi­ness stake­hold­ers and con­duct­ing work­shops to under­stand their require­ments, SAP devel­op­ers can pro­pose solu­tion, lever­ag­ing ser­vices offered by SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) — com­bined with ser­vices offered by cloud providers like AWS — to dri­ve rev­enue growth, cost sav­ings, and cus­tomer satisfaction. 

• Con­sid­er a man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, with a lega­cy SAP ERP sys­tem, that lever­ages its team of ABAP devel­op­ers to opti­mize crit­i­cal busi­ness process­es, extend­ing their pre­dic­tive main­te­nance capa­bil­i­ty with mean time to fail­ure (MTTF) of assets to their finan­cial sys­tems for auto­mat­ed parts order and deliv­ery. By cus­tomiz­ing SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent (ECC) or SAP S/4HANA func­tion­al­i­ties and devel­op­ing tai­lored solu­tions using ABAP, the com­pa­ny suc­cess­ful­ly achieves a 30% reduc­tion in MTTF in their man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty and a 20% increase in pro­cure­ment effi­cien­cy, lead­ing to sig­nif­i­cant cost sav­ings and improved cus­tomer satisfaction.

This cus­tomiza­tion would his­tor­i­cal­ly take months of RICEF devel­op­ment, test­ing, and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, before it would be pro­mot­ed to a pro­duc­tion ECC land­scape to real­ize val­ue. In today’s RISE envi­ron­ment, ABAP devel­op­ers can lever­age SAP’s event-to-busi­ness frame­work with BTP-inte­grat­ed ser­vices like SAP Inte­gra­tion Suite, Advanced Event Mesh, and Ama­zon Web Ser­vices (AWS) like Ama­zon Moni­tron or the AWS SDK for SAP ABAP to effec­tive­ly invoke device noti­fi­ca­tions, with a sin­gle line of code, in a mat­ter of min­utes. By lever­ag­ing cloud ser­vices, ABAP devel­op­ers can imple­ment pre­dic­tive main­te­nance and MTTF asset man­age­ment inte­gra­tion for their pro­cure­ment process with a few lines of code, with no change to their SAP core func­tion and with inte­gra­tion with their SAP Enter­prise Asset Man­age­ment system. 

Tran­si­tion­ing to a Clean Core Strat­e­gy for Agili­ty and Innovation

As com­pa­nies embrace cloud-native ser­vices, SAP devel­op­ers are tasked with tran­si­tion­ing to a clean core strat­e­gy, decou­pling cus­tomiza­tions from their core SAP sys­tem, and lever­ag­ing cloud native ser­vices for inno­va­tion and agili­ty. By lever­ag­ing AWS for inno­va­tion and infra­struc­ture, SAP devel­op­ers can tran­si­tion to clean core archi­tec­tures seam­less­ly and lever­age their busi­ness process insights to quick­ly deliv­er val­ue to customers. 

• Con­sid­er a retail giant that adopts a clean core strat­e­gy, migrat­ing its cus­tom-devel­oped func­tion­al­i­ties from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA Cloud with RISE. By lever­ag­ing RISE with SAP, SAP BTP for exten­si­bil­i­ty, and AWS ser­vices for busi­ness process inno­va­tion, the com­pa­ny achieves greater flex­i­bil­i­ty in pro­vid­ing prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tion, scal­a­bil­i­ty in pro­cess­ing petabytes of trans­ac­tions, and agili­ty in pro­vid­ing secured appli­ca­tion ser­vices glob­al­ly. This enables the com­pa­ny to focus on rapid pro­to­typ­ing of new fea­tures, seam­less inte­gra­tion between SAP and non-SAP sys­tems, and faster time-to-mar­ket by lever­ag­ing SAP BTP and AWS ser­vices, rather than writ­ing cus­tom code across their SAP landscape.

Dri­ving Inno­va­tion Through Con­tin­u­ous Learn­ing and Skill Development

Con­tin­u­ous learn­ing is essen­tial for SAP devel­op­ers to stay rel­e­vant and effec­tive in the RISE era. By upskilling in emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, cloud plat­forms, and devel­op­ment method­olo­gies, SAP devel­op­ers are unlock­ing new pos­si­bil­i­ties, dri­ving new inno­va­tions, and deliv­er­ing dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed solu­tions to customers.

AWS part­nered with SAP to offer a free, five-week, self-paced learn­ing course on build­ing resilient appli­ca­tions with SAP BTP and AWS ser­vices. This course has sur­passed 10.4K learn­ers to date (as of Feb­ru­ary 2024). You can sign up for this course on open­SAP. The course also offers option­al hands-on exer­cis­es for devel­op­ers inter­est­ing in build­ing out a few appli­ca­tion sce­nar­ios to jump­start their learn­ing jour­ney with SAP BTP and AWS.

In con­clu­sion, as orga­ni­za­tions embark on their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney with RISE, SAP devel­op­ers have a piv­otal role to play in dri­ving inno­va­tion, agili­ty, and cus­tomer suc­cess. By embrac­ing SAP ABAP exper­tise, tran­si­tion­ing to clean core archi­tec­tures, invest­ing in con­tin­u­ous learn­ing, opti­miz­ing per­for­mance, and enabling seam­less inte­gra­tion with both SAP and AWS ser­vices, devel­op­ers can unlock new oppor­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness val­ue cre­ation and busi­ness as a whole in the RISE era.

SAP and AWS, the world’s most com­pre­hen­sive and broad­ly adopt­ed cloud plat­form, are team­ing up to accel­er­ate dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion for their cus­tomers. This col­lab­o­ra­tion builds on the suc­cess of the long­stand­ing SAP and AWS part­ner­ship by bring­ing togeth­er the tech­nol­o­gy, solu­tions, and flex­i­bil­i­ty that cus­tomers need to help them suc­ceed in the dig­i­tal economy. 

For more than 15 years, the com­pa­nies have strength­ened a strate­gic rela­tion­ship to dri­ve inno­va­tion and sup­port cus­tomers’ jour­neys to becom­ing sus­tain­able, intel­li­gent enter­pris­es. SAP is a sig­na­to­ry of Amazon’s Cli­mate Pledge, com­mit­ting to net-zero car­bon, and has accel­er­at­ed its sus­tain­abil­i­ty com­mit­ment to 2030. With a part­ner­ship focused on trans­for­ma­tion, inno­va­tion, and deliv­er­ing for cus­tomers, AWS and SAP enter 2024 more ready than ever to help cus­tomers adopt cloud solu­tions that allow them to inno­vate faster and cap­i­tal­ize on dig­i­tal dis­rup­tions with­in their industries.

Spe­cial thanks to Isaac Feld­berg, Spencer Marten­son, RJ Bib­by, Fer­ry Mulya­di, and Sun­ny Pat­wari for their sup­port in the pub­li­ca­tion of this blog.