Product Information
SAP BTP, Serverless Runtime to be discontinued and replaced by SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime and SAP Integration Suite
Serverless computing is a truly cloud-native paradigm. Servers and other computing resources are completely hidden away from the developer and the end user. There are servers in serverless, but these are operated by the cloud provider, which means you can almost forget about most tedious maintenance and operations activities. Nicer still is the fact that your cloud provider automatically scales the load for you. You don’t need to worry about peak loads on your side as this is taken care of.
Function-as-a-Service
Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) refers to an event-driven atomic piece of code that runs in stateless ephemeral containers created and maintained by a third party – typically a cloud provider. From a technology standpoint, FaaS is a combination of code, configuration, and dependencies executed on a compute service in an isolated container. Resource allocation is done in a serverless environment. The resources required to run code are dynamically allocated by the cloud provider.
As a result, developers are responsible for neither capacity planning nor the optimal allocation of resources. In practical terms, Function-as-a-Service allows adding event-driven, serverless functionalities that are completely decoupled from existing application landscapes.
SAP BTP’s Function-as-a-Service Offerings until now
SAP’s Business Technology Platform until now has offered two Function-as-a-Service options with slightly different scope and feature sets.
SAP BTP, Serverless Runtime has been one of SAP’s Function-as-a-Service offerings to enable rapid development in serverless, event-driven environments specifically targeted at extensions in SAP landscapes. SAP BTP, Serverless Runtime is a fully managed cloud service for building, running, and managing stateless application functions.
SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime has been SAP’s second FaaS offering, allowing customers to build extensions by using both microservices and serverless functions. SAP BTP, Kyma runtime is a fully managed Kubernetes runtime based on the open-source project “Kyma”. This cloud-native solution allows developers to extend SAP solutions with serverless functions and combine them with containerized microservices. The offered functionality ensures smooth consumption of SAP and non-SAP applications , running workloads in a highly scalable environment, and building event- and API-base extensions.
In short, SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime offers several technical capabilities and benefits:
- Mesh Serverless Functions, Microservices or custom docker images in one runtime
- Upskill your developers quickly due to open standards
- Get a fully managed Kubernetes Runtime
- Leverage the built-in capabilities of Kyma:
- API Microgateway
- Event bus
- Service mesh
These technical capabilities optimize development and give you tangible business benefits:
- Reduction of both the TCO and time-to-market
- Managed runtime that fits the needs and skillset of your work force for cloud-native solutions
- Aligned with SAP operational and release processes and standards
- Best services/tooling from hyper-scalers, combined with open standards + SAP specific value add on top
Customers so far have had the choice between these two great environments to develop their functions-as-a-service. Over time though, it has shown that SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime has proven the more beneficial and more well-rounded runtime for customers, offering more options and benefitting from the traction of its open-source community.
OData Provisioning
OData Provisioning exposes business data and business logic as OData services on SAP Business Technology Platform, thereby enabling customers to run user-centric applications on SAP Cloud. In the Multi-Cloud/Cloud Foundry environment context, OData Provisioning has been available as a part of the SAP BTP, Serverless Runtime.
SAP’s Business Technology Platform until now has offered OData provisioning with slightly different scope and feature sets:
- SAP BTP, OData Provisioning (On the NEO environment only) to expose business data and business logic developed on the SAP Business Suite as OData services on the SAP BTP without any additional development effort.
- SAP BTP, Serverless Runtime (On the multi-cloud /CF environment only) included OData Provisioning to expose business data and business logic developed on the SAP Business Suite as OData services on the SAP BTP without any additional development effort.
- SAP Integration Suite is the enterprise-grade integration platform as a service offered by SAP. The Integration Suite is an open IPaaS and consists of a modular set of integration services that work together to support a comprehensive variety of end-to-end integration scenarios.
In particular, SAP Integration Suite supports:
- The integration of SAP and non-SAP applications in the cloud and on premise (A2A)
- Integration with business partners (B2B) and government agencies (B2G).
- The design and runtime governance of APIs, including API-based integration.
- Exposing business data and business logic as OData services on SAP Business Technology Platform
- Extensions of business processes with workflows, including human interaction steps and business rules; as well as the integration of IoT devices and equipment.
Customers so far have had the choice between the different services for provisioning of OData services. With SAP Integration Suite enabling and end-to-end API based integrations, customers will have the added value of not just provisioning of OData services but to also manage the lifecycle of the service.
SAP BTP, Serverless Runtime to be replaced by SAP BTP, Kyma Runtime and SAP Integration Suite
It is due to this that SAP has decided to discontinue SAP BTP, Serverless Runtime and to instead increase the focus on and efforts for SAP BTP, Kyma runtime and SAP Integration suite for the respective capabilities.
Please note this however does not have any impact on the OData Provisioning service on the NEO environment.
The way forward
For all existing customers who already use the SAP BTP, Serverless Runtime, we are looking forward to engaging with you to help make the transition as smooth and non-disruptive as possible.
Thanks Karsten Strothmann for providing this update. At the time it was a little strange that OP was included in the serverless runtime service tbh so probably makes good sense to move to the SAP Integration Suite given OP is integrating with on-premise backend systems. Looking forward to more information on this and a timeline.
Hi Phil,
the idea back then had been to have everything needed for extending SAP backends in a serverless way in a single place to facilitate extensions. Given, if you were not taking the serverless route, ODP could have been better positioned. The good thing here is that the colleagues have a chance to fix this now. And from what I know it will be in a / several better suited spots and I assume the detailed communication on the different options will follow soon.
Best,
Karsten
Can you please provide a date by when the Serverless Runtime projects need to be migrated to Kyma runtime?
I would like to see a blog showing how a XFSR project with a faas.json manifest is converted to a deployable Kyma runtime faas solution.
How will you help SAP BTP, serverless runtime customers (or their implementation partners) for this transition exactly?
Hello Pieter, on discovery center is mentioned April 19th, 2022.
Hi Pieter,
the goal of the blog has been to raise awareness of this upcoming change early.
As mentioned in the way forward above, in a next step we will engage with the existing customers on an individual basis and discuss their specific situation. I doubt that there is a going to be a one fits all solution and that the existing use cases can be very different and might need different approaches.
The blog is a good idea. I will raise this with the Kyma colleagues and see what we can do.
Best,
Karsten
Thanks for the info, Karsten.
What is not clear to me though is how customers can use Integration Suite as OData Provisioning. Talking to IS PM team, it looks like that not even they know very well. Is there any blog or document about it?
Thanks!
Hello Karsten and Community,
Pleased to hear about this synergy between Kyma functions and the Integration Suite;
Actually I have been a big fan of kyma functions for quite some time already.
The kyma functions are quite handy at creating your own HTTP REST/ODATA API endpoints.
I have ended up creating nodejs APIs with Kyma functions implementing my own REST/ODATA APIs or integrating with SAP LOB solutions: S/4HANA, S/4HANA Cloud, SuccessFactors, Analytics Cloud and others...
And with regard to the SAP Integration Suite, I have completely adopted API Management as a way of further encapsulating the API endpoints created with the kyma functions...
Last but not least, I have created a series of quovadis blogs where I try to "advice" how best to reach your destination.
kind regards
Piotr.
Hello Karsten,
i am lately replying to this blog, because there is no critical feedback on this.
Maybe i am the only one, that is implementing customer projects where TCO is relevant.
If you have to build SaaS Solutions, not the used technology is relevant, instead everthing focuses on TCO.
Talking about costs:
From this perspective, if you just need a small FaaS, the follow up scenarios are not really an option.
Please do not missunderstand, i am also appreciating kyma (or kubernetes) as runtime for FaaS, but as a decoupled service offering.
Having a look at the Azure Functions costs (running in kubernetes):
this is the only valueable option (from a TCO perspective) at the moment.
If i need an electrical cigarette lighter, i will not be forced to buy a car!
Would be great to hear, if SAP is also thinking about such an offering.
Best regards
Holger
Hi Holger,
I figured you deserve an answer for your direct and honest feedback, even if I am not the right guy to answer on the way forward these days (I work on event-driven architectures). For that answer I would like to use your very descriptive statement as a starting point: If i need an electrical cigarette lighter, i will not be forced to buy a car!
These are two very different use cases, with very different costs and a very different value. The car is going to transport you and your luggage from one city to another. The cigarette lighter is going to light your cigarette. Even if I don't smoke, I can see the value in the second use case as well.
To continue with this analogy, what I do see though is that there have been a lot of likes for the car use case and not enough for the lighter use case. This holds true for the blog above if you look at the likes, as well as the Kyma vs. FaaS comparison. Most customers went for the Kyma option and there is a strong community. This has never developed in respect to FaaS. Therefore back then it was a logical option to discontinue FaaS and move forward with Kyma. It actually did surprise me back then that there was not more criticism for the move and so many people liked it, because by heart I am a FaaS guy and I understand where you are coming from. Might be that this was a big compliment for Kyma and its qualities.
If you look from a financial perspective and use your analogy, most SAP customers have larger use cases: they want to drive the car and at the same time use the cigarette lighter. And for them Kyma pays off financially and skill-wise, because they get both for a good price and can use car and lighter again and again.
Just my few cents here. And yes, in respect to small / one time use cases I totally see your point.
Best,
Karsten
Hi Kasten,
thanks for the honest answer.
Luckily, there are always multiple options!
Regards
Holger
A new playlist about SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) serverless functions has been made available on our YouTube channel.
Watching the complete series of eight videos takes about an hour. What you will learn is