SAP Hana Cloud Platform: The Virtual Glue

One thing I have learned from many years in working in technology, is that it never stays the same.  10 years ago, R/3 was king.  Then came ECC 5.0 and 6.0.  Then we have S/4.  And along with all of these products comes the user interfaces and applications that people must negotiate to fully implement, integrate and use them.  But to me, aside from the UI, the integration to these systems has always been the tricky part.  We’ve had XI, then PI… then Gateway and now HCI, not to mention SAP Cloud Connector.  What I have found is that HCP offers the simplest way to connect the dots on distributed cloud solutions and on premise solutions better than the products of the past, and often in less time with less money.

This is why I call HCP the “virtual glue” when it comes to solutions offered by SAP today.

For example, working with one customer who has an investment in SAP backend (HR / ECC), non SAP for CRM (SF.com) and non-SAP for mobility (Native custom build).. yet we were able to sell to them the idea the HCP could elegantly bring together all these components, in ONE solution.  With an investment in HCP, we were able to create an HCPms app that utilized data from their on – premise systems (SAP and non-sap), exposed as end points via the SAP Cloud Connector (via a secure VPN that comes with HCP).

We were able to create a cloud-based DB to house all user data in the HCP DBaaS, so that whenever users moved to a new device, the data was all there.. and we were able to create a robust mobile app that worked even offline via the HCPms apis and services, even though the application itself was obviously cloud-based.  This, not to mention, using HCP IDM to manage SCIM based authentication and authorization to satisfy their identity management requirements placed upon the project.

And it all started with HCP as a simple corner stone, or the “virtual glue” for all these assets and components to work together.  Its through projects like these, that customers can become more aware of the power of HCP, and the limitless possibilities it has to connect and run both SAP and Non-SAP assets and components in the enterprise.