Juergen Mueller, chief technology officer and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, took his virtual audience at SAP TechEd in 2020 on an inspirational journey, showcasing how the company supported customers during an extraordinary year, while collaborating with developers to build an even stronger future.
Speaking directly to all developers across the SAP ecosystem, Mueller explained how SAP Business Technology Platform was the foundation of the company’s intelligent enterprise vision and technology strategy, providing them with future-proof resilience.
“This is why we get up every morning. The goal of SAP Business Technology Platform is to empower you in your development role so that you can accelerate your company’s move to the cloud,” he said. “This year has been an exceptional journey, impacting each and every one of us, and we have to go through it together as a shared journey.”
One Platform for Extensibility, Integration, and Data-to-Value
Inclusive in all ways, Mueller’s words were both heartfelt and fact-based, as he enumerated how SAP had achieved important milestones throughout the year. Filled with solution demonstrations and a customer testimonial, Mueller’s keynote answered questions from developers in the SAP ecosystem, ranging from the impact of COVID-19 on the company’s strategy to how SAP Business Technology Platform delivered extensibility, integration, and data-to-value.
“We identified the three top scenarios to support you best so that you are able to build extensions on your SAP environment, create value from various data sources, and build integrations across SAP and non-SAP systems. And all of that in a simple and agile way,” said Mueller.
Easily Build, Integrate, and Extend Applications
Whether someone was a cloud native developer, data scientist, enterprise architect, application developer, integration developer, or UX designer, Mueller and his special guests shared how SAP Business Technology Platform empowered developers with extensibility and integration.
Supporting SAP’s commitment to extensibility for rapid customization and innovation, Mueller announced SAP Cloud Platform, ABAP environment multitenancy, as an example of how SAP made it easy for partners to extend SAP and non-SAP solutions using SAP Business Technology Platform. He said this would reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) for ABAP deployments. He also explained how cloud native developers can more easily build extensions for more SAP solutions, including SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP ECC.
“ABAP is still at the heart of the Intelligent Enterprise, fully backed by [SAP] Business Technology Platform. We protect your career and your investments of all the ABAP know-how in the world, and we bring ABAP to the cloud,” Mueller said. “With [SAP] NetWeaver add on for event enablement, we allow [cloud-native developers] to build extensions for your SAP ECC system, the same way as for SAP S/4HANA, using SAP Cloud Platform Enterprise Messaging.”
At the same time, he called out the integration value of SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite enhancements, along with new SAP Cloud Platform Master Data Integration service and SAP One Domain Model for first objects.
“With the SAP One Domain Model and the SAP Cloud Platform Master Data Integration service, integration happens holistically and out-of-the-box,” said Mueller.
This was followed by a quick overview of the updated SAP API Business Hub user experience.
Turn Data into Business Value
Mueller also noted that 2020 marked the 10-year anniversary of SAP HANA.
“There’s so much to celebrate. SAP HANA plays a vital role in the SAP portfolio. It is the foundation for our key solutions like SAP S/4HANA, and the foundation for industry cloud,” said Mueller.
Mueller announced new integrations in SAP HANA Cloud, allowing developers to connect data between SAP HANA on premise and SAP S/4HANA systems, as well as third-party sources.
“We want to make it very simple for you to make sense of your data,” he said. “The latest edition of SAP HANA Cloud combines all the greatness of [SAP] HANA on premise with all the great cloud capabilities, including federated data access. Connecting your [SAP] HANA Cloud system to your on-premise SAP S/4HANA system is extremely easy. Also connecting to other third-party systems is very easy.”
Data-to-Value Can Modernize Medical Supply Chains
Raymund Heinen, chief process officer and member of the Board at HARTMANN Group, a medical supply company, was among the experts that joined Mueller on the virtual stage. Heinen explained how his organization collaborated with SAP to develop a proof of concept addressing one of the most urgent pandemic demands: prioritizing medical supplies, such as hand disinfectant, where they are needed most in an unpredictable environment.
Built on SAP Analytics Cloud, the pilot solution used machine learning to analyze data from internal and external sources – such as daily health updates from external organizations and intensive care beds by region – into one dashboard on SAP Business Technology Platform.
“If you can anticipate at an early stage the most likely scenarios, we could approach the impacted customers proactively. We could verify and increase the local inventories and adapt on short notice our supply chain even before most customers start ordering,” said Heinen. “A dashboard can be of really great help and make it easier for teams to prioritize based on actual internal and external data.”
A Call to Developers
COVID-19 and other important issues loomed large across Mueller’s talk. He spotlighted SAP’s commitment to workforce diversity beyond gender, as well as addressing climate change with a number of initiatives, including embedding sustainability metrics in the company’s analytical and transactional applications. He also held up SAP’s co-innovation of the German Corona-Warn-App with Deutsche Telekom for the German government as an example of the collective power of the developer community. His message to developers was clear.
“COVID-19 really brings a new level of digitalization. As developers, you are the true enablers for every business. We want to help you be successful personally, and we want to help you help your company,” said Mueller. “This is the whole purpose of SAP Business Technology Platform. This is your time to shine by developing new applications, extending applications, creating new integrations quickly, helping your teams make confident decisions, and making it easier for your colleagues to work in your company.”
To learn more about SAP’s portfolio supporting its intelligent enterprise vision, Mueller encouraged viewers to explore the company’s roadmaps, take advantage of the free SAP Learning Hub, event edition for SAP TechEd and SAP software trials, and get involved in the SAP Community.
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