Fol­low­ing suit of all con­fer­ences this year, SAP TechEd 2020 was held vir­tu­al­ly. Atten­dees were treat­ed to a more casu­al but robust expe­ri­ence, which includ­ed a num­ber of announce­ments around new low-code/no-code tools, updates to the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form, and access to ser­vices designed to make a developer’s — regard­less of lev­el — work­ing expe­ri­ence easier. 

“Last year, I shared with you that the intel­li­gent enter­prise pro­gram is the largest engi­neer­ing pro­gram we have at SAP,” said Juer­gen Mueller, exec­u­tive board mem­ber and CTO at SAP, dur­ing his keynote. ​“That is still the case today. We can prob­a­bly look back at all our achieve­ments this year, but we also know that there is still work to be done.” 

He added, ​“From a developer’s per­spec­tive, there’s still too much com­plex­i­ty in the sys­tem. It’s a road­block for you. We are not yet the most devel­op­er-friend­ly com­pa­ny and we want to change that.” 

Know Thy Devel­op­er and the Tools They Need

Announced dur­ing Mueller’s keynote, atten­dees learned about enhance­ments to the SAP Cloud Plat­form Exten­sion Suite, which was designed to empow­er devel­op­ers to build and extend busi­ness appli­ca­tions, process­es, and inno­va­tions with ​“clicks or codes.” 

“When we talk about devel­op­ers today, it’s not just one per­sona,” he said. ​“A devel­op­er can be a cloud-native devel­op­er, a data sci­en­tist, an enter­prise archi­tect, an appli­ca­tion devel­op­er, an inte­gra­tion devel­op­er, or a UX design­er.” Even with all these dif­fer­ent types of devel­op­ers, Mueller not­ed, ​“One thing they all have in com­mon is that they are mak­ers. They make things. And we want to cre­ate a future where SAP caters to all these devel­op­er roles. We want to help you to get your job done in the most pro­duc­tive way. And we have dif­fer­ent approach­es to help you get there.” 

Dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion fol­low­ing the keynote address, ASUG CEO Geoff Scott not­ed, ​“I love the con­ver­sa­tion about per­sonas because it con­nects the real peo­ple doing all this incred­i­bly impor­tant work behind the scenes every day.” 

“The con­ver­sa­tion I think we need to have has to do with the role of the cit­i­zen devel­op­er — or end user — and how do we empow­er that per­son to use and access all of the great SAP tech­nol­o­gy,” Scott con­tin­ued. ​“We need to enable our end users to under­stand what they’re doing a lit­tle bit more, and how they can put all of this tech­nol­o­gy and data to work in their day-to-day jobs and real­ly help dri­ve even more val­ue for their enter­prise applications.” 

SAP intro­duced three com­ple­men­tary and inte­grat­ed process-automa­tion tools designed to help any devel­op­er — regard­less of skill lev­el or automa­tion sce­nar­ios they are build­ing for — get the job done more eas­i­ly and efficiently. 

Hey Low-Code Devel­op­ers: This One’s for You 

The SAP Cloud Plat­form Work­flow Man­age­ment tool, which was designed specif­i­cal­ly with low-code devel­op­ers in mind, allows both devel­op­ers and busi­ness experts to gain end-to-end process vis­i­bil­i­ty, while also being able to con­fig­ure and auto­mate enter­prise work­flows. The man­age­ment work­flow tool includes new pre­de­fined con­tent pack­ages and an inte­gra­tion with Qualtrics XM solutions. 

Lead­ing up to SAP TechEd, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak to Sabas­t­ian Schroe­tel, VP and head of intel­li­gent robot­ic process automa­tion (RPA) at SAP, to dig in a lit­tle fur­ther on the impor­tance of this new work­flow man­age­ment tool. 

​“This is our strong work­flow back­bone,” he said. ​“When devel­op­ing this, we had in mind our core inte­gra­tion capa­bil­i­ties and the devel­op­er per­sona of some­one who has a lit­tle bit more expe­ri­ence.” He added that cus­tomers will be able to dig­i­tize work­flows, man­age deci­sions, gain end-to-end process vis­i­bil­i­ty, and con­fig­ure process­es in a low-code approach and with­out the involve­ment of the IT department. 

To No-Code Devel­op­ers: We’ve Got You Cov­ered, Too 

For those busines users who have no cod­ing expe­ri­ence, SAP Ruum allows you to cre­ate depart­men­tal process­es in just hours. Still only avail­able as a beta pro­gram, there cur­rent­ly are 50 SAP cus­tomers and part­ners tak­ing advan­tage of the tool. ​“This was devel­oped with light­weight work­flow project man­age­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion in mind,” Schroe­tel said. ​“Those in the beta pro­gram have the busi­ness units them­selves — those who know best how to auto­mate and struc­ture their work — build their own process automation.” 

The busi­ness users can build, run, and man­age depart­ment-lev­el process­es with­out com­pro­mis­ing IT secu­ri­ty, but at no point are required to enter a sin­gle line of code. This is a new era of IT — one that has been in the call­ing for a while now. ASUG’s Scott wrote about this very top­ic ear­li­er this year when he called for IT to bring down those walls and let the users in. He not­ed, ​“We need to let the users inside the gat­ed walls of the IT depart­ment, grant them a seat at IT’s table, and take advan­tage of new method­olo­gies and tools to deliv­er soft­ware with greater speed and transparency.” 

Automat­ing Repet­i­tive Tasks Made Easier 

The third tool announced dur­ing the keynote was SAP Intel­li­gent Robot­ic Process Automa­tion 2.0, which was specif­i­cal­ly designed to allow all devel­op­ers to auto­mate repet­i­tive, man­u­al tasks with soft­ware bots. The tool includes pre-built bot tem­plates to dri­ve effi­cien­cies with SAP S/4HANA and 12 LoBs. There will be a lim­it­ed edi­tion of SAP Intel­li­gent RPA includ­ed in every SAP S/4HANA Cloud sub­scrip­tion begin­ning Jan­u­ary 2021. 

“Intel­li­gent RPA was launched at SAP­PHIRE NOW 2019, and Intel­li­gent RPA 2.0 now offers a cit­i­zen devel­op­er a low-code option to devel­op their own bots,” Schroe­tel not­ed. ​“Of course, low-code/no-code is a con­tin­u­um, so you can build a sim­ple RPA bot with­out a sin­gle line of code, as well.” 

Extend­ing the Free Tier Mod­el for SAP Cloud Platform 

Mueller also announced the launch of a free tier mod­el for SAP Cloud Plat­form in 2021, which will pro­vide extend­ed access to devel­op­ers for the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Platform’s inte­gra­tion and exten­sion solu­tion. The news res­onat­ed with atten­dees. It will allow every­one from cus­tomers, part­ners, and devel­op­ers to learn, devel­op, and imple­ment inte­gra­tions and exten­sions in one account. 

In a con­ver­sa­tion I had with Thomas Grassl, VP and glob­al head of devel­op­er rela­tions and com­mu­ni­ty at SAP, he explained the sig­nif­i­cance of the announce­ment. ​“We recent­ly extend­ed the cur­rent SAP Cloud Plat­form tri­al from 3 months to 12 months, which will allow users more time to explore what is avail­able,” he said. ​“The free tier mod­el is more than just a tri­al; it is a sep­a­rate sand­box envi­ron­ment to ful­ly explore and build appli­ca­tions and then trans­fer them to pro­duc­tion when you’re ready with­out hav­ing to rebuild the content.” 

Accord­ing to Den Howlett of dig­i­nom­i­ca, ​“This news should be count­ed as an impor­tant step for­ward for a com­mu­ni­ty that has been right­ful­ly vocal in its frus­tra­tion at SAP’s glacial pace in both acknowl­edg­ing and act­ing upon the prob­lem. In the inter­im, the 90-day lim­i­ta­tion has been extend­ed to 365 days as pre­vi­ous­ly announced, which gives SAP ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to get this impor­tant work completed.”

Access to Learn, Use, and Devel­op Made Simple 

Anoth­er big announce­ment made dur­ing the vir­tu­al con­fer­ence was that SAP TechEd 2020 atten­dees will receive free access to SAP Learn­ing Hub, event edi­tion for SAP TechEd. Those who take advan­tage of this offer can tap into learn­ing jour­neys to upskill on SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form and addi­tion­al cours­es that lead toward SAP Glob­al Certifications. 

Mueller tout­ed the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form as a sin­gle plat­form designed for exten­si­bil­i­ty, inte­gra­tion, and data-to-val­ue. He explained how it was the foun­da­tion of SAP’s intel­li­gent-enter­prise vision and tech­nol­o­gy strat­e­gy, pro­vid­ing devel­op­ers with future-proof resilience. He also intro­duced SAP Cloud Plat­form, ABAP envi­ron­ment mul­ti­te­nan­cy, show­ing how part­ners can eas­i­ly extend SAP and non-SAP solu­tions using the plat­form. ​“We know that not all devel­op­ers are ABAP experts,” he said. ​“But with this, we can enable cloud-native devel­op­ers to build exten­sions for more of our prod­ucts, includ­ing SAP S/4HANA, SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, and SAP ECC.”

The news of free access and learn­ing resources on how to best uti­lize the plat­form, and it’s updates were well-received. One attendee tweet­ed, ​“I don’t think SAP has any idea how big of an impact this free SAP TechEd with full access to all mate­r­i­al will have on the ecosys­tem.” Anoth­er added, ​“My biggest take­away from SAP TechEd keynote: Free Tier + Free Tri­al + Free Learn­ing Hub. This is a huge push for adoption!” 

Reg­is­ter for ASUG web­cast, ​“Nav­i­gat­ing Through SAP S/4HANA Code Cor­rec­tions with Con­fi­dence,” on Dec. 16, 12 p.m. ET/11 a.m. CT. ASUG mem­bers can find train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with ASUG’s pri­vate cours­es, which cov­er the fun­da­men­tals of SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA.

Also, keep your orga­ni­za­tion pro­gress­ing and stay cur­rent on our offer­ings by mak­ing sure that your ASUG pro­file is cur­rent, so you can receive the con­tent most rel­e­vant to you.