Building a strong digital foundation - How SAP BTP became a powerful tool for hyperscale landscapes
SAP Business Technology Platform (or SAP BTP) is the new name for SAP’s platform as a service, which was previously called SAP Cloud Platform. SAP BTP encompasses technologies and services including data management, application development and integration, as well as intelligent technologies like conversational AI, blockchain and RPA. SAP BTP evolved from the HANA database extension engine (HANA XS) to SAP Cloud Platform (SCP), and its capabilities were enhanced at each step along the way.
The rebranding of SAP BTP is not just a name change but a further evolution. It is breaking barriers to accessing services and enabling the development of platform agnostic solutions that can be integrated with SAP and non-SAP solutions, analytics and data management.
SAP HANA XS
- HANA XS with DB
- Faster data processing
- Front-end development with presentation and control flow
SAP SCP
- SAP integration and extension suites
- Runtime environments
- More adoption of open source technologies, rapid build
- CAI, IoT adoption
SAP BTP
- SAP extension and integration suites
- Analytics
- Data management
- Development for industry solutions
The evolution to BTP
This evolution has positioned BTP as a powerful tool for hyperscale landscapes, providing a unified business-centric platform for the SAP ecosystem while enabling seamless integration with all components. In this sense, it is a key foundation for accelerating digital innovation though its ability to provide scalable solutions and reduce system complexity.
SAP BTP is a key offering in RISE with SAP, enabling a customized approach for any enterprise’s transformation and digitalization needs.
The biggest advantages of BTP adoption are:
- Companies working with non-SAP ecosystems can use BTP to gain similar advantages to traditional SAP S/4HANA or ECC users, with a clear technical path to adoption.
- SAP BTP acts as an innovation hub with the ability to leverage automation and the BTP intelligent suite with conversational AI, blockchain and machine learning.
- BTP enables a reduction in complexity and costs, along with continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) to enable accelerated time-to-value and time-to-market.
- It enables SAP customers to keep their core ERP clean, extending and integrating solutions by using BTP to perform customizations outside the core.
- BTP can lead to bigger use cases, seamless integrations and extensions enabling the journey towards digitalization.
- It encourages developers and developments from different technologies with services to port and support with standard runtimes and containerization.
Using SAP BTP to create an industry cloud solution
One of the primary benefits of SAP BTP is its ability to use containerization (deploying software across many environments) to integrate custom and non-SAP applications and components with the SAP software suite.
A case in point: Atos has created an accelerator that integrates a custom-built tax and invoice solution with S/4HANA APIs. The solution runs on Google Cloud Platform and leverages the functional collection and disbursement capabilities of the SAP ecosystem — providing customization to meet specific client needs. It facilitates legitimate trade and customs declarations, fosters compliance and improves communication. It is also able to easily scale and adapt to customs regulations and policies in different countries.
BTP experts within the Atos Innovation Centre for SAP used a four-step process to create this industry solution, combining Atos’s SAP BTP capabilities with our deep expertise in tax and customs.
1. Assessment
Assess existing components
Containerization modes
Study configuration for hyperscalers
2. Compatibility
Understand compatibility on BTP
Perform fit-gap analysis
Leverage SAP extensions and integration suites
3. Accessibility and Security
Secure accessibility and authentication for all systems
Leverage best practices for BTP connectivity
4. Containerization and Deployment
Containerization using runtime on BTP
Memory management and database connectivity
Our step-by-step BTP conversion approach helps move any existing business solution to BTP in an easy and hassle-free way. It consists of:
1. Assessment
Review the existing landscape and artifacts for deployment on SAP BTP. Our assessment model analyzes the landscape and artifacts, but also takes containerization and hyperscaler configurations into account.
2. Compatibility
After understanding the compatibility of the existing components, a fit-gap analysis is performed. BTP supports all traditional and new ways of development for user experience, including open source — enabling lift and shift of most microservices and UI components.
3. Accessibility and Security
Using our own and industry best practices to establish secure and seamless access to the different systems, including SAP systems.
4. Containerization and Deployment
BTP uses containerization with runtimes compatible across all hyperscalers. Containerization is a cloud-native solution that allows developers to extend SAP solutions with serverless functions and combine them with microservices. Once the docker images (executable software packages) are ported and containerized on the BTP runtime, integration with both SAP and non-SAP solutions is seamless and easy.
Using an approach like this enables enterprises to create platform agnostic solutions that are containerized on BTP and can work on any other hyperscaler.
We believe that any enterprise looking to develop, enable and integrate a scalable, platform agnostic industry solution should consider SAP BTP. Today, BTP is an integral part of SAP S/4HANA migrations, and it will remain so in the future. Its seamless and easy portability makes BTP a powerful tool for hyperscale landscapes, providing a unified, business-centric foundation for digital transformation.
As an SAP Global Strategic Service Partner (GSSP), Atos is porting many of our current industry solutions on SAP BTP. Of course, new ones are always being developed, which will soon be available in the SAP store. Stay tuned for more, as we have several industry-driven co-innovation projects with SAP coming to fruition.
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