Build­ing upon the launch of SAP Build two years ago as a low-code suite run­ning on SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP), and last year’s announce­ment of SAP Build Code to add pro-code capa­bil­i­ties to SAP Build, SAP is con­tin­u­ing to broad­en its embrace of the devel­op­er com­mu­ni­ty by enabling busi­ness users to cre­ate enter­prise appli­ca­tions, auto­mate process­es, and design busi­ness sites.

For devel­op­ers already skilled in SAP tech­nolo­gies, recent evo­lu­tions of the company’s ABAP pro­gram­ming lan­guage in the cloud era have fur­ther accel­er­at­ed the cre­ation of a sin­gle suite of tools for exten­sion devel­op­ment — one that encom­pass­es low-code, pro-code, and gen­er­a­tive AI capabilities. 

Recent­ly, SAP announced the addi­tion of ABAP envi­ron­ments to the SAP Build suite, as part of a broad­er shift toward fusion devel­op­ment aimed at cre­at­ing a seam­less, end-to-end devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence and bridg­ing the gap between low-code and pro-code tools. 

Dr. Alexan­der Rother, Head of ABAP Prod­uct Man­age­ment at SAP, has acquired deep knowl­edge of these devel­op­ments and their impli­ca­tions since start­ing at SAP in 2017. Ini­tial­ly, Rother honed his skills as a devel­op­er for the ABAP plat­form focused on reuse ser­vices (such as log­ging, jobs, and fac­to­ry cal­en­dars) and act­ed as qual­i­ty man­ag­er and pro­gram man­ag­er for SAP Fiori applications. 

Since then, Rother has tak­en on lead­er­ship roles, becom­ing prod­uct lead of cloud reuse ser­vices devel­op­ment and aid­ing in the roll­out of the SAP BTP ABAP Envi­ron­ment, and ABAP Cloud. Rother also played a role in intro­duc­ing the three-tier exten­si­bil­i­ty mod­el, which deep­ened his con­nec­tions to the ABAP com­mu­ni­ty, cus­tomers, and part­ners; bring­ing that devel­op­ment mod­el from the SAP BTP ABAP Envi­ron­ment to the SAP S/4HANA world has result­ed in a new par­a­digm: the SAP S/4HANA Cloud ABAP Environment.

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion with ASUG, Rother pro­vid­ed valu­able insights into the future of ABAP in the cloud era, ABAP’s evo­lu­tion, and the impact of tech­nolo­gies like gen­er­a­tive AI on ABAP development. 

This inter­view has been edit­ed and condensed.

It’s been six years since SAP launched the SAP BTP ABAP Envi­ron­ment so that devel­op­ers could build and run ABAP code in the cloud, which allowed for the intro­duc­tion of the ABAP Cloud devel­op­ment mod­el. What’s hap­pened since? How has ABAP Cloud expand­ed, and how has it fit into the SAP devel­op­er tools strategy?

2018 was the year when we launched the SAP BTP ABAP envi­ron­ment. This was the first time we had full-fledged ABAP devel­op­ment in a cloud envi­ron­ment while strict­ly sep­a­rat­ing the SAP and cus­tomer codes. We call this a release con­tract. We estab­lished these release con­tracts for the APIs and tech­nolo­gies so that we guide all cus­tomer and part­ner devel­op­ments toward the released APIs and the ABAP Cloud tech­nolo­gies. That was a game-chang­er for us. Now, six years lat­er, it has matured, and we are in very good shape for every­thing ahead of us.

“You can keep your exist­ing knowl­edge, trans­form it, and adapt it to new technologies.”

This shift toward stan­dard­iza­tion in the cloud seems to have rede­fined the ABAP developer’s role. How did you approach this tran­si­tion from your end?

Now, there’s a tech­no­log­i­cal shift from the clas­sic world toward the cloud world. Some­thing needs to be learned. As a clas­sic ABAP devel­op­er, you have a very strong back­ground to do all the upskilling required for the ABAP Cloud. It’s not some­thing that you have nev­er seen before. You can keep your exist­ing knowl­edge, trans­form it, and adapt it to new technologies. 

Learn­ing is very impor­tant. More and more, you will hear about fusion devel­op­ment, com­bin­ing dif­fer­ent aspects of devel­op­ment, from low-code to pro-code. It’s not about being one devel­op­er or the oth­er but bring­ing things togeth­er, bring­ing dif­fer­ent devel­op­ment skills from low-code offer­ings, pro-code offer­ings, from SAP BTP to on-stack learn­ing, and achiev­ing results and solu­tions together.

At SAP TechEd in 2021, SAP announced it was open­ing up ABAP to the wider SAP com­mu­ni­ty. Tell me about this deci­sion to evolve ABAP from a pro­pri­etary SAP prod­uct into an open-source pro­gram­ming lan­guage, and how the com­mu­ni­ty has dri­ven its devel­op­ment since then.

ABAP is SAP’s pro­pri­etary pro­gram­ming lan­guage. The core of ABAP and the fun­da­men­tal tech­nol­o­gy remains pro­pri­etary. That’s impor­tant for us to shape ABAP to all our busi­ness devel­op­ment needs at SAP. But at the same time, the com­mu­ni­ty around us has grown. Step by step, there have been more and more open-source projects. We are very proud of our com­mu­ni­ty for dri­ving these kinds of projects.

How do you col­lab­o­rate with the com­mu­ni­ty on ABAP’s devel­op­ment? Where do these con­ver­sa­tions and engage­ments typ­i­cal­ly happen?

What is very impor­tant for us is the direct con­nec­tion with our cus­tomers, part­ners, and devel­op­ers. As of COVID-19, there are many vir­tu­al engage­ment pos­si­bil­i­ties. We just had vir­tu­al TechEd and the Dev­to­ber­fest. These are very impor­tant for­mats for roll­out vir­tu­al­ly to engage with the com­mu­ni­ty. After COVID-19, the on-site and live events became more and more impor­tant. We love to engage on-site with our cus­tomers and part­ners to dis­cuss and have hands-on sessions. 

Could you share a spe­cif­ic exam­ple where com­mu­ni­ty feed­back led to updates in the ABAP pro­gram­ming language?

We have this exchange reg­u­lar­ly, and it active­ly influ­ences the devel­op­ment of ABAP tech­nol­o­gy. We have the cus­tomer influ­ence chan­nels that are avail­able. Even more infor­mal­ly, we learn a lot when we talk to our cus­tomers. We bring that to our ABAP tech­nol­o­gy development. 

Imag­ine the three-tier exten­si­bil­i­ty mod­el for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pri­vate edi­tion. We have Tier 1 for ABAP Cloud devel­op­ment on-stack and the entire BTP offer­ing side-by-side. In addi­tion, we have Tier 2 and Tier 3 for Cloud API enable­ment, in case a released API is miss­ing and for clas­sic ABAP, respec­tive­ly. The pri­vate cloud is one of the tar­get solu­tions for our installed base when they move from SAP ECC to the SAP S/4HANA. And when they bring over their clas­sic exten­sions from ECC, they all end up in Tier 3. 

So far, in the three-tier exten­si­bil­i­ty mod­el, we have told cus­tomers to remove as much as pos­si­ble from that Tier 3 cod­ing when mov­ing to SAP S/4HANA. Clean up the stack. Then, if there is a busi­ness case, pur­sue a trans­for­ma­tion to Tier 1. The third path is to adapt your Tier 3 cod­ing at least to make it more upgrade-sta­ble. Here is one of the pieces of feed­back we got from the com­mu­ni­ty and our cus­tomers’ part­ners: We didn’t tell too much about how to adapt the clas­sic ABAP to at least become more upgrade-sta­ble. This is some­thing where we’ve invest­ed. In Q4 this year, you can expect more news regard­ing that.

More than five mil­lion devel­op­ers are cur­rent­ly using the ABAP pro­gram­ming lan­guage. Last year, SAP launched new role-based cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and free learn­ing resources for back-end devel­op­ers using the ABAP Cloud devel­op­ment mod­el. A year lat­er, how would you eval­u­ate the sta­tus of evolv­ing and upskilling ABAP developers?

The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is one of the key pil­lars of our stan­dard­ized learn­ing offer­ing around ABAP Cloud and clean-core exten­si­bil­i­ty, SAP S/4HANA exten­si­bil­i­ty. We have sev­er­al learn­ing paths pro­vid­ed by our learn­ing orga­ni­za­tion. There’s tremen­dous inter­est in every­thing regard­ing ABAP Cloud. This is very good from our point of view because ABAP Cloud is one of the key ele­ments in the clean-core strat­e­gy and the three-tier exten­si­bil­i­ty mod­el. More cus­tomers and part­ners are embrac­ing ABAP Cloud now. They are devel­op­ing cus­tomer exten­sions with ABAP Cloud on SAP BTP and on-stack. But there’s still room for improvement.

At SAP TechEd this year, the merg­er of ABAP Cloud and SAP Build was announced. Con­se­quent­ly, SAP BTP ABAP Envi­ron­ment is avail­able in the SAP Build prod­uct port­fo­lio and rep­re­sents anoth­er inte­grat­ed tool for extend­ing side-by-side sys­tems. Tell us about this announce­ment and what it sig­ni­fies for the direc­tion of ABAP at SAP.

In 2022, SAP Build was sole­ly the low-code, no-code port­fo­lio. We have SAP Build Apps, SAP Build Process Automa­tion, and the SAP Build Work Zone. In 2023, there was the first step of the evo­lu­tion. SAP Build Code was born to offer a pro-code devel­op­ment offer­ing on BTP, focus­ing on CAP, the cloud appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming mod­el for Java and JavaScript. 

The real­i­ty that we rec­og­nize is that for real-life, end-to-end cus­tomer and part­ner sce­nar­ios, usu­al­ly not only low-code or CAP pro-code but also on-Stack and ABAP are involved. The dimen­sions of pro-code and low-code come togeth­er. Here, we want to embrace the fusion devel­op­ment prin­ci­ple. We see that you need mul­ti­ple tech­nolo­gies, mul­ti­ple inte­grat­ed devel­op­ment envi­ron­ments, and some­times mul­ti­ple run­times for end-to-end devel­op­ment sce­nar­ios. That must fit eas­i­ly together.

From the devel­op­ment point of view, you need a har­mo­nized and seam­less devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence. Noth­ing shall stop you from devel­op­ing your solu­tion. Of course, from the run­time aspect, we must have a har­mo­nized approach here. Imag­ine you devel­op an ODa­ta ser­vice using ABAP Cloud on the SAP S/4HANA stack and build a SAP Fiori app. But you do this in Busi­ness Appli­ca­tion Stu­dio, which is now part of the SAP Build Code. So you have a com­bi­na­tion of on-stack and side-by-side, and back-end and front-end. There are mul­ti­ple tools and prod­ucts involved which need to work hand-in-hand. And this expe­ri­ence we will deliv­er with SAP Build includ­ing ABAP Cloud.

How does this announce­ment reflect the over­all trend at SAP toward empow­er­ing one to be a devel­op­er (be that a low-code, no-code, or pro-code devel­op­er), and how does it rein­force the need for skilled ABAP developers?

Every­thing is need­ed — pro-code, low-code, front-end, back-end. And then it, of course, depends on your spe­cial­iza­tion. Not every­one is a full-fledged front-end devel­op­er. Maybe your col­league is doing the front end with JavaScript, SAP UI5, and SAP Fiori, and you are focus­ing on the ABAP back end. It means work­ing on your home turf, adopt­ing new tech­nolo­gies, and learn­ing where the bridges that need to be built are. Either you do that on your own and devel­op full-stack, front-end to back-end, or you col­lab­o­rate with your col­leagues. Then, you know exact­ly how to tra­verse the dif­fer­ent tools and prod­ucts. We bring this with the fusion devel­op­ment prin­ci­ple and the SAP Build story.

“Our CEO, Chris­t­ian Klein, also told us that the world’s econ­o­my is run­ning on our shoul­ders. A large part of these shoul­ders is built with ABAP.”

At SAP Sap­phire this year, NVIDIA and SAP revealed gen­er­a­tive AI efforts to offer new capa­bil­i­ties for Joule, includ­ing ABAP devel­op­er capa­bil­i­ties, with NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jensen Huang declar­ing that, ​“at SAP, the most valu­able lan­guage is ABAP.” What makes ABAP so valu­able to SAP?

Being head of ABAP prod­uct man­age­ment, I cel­e­brat­ed that moment. That was real­ly nice. In the same keynote, our CEO, Chris­t­ian Klein, also told us that the world’s econ­o­my is run­ning on our shoul­ders. A large part of those shoul­ders is built with ABAP. We are cur­rent­ly with our cus­tomers in the tran­si­tion from the clas­sic on-premis­es busi­ness suite toward our Cloud ERP with SAP S/4HANA. The core of the clas­sic busi­ness suite and S/4HANA in all edi­tions is built using ABAP. This is where the val­ue is and where the impor­tance and the impact of ABAP come from.

As gen­er­a­tive AI sweeps across the land­scape, some devel­op­ers have expressed con­cern about the future of their work in tech­nol­o­gy, fear­ing that automa­tion will replace them. And yet gen­er­a­tive AI tools can’t teach debug­ging and secu­ri­ty-by-design, and the inge­nu­ity of human devel­op­ers con­tin­ues to set the best appli­ca­tions apart. How do you see the future of the ABAP devel­op­er role evolv­ing along­side gen­er­a­tive AI, espe­cial­ly in terms of build­ing enter­prise-grade apps?

It is super impor­tant that we offer gen­er­a­tive AI capa­bil­i­ties in ABAP. For that rea­son and our own rea­sons, we will embed full gen­er­a­tive AI sup­port for ABAP Cloud devel­op­ment in any of our tools where it is rel­e­vant. How­ev­er, one thing to keep in mind is that gen­er­a­tive AI will not make your ABAP devel­op­ers obso­lete. It is bet­ter to think of gen­er­a­tive AI as a bud­dy that sits next to you as a devel­op­er and helps you with your every­day tasks. It sees the same screen that you see. It has the same con­text you know and hope­ful­ly also under­stands the busi­ness and the prob­lem you are try­ing to solve.

With that knowl­edge, gen­er­a­tive AI will help you with pre­dic­tions, code pre­dic­tions, sug­ges­tions, unit tests, code expla­na­tions, and so on. It’s help­ing you with your every­day work, but it’s not mak­ing you obso­lete. We’ll make ABAP devel­op­ers more pro­duc­tive. We will also deliv­er an ABAP AI SDK that allows you, as an ABAP devel­op­er, to infuse gen­er­a­tive AI into your busi­ness appli­ca­tions. Using it, you can include gen­er­a­tive AI in an easy way. It will just be some class­es and inter­faces that you need to call in ABAP, and then you have full access to the SAP BTP Gen­er­a­tive AI Hub with all its capabilities.

With AI as a ​“bud­dy” for devel­op­ers, how do you see this chang­ing where ABAP devel­op­ers can focus their expertise?

Hav­ing gen­er­a­tive AI and a co-pilot as a bud­dy sit­ting next to you makes it inter­ac­tive. You talk with the co-pilot, you talk with Joule, so to say, and in an inter­ac­tive mode, you will devel­op your solu­tion and your exten­sion. At ASUG Tech Con­nect, we will have hands-on ses­sions where you can try out the first fea­tures with gen­er­a­tive AI and get a feel­ing for it. If you insert a prompt with human-read­able lan­guage, you get some code, expla­na­tion, unit test, and so on. It’s a change, but be brave and embrace it. I’m sure you will be more pro­duc­tive in the end and valu­able to the mar­ket as well.