Summarizing Key Sessions: A SAP TechEd Online Personal Experience (Part One)

Not everyone has the good fortune to attend the SAP TechEd and surely not everyone has ‘THE’ good fortune of attending a SAP TechEd in Las Vegas.

But I must say, it is no cause for disappointment especially if you are someone like me located thousands of miles away in India, on a couch, sipping an early morning ‘masala’ chai and making the best out of SAP Tech Ed Online.

Many might not be aware but most part of the TechEd is streamed live. There are also replays that you can watch at your leisure. Do take some time out to visit SAP Virtual Events and make the best out of SAP TechEd Online.

All my life (the professional one), I been an Integration guy. So It is indeed obvious that my interests this TechEd would be around SAP Process Orchestration, Cloud integration, HANA and of course Mobility to a fair part.

I have been watching sessions that are available online and believe me most of them are 60 minutes or longer. So I thought, not every one has time (hope my manager is not interpreting this as me being someone with no work apart from indulging in online streaming videos) and what better than summarizing on the key takeaways of some of the sessions I have been watching.

Catch the SAP Executive Keynote here by the Godfather of SAP HANA aka Vishal Sikka

Key takeaway from the keynote;

1. The heart of the SAP system is now HANA

2. 1 million inserts per second and growing.

3. Small and simple use cases can run production HANA on Amazon

4. GA of SAP Netweaver Cloud

5. The Sybase and HANA teams are working together to bring the two together in a non-disruptive way.

Architecture Guidelines for Applications on SAP NetWeaver Process Orchestration

1. Process Driven Approach and human centric processes

2. Process Driven Architecture = BPM + SOA -> Definition + methodology + architecture

3. A Process driven Application (PDA) is business oriented, user centric applications that support high collaboration and dynamic business process spanning beyond functional, system and Org. boundaries by facilitating reuse.

4. Need for collaboration between Business and IT to deliver a good process model

5. A clear separation of the business process from the technical integration process

6. Consolidation of all required development tools on to NWDS

7. There are 1/2/3 Layer Architecture for developing a PDA. Each has its own pros and cons and there is no one fit for all.

8. Migrating ccBPM process to BPMN – 

a. A direct translation might be possible but it will be worth redesigning the ccBPM so as to make it a much more compact and readable BPMN process.

b. The recommendation clearly is to invest time in remodelling your existing BPEL based ccBPM process to a BPMN process.

c. There is no automatic migration but SAP supports with ready-to-use patterns.

Integration of Cloud Solutions from SAP

1. Integration services running on SAP NW Cloud

2. Will support packaged integration via RDS, Integration content

3. Mappings deployable on Cloud compatible with On-Premise PI

4. Support for application scenarios like Sales OD <-> CRM OP, Financial services (Ex. Payment gateways)

5. PI is not Cloud ready and is meant for OnPremise integration needs

6. Currently the Cloud Integration solution is offered as a service by SAP only i.e customers/SIs are not able to implement the solution

7. SAP claims this will better the customer experience in terms of shorter delivery timelines, scalability, cost, service availability etc

8. Tooling is Eclipse based via iFlows

Mobility Platform Road Map and Strategy

1. Having a mobile platform is benefitial

2. SUP has been the base platform

3. Syclo was aquired to benefit from the Apps it has in specialized areas like Asset management

4. SUP continues to be upgraded (SUP2.2)

5. Roadmap is towards unification of SUP, Syclo Agentry and Sybase Mobilizer

6. Cloud enablement (mobile as a service)

7. The new Brand is SAP Mobile Platform

(Continued….) Part Two : Click Here