SAP exec­u­tive voic­es focused on extend­ing and accel­er­at­ing busi­ness appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment, automa­tion, cross-SAP and non-SAP inte­gra­tion, and ana­lyt­ics in prod­uct improve­ments revealed at this year’s SAP TechEd hybrid conference.

Though their remarks pri­mar­i­ly aimed at what SAP CTO Juer­gen Mueller called the more than ​“three mil­lion strong devel­op­er com­mu­ni­ty,” keynotes includ­ed the usu­al devel­op­er-led demos as well as com­men­taries from ear­ly use cus­tomers, includ­ing tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers from the NHL, Bar­clays, Maer­sk, Apple, and 12-year-old Dak from Massachusetts.

“One of my absolute favorite things is pro­gram­ming and appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment,” Dak, an ear­ly user of the new SAP Build, con­fessed in his video remarks. 

“The No Code plat­form will help me devel­op into a full stack devel­op­er,” he added, rein­forc­ing Mueller’s claims that with SAP Build ​“every­one can be a builder” and that ​“peo­ple of all skills lev­els can work togeth­er to solve prob­lems” through app development.

Drag Drop Build

Sport­ing a t‑shirt empha­siz­ing one sim­ple, key SAP mes­sage — Drag Drop Build — Mueller not­ed the new capa­bil­i­ties are designed to help cus­tomers over­come app devel­op­ment chal­lenges, achieve clean core oper­a­tions, and reduce man­u­al tasks and time through automation. 

The new capa­bil­i­ties (high­light­ed in more detail below) lean into the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) and SAP Sig­navio, which Mueller dubbed ​“the busi­ness oper­at­ing sys­tem for everything.”

In addi­tion to his tech­nol­o­gy-focused remarks and inter­play with cus­tomers, Mueller said SAP will ​“redou­ble efforts to upskill” at least two mil­lion peo­ple, includ­ing devel­op­ers, glob­al­ly by 2025 to help fill the chron­ic tech skills short­age. SAP also announced a part­ner­ship with Cours­era to train and award SAP certifications.

In the demo- and cus­tomer-con­ver­sa­tion intense sec­ond-day keynote, Philipp Herzig led a rapid-fire high­lights tour of ​“how all appli­ca­tions are com­ing togeth­er on BTP,” the platform’s increas­ing inte­gra­tion capa­bil­i­ties, and how SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and cus­tomers, such as Red Bull, already lever­age SAP Build, SAP BTP and SAP S/4HANA.

The ses­sion also included:

• Announce­ments relat­ed to ship­ment of SAP One Domain Mod­el Mas­ter Data Inte­gra­tion for Cloud environments
• SAP Task Cen­ter capa­bil­i­ties for mobile platforms
• SAP-Google col­lab­o­ra­tions to inte­grate SAP S/4HANA sys­tems and ser­vices with Google Work­space applications
• Ref­er­ences to SAP Intel­li­gent Spend and Busi­ness Net­work announce­ments at the recent Spend Con­nect Live.

SAP Build

SAP kicked off TechEd by intro­duc­ing SAP Build, an inte­grat­ed low-code devel­op­ment suite that SAP lead­ers described as the annu­al event’s ​“mar­quee announcement.” 

Bring­ing togeth­er three pre­vi­ous­ly released devel­op­ment tools for SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) with enhanced low-code capa­bil­i­ties, the SAP Build suite com­bines SAP AppGyver’s low-code devel­op­ment envi­ron­ment (rebrand­ed as SAP Build Apps) with SAP Process Automa­tion and SAP Work Zone solutions.

SAP Build, an evo­lu­tion of the SAP low-code port­fo­lio of BTP, now enables busi­ness users to more eas­i­ly cre­ate and aug­ment enter­prise appli­ca­tions, auto­mate pre­vi­ous­ly man­u­al process­es, and design more dynam­ic busi­ness sites. 

Billed by SAP CEO Chris­t­ian Klein as a ​“uni­fied devel­op­er expe­ri­ence,” SAP Build is designed to suit the needs of users at var­i­ous skill lev­els, empha­siz­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty and user expe­ri­ence with visu­al tools and an exten­sive set of ser­vices and pre-built con­tent. Address­ing a glob­al short­age of skilled soft­ware devel­op­ers, SAP Build will allow busi­ness users to be more hands-on while build­ing dig­i­tal solu­tions to press­ing busi­ness issues — if one was to iden­ti­fy an over­ar­ch­ing theme of TechEd, it was ​“devel­op­er tools for everyone.”

As an evo­lu­tion of SAP App­Gyver SAP Build Apps offers improved Cloud func­tion­al­i­ty, back­end launch­ing, and data mod­el­ing tools. SAP Build Process Automa­tion now native­ly inte­grates with Signavio’s process min­ing and insights soft­ware, and Google Work­space, allow­ing for enhanced automa­tion around Google Sheets, Google Dri­ve, and Google Cal­en­dar. Two ver­sions of SAP Build Work Zone or build­ing cus­tom busi­ness sites will be on offer: the advanced edi­tion, now gen­er­al­ly avail­able as the next incar­na­tion of SAP Work Zone, and a stan­dard edi­tion, launch­ing in ear­ly 2023 as an evo­lu­tion of the SAP Launch­pad service.

Lever­ag­ing the full pow­er of SAP BTP and busi­ness appli­ca­tion data from SAP, SAP Build will allow users to inte­grate sys­tems more eas­i­ly; intel­li­gent­ly mon­i­tor, ana­lyze, and auto­mate process­es; and build appli­ca­tions with­out mov­ing data to exter­nal sys­tems. Giv­en SAP Sig­navio inte­gra­tion, users will ben­e­fit from increased vis­i­bil­i­ty into all their oper­a­tions; busi­ness exper­tise capa­bil­i­ties are struc­tural­ly ingrained with­in the plat­form, with more than 275,000 process ref­er­ence points from 4,000 cus­tomers, as well as 1,300 use-case spe­cif­ic work­flows and automations.

Addi­tion­al­ly, TechEd allowed SAP lead­ers to announce the beta of SAP Start, an out-of-the-box cen­tral access point for SAP pub­lic Cloud solu­tions, fea­tur­ing pre-con­fig­ured busi­ness con­tent from SAP and exten­si­bil­i­ty with SAP Build Work Zone. To fur­ther empow­er busi­ness users to uti­lize SAP Build, the SAP Builders pro­gram will serve as an intro­duc­tion for users and help them max­i­mize their SAP Build invest­ment via hands-on ses­sions and forums to dis­cuss best prac­tices. Both announce­ments align with an SAP ini­tia­tive to empow­er its users through learning.

Addi­tion­al Innovations

TechEd also placed BTP in the spot­light, with SAP launch­ing 10 new use cas­es to help cus­tomers get start­ed with the plat­form while unveil­ing a range of new Cloud, ana­lyt­ics, and inte­gra­tion capabilities. 

Cus­tomers can use SAP BTP in new cloud envi­ron­ments and loca­tions from SAP and hyper­scalers. The SAP HANA Cloud data­base is enabled as a foun­da­tion for cre­at­ing new, intel­li­gent data apps that are self-learn­ing and adapt­able, thanks to built-in algo­rithms for machine learn­ing and AI. 

Mean­while, SAP announced a new, uni­fied user expe­ri­ence in the SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud solu­tion, sim­pli­fy­ing ana­lyt­ics for visu­al­iza­tion and ana­lyt­i­cal appli­ca­tion build­ing in an evo­lu­tion of pre­vi­ous­ly announced sto­ry expe­ri­ence enhance­ments aimed at improv­ing user expe­ri­ence and ele­vat­ing performance. 

Out-of-the-box inte­gra­tions include what SAP refers to as ​“improved func­tion­al inte­gra­tions across lead­ing end-to-end process­es for the intel­li­gent enter­prise,” such as inte­gra­tions between SAP Field­glass and SAP S/4 HANA and between the SAP CPQ and SAP Billing and Rev­enue Inno­va­tion Man­age­ment solutions. 

Advanced event mesh, a new capa­bil­i­ty with­in SAP Inte­gra­tion Suite, is designed to com­ple­ment the exist­ing event mesh offer­ing for more demand­ing sce­nar­ios, pro­vid­ing scal­able, resilient real-time busi­ness trans­ac­tion­al pro­cess­ing and opti­miz­ing oper­a­tions through real-time vis­i­bil­i­ty into the state of dis­parate applications. 

SAP announced new releas­es in the expan­sion and evo­lu­tion of its lead­ing mobile app port­fo­lio, includ­ing SAP Mobile Start, SAP Ser­vice and Asset Man­ag­er, SAP Ari­ba Shop­ping mobile app, and SAP Ware­house Operator. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, SAP announced a new imple­men­ta­tion offer­ing designed to dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduce the time need­ed for users to start run­ning SAP S/4HANA Cloud, stream­lin­ing the process to 30 days or less.