First, even if we are already mid-February, I consider that it is not too late to wish you a very happy year 2024!
And from my new role as Head of Product Management for Application Development, Automation and Integration in SAP BTP, I would like to start this new year by sharing with you the major directions we have chosen for our product strategy.
Where do we come from?
Let’s look back to what we have already achieved during the last 2 years: a bit more than a year ago, during his keynote at SAP TechEd 2022 in Las Vegas, our CTO Juergen Muller launched our low-code suite SAP Build:
If you did not try out SAP Build already, just read this blog post to have a quick overview, and then join our SAP Builders Community to get all of the updates, tutorials, and our SAP Builders Group to engage with a community of peers!
3 months ago, we announced at SAP TechEd 2023 SAP Build Code, our new solution for those who prefer a code-first approach with a simplified experience, optimized for SAP development, and enhanced fusion team collaboration. If you missed it, read Bhagat Nainani’s blog post to understand why it is a true game-changer for SAP developers. Indeed, SAP Build Code offers a turn-key environment for coding, testing, integrations, and application lifecycle management, optimized for Java and JavaScript, and is powered with AI code generation by Joule copilot, as I will present below. The solution is a combination of tools, application services and runtime services providing a cohesive experience for developers and fusion development teams. Great news: SAP Build Code will be Generally Available in March 2024, so in a month from now!
What will come in 2024?
What to expect in 2024 for our product area focused on Application Development, Automation and Integration?We have defined 3 key directions that I will present you:
1. Fusion Development:
At SAP, we firmly believe in the power of the developer continuum to increase the speed of innovation at our customer’s organizations. The developer continuum consists of IT experts and professional developers on the one end and the business experts, key users, or citizen developers on the other end. Each stakeholder on this continuum has their own strengths and skillsets:
SAP Build, our low-code toolset for business experts, is of course also a way to provide the power of a low-code approach to professional developers. When talking to customers, I like to make this statement below to explain that all types of developers use the appropriate tools to “get the job done”:
“Even professional developers are human beings: and human beings are in general happy
when they can use simple tools to manage complex problems!”
Now, after we introduced SAP Build Code, it might seem that SAP Build and SAP Build Code are twins trudging the identical path. Let me clarify: SAP Build on the one hand, SAP Build Code on the other hand serve distinctive purposes catering to developers of different intentions and proficiency.
Our customers have been leveraging their fusion teams – a combination of professional and business experts/citizen developers – to build their extension applications, thereby ensuring that the more technically complex pieces are taken up by the professional developers, while those that require business expertise can easily be built by the business process experts and key users. That is what we are calling Fusion Development.
SAP Build Code alongside SAP Build is a key milestone showing our commitment to foster Fusion Development by teams where business and IT work together, hand in hand:
Our strong portfolio of application development products ensures that each developer on this continuum can use their skills to deliver mission critical innovations without compromising on governance and security best practices.
To deep dive on Fusion Development with SAP Build and SAP Build Code, you may read Franziska Mickley’s blog post “SAP Build and SAP Build Code: Comprehensive Tools for Novice to Expert Developers”and Rupa Maity’s blog post “Fusion development – when professional and citizen developers come together”. I mention also 2 blog posts from Kanishka Raghuraman, a business user, and Chinmaya Gorachanda Chaudhury , an SAP BTP integration expert, sharing a very concrete example based on SAP Build and SAP Integration Suite, presented end-to-end: A Tale of Fusion Development with SAP Build – The Beginning + The Conclusion.
Let me share two other examples:
Easily consuming APIs from SAP Build
When automating a process with SAP Build Process Automation, a business user might need to access data available in an SAP system, for instance in SAP S/4HANA. We introduced the Action concept in SAP Build Process Automation to simplify the experience to consume APIs without coding. An action reflects a single operation or method of an API but hides its complexity and allows for easy configuration and testing.
To learn more, read Thomas Jentsch’s blog post “Extensions for SAP Build Process Automation – Actions from CAP Node.js Service”
Extending an SAP solution UI with UI5 in SAP Build Code
When extending an SAP solution, such as SAP S/4HANA, it is important to keep UI consistency for maintaining a good end-user experience. Thanks to SAP Build Code, these extensions go beyond what is possible with key user tools for achieving a highly customized user experiences while keeping the SAP S/4HANA core clean. SAPUI5 flexibility in SAP Build Code provides capabilities for business users, key users, and developers to extend SAP standard applications built with SAPUI5 / SAP Fiori elements. Indeed, different user groups can shape the UI of these apps without touching the source code.
To deep dive on this topic, read Oliver Graeff’s blog post “SAPUI5 Development with SAP Build Code”.
2. Enterprise Automation
You may have heard about Enterprise Automation already. If not, this prominent topic was brought on stage by our CMSO Julia White during SAP Sapphire 2023 opening keynote, and by Juergen Mueller and Thomas Saueressig in their Future-Proof Innovation keynote. It has been introduced by JG Chirapurath in a news article as well as by Angela Harvey in a deep-dive blog post.
Today, I would like to emphasize that Enterprise Automation is not only Signavio + SAP Build Process Automation: indeed, SAP Integration Suite is playing a key role, with capabilities such as Edge Integration Cell and Advanced Event Mesh. Because, ultimately, you cannot improve or automate what is not connected:
Edge Integration Cell
Edge Integration Cell is a hybrid solution that is offered with the SAP Integration Suite to enable API-led integration. The hybrid model supports control plane in the BTP while providing the flexibility to the customer to have the runtime deployed on customer’s private cloud / on-premise.
The control plane on BTP enables user to design, configure and monitor APIs and Integration Flows. Edge Integration significantly enhances the API lead integration capability by providing API management functionalities such as security, traffic management, along with mediation features.
Read more from Piyush Gakhar, in his blog post “Announcement: Hybrid Integrations with Integration Suite”. Read also Finny Babu’s “Next-gen hybrid integration with SAP Integration Suite & Edge Integration Cell – Introduction & Setu...” and Ashutosh Kumar Singh’s “Edge Integration Cell: Design, deploy and manage APIs”.
Advanced Event Mesh
Advanced Event Mesh for SAP Integration Suite is a complete event streaming, event management, and monitoring toolset that makes software event brokers available as a service. With advanced event mesh you can create event broker services in minutes, build a model of your event mesh to design and help implement it, and monitor your services and event mesh to ensure everything runs smoothly.
This platform incorporates best practices, expertise, and technology for event-driven architecture (EDA) on a single platform. Our platform is offered as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) which:
- gives you everything you need to accelerate your organization’s EDA adoption, allowing you to fulfill modern use cases that demand real-time, intelligent event streaming
- provides an intuitive, unified interface to design, deploy, manage, monitor, and govern your event streaming infrastructure (including the events that flow over it) in the most secure manner.
Browse our Help Portal content on SAP Integration Suite, Advanced Event Mesh and learn with Advanced Event Mesh missions available in SAP Discovery Center.
3. Generative AI
Of course, Generative AI is now everywhere, and our Application Development, Automation and Integration offering with SAP Build + SAP Build Code + SAP Integration Suite must leverage AI to bring the best value to our customers: clearly, we are building a cohesive development platform for business experts and professional developers, powered by advanced AI capabilities.
In SAP Build we are leveraging AI capabilities through chatbot and voice command integration. With that, we will
- provide citizen developers and IT administrators with in-app help provided by Joule, as digital assistant
- facilitate collaboration of users with stakeholders during the lifecycle of the project, thanks to voice command integration
To further improve developer efficiency, we are also integrating Generative AI capabilities in SAP Build Code. In an extended product demo shown at SAP TechEd 2023 in Bangalore, we presented a use case for Code Generation including "capGPT" where Joule is able to generate code in Business Application Studio based on text description in natural language.
You can have an overview in Pierre Col’s blog post: “SAP Build | SAP Build Code – When Generative AI comes to help!”.
For more details you can watch this TechEd session, read this presentation and this blog post. Further down the road, we intend to introduce GenAI capabilities as well across the Low Code and Pro Code and Integration platform, so that users can generate process models, integration artefacts and get recommendations for content and actions.
Keep in touch!
So, here we are, I just shared with you where we are heading to in 2024 regarding Application Development, Automation and Integration on SAP BTP.
To stay updated throughout the year, regularly browse our public roadmaps for SAP Build + SAP Build Code + SAP Integration Suite and… feel free to follow me here and/or on LinkedIn to be notified of my next blog posts! 😉
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