SAP business technology platform introduction and overview

[sudhiranjan_lenka]

SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) (formerly named SAP Hana Cloud Platform, then changed to SAP Cloud Platform) is an integrated offering comprised of four technology portfolios: Database & data management, Application development & integration, Analytics, and Intelligent technologies. SAP BTP offers set of tools, services and products that enable users to develop, integrate and extend all SAP and 3rd party applications.

The services and solutions of SAP BTP are available on multiple cloud infrastructure providers. The multi-cloud foundation supports different environments, such as Cloud Foundry, ABAP, and Kyma, as well as multiple different regions, and a broad choice of programming languages.

SAP BTP Accounts and Associated Activities

(Image source : help.sap.com)

Regions

Each region represents a geographical location, where applications, data, or services are hosted, which is called as data center. Regions are provided either by SAP or by Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) partners Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud. A region is chosen at the subaccount level, exactly one region is selected for each subaccount.

Environments

Environment in SAP BTP is a platform-as-a-service offering, which offers runtime, services, tools for development and execution of a business application. Environments are chosen at subaccount level.

SAP BTP comes with two variants and offers different environments:

• Multi Cloud

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   1. Cloud Foundry Environment: -
      
      
      
      • The Cloud Foundry environment contains the SAP BTP, Cloud Foundry runtime service, which is based on the open-source application platform managed by the Cloud Foundry Foundation
      
      
      • It enables developers to develop new business applications and business services, supporting multiple runtimes, programming languages, libraries, and services.
      
      
      
      
   
   
   2. ABAP Environment: -
      
      
      
      • The ABAP environment allows developers to create extensions for ABAP-based products, such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and develop new cloud applications.
      
      
      • It supports the ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model including SAP Fiori and Core Data Services (CDS)
      
      
      
      
   
   
   3. Kyma Environment: -
      
      
      
      • The Kyma environment is a fully managed Kubernetes runtime based on the open-source project "Kyma".
      
      
      • It allows developers to extend SAP solutions with serverless functions and combine them with containerized microservices.
      
      
      
      
   
   
   
   

• Neo
  
  
  
  1. Neo Environment: -
     
     
     
     • The Neo environment is provisioned from SAP data centers.
     
     
     • It enables developers to develop HTML5, Java, and SAP HANA extended application services (SAP HANA XS) applications.
     
     
     
     
  
  
  
  

Services

Services enable, facilitate, or accelerate the development of business applications and other platform services on SAP BTP. We can find all available services, solutions, and use cases in the “SAP Discovery Center”.

SAP Discovery Center: - https://discovery-center.cloud.sap/index.html#/viewServices

Some of the services we have used in our projects: -

• Agentry: Used to develop and run Agentry based metadata-driven mobile applications.


• SAP Authorization and Trust Management Service: It helps to manage application authorizations and connections to identity providers.


• SAP Business Application Studio: It helps to develop, debug, test, and deploy SAP business applications.


• SAP Credential Store: It offers to store and retrieve credentials such as passwords, keys and keyrings.


• SAP Mobile Services: It enables simple mobile application development, configuration, and management.


• SAP HANA Cloud: Store, process, and federate data in a cloud infrastructure.

Different Account Types offered in SAP BTP

SAP BTP provides different types of global accounts: enterprise, trial, and free tier. Account type determines pricing, condition of use, resources, available services, and hosts.

1. Trial account: It allows individual developers to try out BTP platform for free. It is intended for personal exploration, and not for production use. It allows restricted use of platform resources and services. It has a time limit; it needs to be extended before the time limit reaches else it will be deleted automatically.

 

2. Free Tire account: This account is open to customers, partners, and individual developers and allow them to try out SAP BTP for free without time limits. These account types enable users to test the scenarios and generally offer the option to upgrade to paid service plans. These accounts also allow users to store data long-term and move projects to production. Many services which are not available for trial account, are available for free tire account. Free tire services are tagged as “FREE TIER” in “SAP Discovery Center”. As of now Free tire account is not available for all countries.

 

3. Enterprise account: It is primarily used by SAP customers and partners. It enables production use of the SAP BTP platform. It contains purchased entitlements to platform resources and services.

Commercial Model

SAP BTP offers two different commercial models:

1. Consumption-based commercial model: Organizations receive access to all current and future services that are eligible for this model. Organizations have complete flexibility to turn services on and off and to switch between services as their business requires throughout the duration the contract. This commercial model is available in two flavors: Cloud Platform Enterprise Agreement (CPEA) and Pay-As-You-Go for SAP BTP.


2. Subscription-based commercial model: Organization subscribes only to the services that they plan to use. Organizations can use these services at a fixed cost, irrespective of consumption.

Account Model

Accounts in SAP BTP are structured in two models.

1. Account Model Feature Set A: SAP BTP cockpit is structured according to global accounts and subaccounts. One global account can have two or more subaccounts and each subaccount can have one or more spaces. Subaccounts allow to structure a global account according to the organization’s and project’s requirements with regard to members, authorizations, and entitlements.


2. Account Model Feature Set B: SAP BTP cockpit is structured according to global accounts, directories, and subaccounts. Directories allow to organize and manage subaccounts according to the technical and business needs. A directory can contain directories and subaccounts to create a hierarchy.

Here is a use case of the account model, which we have used in our SAP BTP.