SAP announced new tools, updates, and services for making developers’ lives easier, regardless of skill level or job focus. These new offerings include low-code/no-code tools, a free tier model for SAP Cloud Platform, exclusive free learning opportunities, and further updates to SAP Business Technology Platform.
The announcement was made at the SAP TechEd conference, being held online December 8-10, 2020.
Extension Through Process Automation, Low-Code and No-Code Tools
SAP Cloud Platform Extension Suite empowers developers to build and extend business applications, processes and innovations with clicks or code. With its latest enhancements, the suite now offers three complementary and integrated process automation tools, which address different skill levels and automation scenarios:
- SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management allows developers and business experts to gain end-to-end process visibility, and to configure and automate enterprise workflows in a low-code approach. SAP Cloud Platform Workflow Management includes new predefined content packages and integration with Experience Management solutions from SAP and Qualtrics, combining operational and experience data.
- The SAP Ruum solution allows business users with no coding skills to create departmental processes in hours instead of days and weeks. About 50 SAP customers and partners, including German chemical company Evonik Industries AG, U.S. company Varian Medical Systems Inc. and Norwegian furniture maker Ekornes Ltd., have already joined the beta program for SAP Ruum. “With SAP Ruum, Ekornes was able to model the process in about an hour, without requiring a lengthy project with resources from our central team,” said James Fogarty, an Ekornes business operations analyst.
- SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA) 2.0 technology targets developers looking to automate repetitive, manual tasks with software bots. SAP Intelligent RPA includes prebuilt bot templates to drive efficiencies with SAP S/4HANA and 12 lines of business. Beginning January 2021, SAP plans to include a limited edition of SAP Intelligent RPA in every SAP S/4HANA Cloud subscription.
Free Tier Model for SAP Cloud Platform
SAP in 2021 plans to offer developers a free tier model for SAP Cloud Platform, the integration and extension solution for SAP Business Technology Platform. The free tier model will provide users access to learn, develop, and implement integrations and extensions in one account. It removes current time restrictions and allows users to transfer projects to production without the need to rebuild content. As an intermediary step toward the free tier model, SAP recently extended its current SAP Cloud Platform trial offering from three to 12 months.
“SAP Business Technology Platform is key for our customers to integrate and extend their SAP applications and to enable future business,” said Juergen Mueller, chief technology officer and member of the SAP Executive Board. “As the cornerstone of SAP’s own transformation and accelerated shift to the cloud, it helps to provide value to customers with a seamless technology experience, a robust ecosystem and greater development efficiency. The ongoing innovation to SAP Business Technology Platform underscores our commitment to the developer community and the entire ecosystem of customers and partners, and shows we are not only listening but also acting on what we hear.”
Integration Capabilities Updated
SAP Business Technology Platform helps make it easier to share data across SAP applications by providing SAP One Domain Model — a common data model for business objects. It now supports its first business objects for the end-to-end recruit-to-retire business process. More business objects for other end-to-end business processes will follow. Developers can access these through the SAP Graph software beta offering or SAP API Business Hub.
The redesigned user experience for SAP API Business Hub helps make it easier for architects and experts to identify relevant integration content, such as APIs and events, integration packs and user documentation. The update will be available as a beta shipment by the end of 2020.
Data to Value: Make Confident, Timely Business Decisions
To account for the tremendous increase in data volume and variety, on-premise installations of SAP HANA can now be extended with SAP HANA Cloud as a hybrid data solution. This offers users a single access point to data across SAP and non-SAP sources while simplifying a customer’s data environment, reducing replication or inaccuracies, and increasing security and compliance.
The SAP Data Warehouse Cloud solution unites the data management capabilities of SAP HANA with the analytics features of the SAP Analytics Cloud solution. Its new, easy-to-use data flow builder allows users to integrate and combine structured and semi-structured data from SAP and non-SAP sources. The expanding business content library for SAP Data Warehouse Cloud includes prebuilt content ranging from financial analytics, utilities and automotive to retail, to help customers save time and effort modeling their data.
Exclusive Free Access to SAP’s Learning Resources
SAP TechEd 2020 attendees will get free access to the event edition of SAP Learning Hub for SAP TechEd. It offers learning journeys to upskill users on the SAP Business Technology Platform and additional courses that lead toward SAP Global Certification digital badges. Attendees also can take advantage of a special discounted SAP Global Certification offering.
