The Ultimate Guide to SAP BTP

What is SAP BTP?

SAP BTP stands for Business Technology Platform. It’s a strategic cloud service that combines data and analytics, automation, integration, AI and app development into a unified environment for producing SAP Applications and business accelerators. Simply put, it’s a platform for enterprises to become intelligent and sustainable via the adoption of cloud-based apps to streamline operations, enhance decision-making, and drive innovation.

App development, integration, automation, AI and data & analytics are the five pillars which make up SAP BTP. These were chosen as the five underpinning pillars of the platform as they make up the basis of a comprehensive digital solution, enabling businesses to innovate, streamline operations, and make data-driven decisions in the modern digital landscape.

What are the pillars of SAP BTP?

At the core of SAP BTP are five key pillars, each essential to achieving digital transformation. Let’s take a closer look at these pillars and how they empower businesses.

1. Application Development

The first pillar of SAP BTP is application development. Whether it’s creating new business applications or extending existing SAP solutions, this pillar provides developers with the tools and frameworks to build scalable and customised applications. SAP BTP offers low-code/no-code platforms alongside more advanced development environments, allowing organisations to accelerate innovation and bring solutions to market faster.

2. Data and Analytics

Data is often referred to as the new oil, and with SAP BTP’s data and analytics pillar, businesses can unlock the full potential of their data. This pillar includes powerful tools like SAP HANA Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud, enabling businesses to manage, analyse, and visualise data. From real-time insights to predictive analytics, this pillar helps organisations make data-driven decisions with confidence, enhancing performance and driving strategic growth.

3. Integration

In a world where businesses rely on multiple systems and applications, integration is key. The integration pillar of SAP BTP ensures seamless connectivity between SAP and third-party applications, whether they’re on-premise or in the cloud. With pre-built connectors and comprehensive integration services, organisations can streamline processes, reduce silos, and improve overall efficiency, all while ensuring data consistency across the business.

4. Automation

Automation is another critical component of SAP BTP, designed to help businesses increase efficiency and reduce manual workload. Whether through robotic process automation (RPA) or workflow automation, SAP BTP enables organisations to automate repetitive tasks and optimise business processes. This frees up employees to focus on higher-value activities, improving productivity and reducing operational costs.

5. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The final pillar is artificial intelligence (AI), a game-changer for businesses looking to stay ahead in today’s competitive market. SAP BTP offers AI-driven capabilities that can be embedded into applications to enhance decision-making, automate processes, and improve customer experiences. From natural language processing to machine learning, AI is seamlessly integrated into the platform, helping businesses make smarter, faster decisions.

SAP BTP Major Services

1. SAP HANA Database
At the core of SAP BTP lies SAP HANA Database, a high-performance, in-memory database that enables real-time processing and analysis of large volumes of data.

2. SAP Integration Suite
SAP Integration Suite facilitates seamless integration between different systems, applications, and data sources. It enables organisations to connect their on-premises and cloud-based solutions, ensuring smooth data flow and interoperability.

3. SAP Analytics Cloud
SAP Analytics Cloud empowers businesses with advanced analytics and visualisation capabilities. It allows users to gain insights from their data, uncover trends, and make data-driven decisions to drive business growth and competitiveness.

4. SAP Business Application Studio
SAP Business Application Studio is a collaborative development environment that enables developers to build, extend, and customise applications on SAP BTP. It provides a rich set of tools and capabilities for rapid application development and deployment.

5. SAP Build Process Automation
SAP Build Process Automation automates repetitive and manual tasks, allowing organisations to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and free up resources for more strategic activities.

6. SAP Workzone
SAP Workzone functions as the central entry point for SAP BTP. It provides a centralized hub for accessing business applications, documents, and communication tools, enabling streamlined processes when accessing and navigating between multiple applications.

Benefits of SAP BTP

Innovate before competitors

The past few years have shown that customer requirements can change rapidly. Innovating before competitors gives companies a huge advantage. Quickly adapting to customer needs often leads to quicker adoption of products or services. The SAP BTP facilitates innovation at pace so businesses can keep up with an ever-changing market.

Run in Uncertainty

As we have discovered, change is the only constant in business so it’s essential to have agility and continuity to run in times of uncertainty. BTP is a hosted cloud platform, meaning even if you go down, BTP does not. BTP keeps businesses running permanently.

Champion Cost Savings

Cost-saving pressures are only rising for businesses currently. By leveraging BTP and cloud services, companies can relieve some of this pressure and save huge overheads on incumbent on-premises SAP solutions.

Agility and pivot at speed

Adapt and pivot with a dynamic market. SAP BTP offers agility and innovation that matches the market’s external needs. This allows businesses to excel in a digital-first world.

Grow with Multi-cloud Openness

Multi-cloud openness creates great flexibility around deployment as well as adapting and tailoring solutions to customer and company needs. SAP BTP facilitates growth through innovation and customer-centric thinking deployed in a cloud format.

SAP BTP Use Cases

The Business Technology platform is huge by its very nature. As a strategic platform that unifies all of SAP’s best tools in one place, pinpointing any use case is not easy. It is the kid in the sweet shop scenario for any SAP professional. The following three use cases stand out as great jumping-on points for SAP BTP, proving high value at low risk.

Data Integration and Analytics

Organisations can use SAP BTP to integrate data from various sources, both internal and external, into a unified platform. By leveraging SAP BTP’s data integration capabilities, businesses can streamline data pipelines, cleanse and harmonise data, and perform advanced analytics to gain untapped insights. This use case is particularly beneficial for organisations looking to make data-driven decisions and optimise their business processes.

Application Development and Extension

SAP BTP provides a comprehensive set of tools and services for building, extending, and customising applications. Developers (of high and low experience) can use SAP BTP’s development environment to create new applications from scratch or extend existing SAP solutions to meet specific business requirements. With support for various programming languages and frameworks, as well as cloud-native development principles, SAP BTP enables rapid application development and deployment.

Intelligent Automation and Build Process Automation

SAP BTP creates automation opportunities via the use of build process automation (BPA), to automate repetitive tasks and streamline business processes. Organisations can use SAP BTP’s automation services to automate manual processes, such as data entry, reconciliation, and report generation, freeing up employees to focus on more strategic and value-added activities. This use case is particularly relevant for organisations looking to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs. For more information on this in action, see our case study on warehouse automation solutions.

Is SAP Cloud Platform the same as SAP BTP?

Yes, the SAP Cloud Platform and the Business Technology Platform are one and the same. The only difference is a rebrand. When the Platform as a Service was first launched in 2013, SAP dubbed it the Cloud Platform. However, as it has evolved into a resource for businesses, Business Technology Platform became a name with a better fit. There’s no real difference between the two. They refer to the same platform for creating and developing applications to improve business SAP’s but Business Technology Platform is the current correct name.

How can I monitor my SAP BTP environment?

Monitoring SAP BTP performance is an important ability for any SAP programme leader. Typically, applications used from the BTP are charged per license and if those licenses are not being taken advantage of, it’s a waste of money. The SAP BTP Monitor is an application which enables BTP users to monitor BTP Licenses and consumption, reporting, management, user creation and self-service. It’s a great way for organisations to ensure lean and effective usage of the Business Technology Platform and optimise how It is used.

SAP is changing the structure of SAP BTP. The Data & Analytics pillar is shifting into its own sub-platform. Find out more about Business Data Cloud here.