SAP Business Technology Platform – 7 frequently asked questions

What is SAP Business Technology Platform?

The SAP Business Technology Platform brings together all the key technologies needed to accelerate innovation in one unified environment, providing tools to support critical processes, create digital workflows and fully leverage existing data and applications by professional developers and non-technical business users.

Which components and services from the SAP portfolio are part of the SAP BTP platform?

SAP Business Technology Platform is a unified, business-centric & open platform and a technological foundation for all applications in the SAP ecosystem. It provides core capabilities to support on-premise, hybrid and cloud scenarios, offering greater flexibility and efficiency.

Leveraging open source technologies, the SAP Business Technology Platform helps companies benefit from innovation and the support of a powerful developer community. By combining data management, analytics, artificial intelligence, application design, automation and integration in one unified environment, SAP BTP gives users greater freedom to create their own solutions, unleashing the full business potential of their organization.

How can a unified technology platform meet the specific needs of an organization?

Every organization, regardless of its size, number of branches, and the industry it represents, has a diverse set of tools and applications to meet its needs. As the business environment evolves dynamically and end-user expectations change, the demand for custom software solutions or extensions to existing applications grows. SAP Business Technology Platform provides the right environment to create and customize solutions without the support of the IT department and external specialists, which not only guarantees self-sufficiency in software development, but also significantly reduces the time required for project implementation.

In addition, SAP Business Technology Platform users gain access to a complete view of real-time corporate data, can innovate to integrate with SAP applications natively, and easily manage workflows by using SAP Process Automation.

What capabilities for application development, system integration, data management and business analytics does the SAP Business Technology Platform offer?

With SAP BTP, developers get the toolset they need to quickly connect critical processes, extend applications from SAP, and build custom integrations with solutions from other vendors. Business users, in turn, can use intuitive drag-and-drop GUIs in the SAP AppGyver and SAP Business Application Studio development environment, to automate their daily tasks, create instant and flexible workflows, or customize mobile interfaces to meet specific business requirements.

SAP is thus bridging the skills gap, making it easier for non-IT staff to develop the software they need to simplify operations and increase productivity. As predicted, low-code and codeless programming will become a common office skill in the near future, as will creating multimedia presentations and building spreadsheets.

Will SAP BTP replace SAP Cloud Platform and how do the two solutions differ?

SAP Business Technology Platform is the successor of a well-known solution – SAP Cloud Platform. The cloud platform is one of the main pillars of SAP BTP and, and as a PaaS (Platform as a Service), functions as a key element of a broader offering in the SAP product portfolio. The extensive application design, integration and extension development mechanisms previously available as part of the SAP Cloud Platform solution are now cloud services running on the SAP BTP platform under the names SAP Integration Suite and SAP Extension Suite.

In which environment can the SAP BTP platform be run?

SAP Business Technology Platform is a cloud solution, which means the need to develop an enterprise IT infrastructure is reduced to a minimum. The services and solutions from SAP BTP are offered by a number of cloud infrastructure providers. Applications built with SAP BTP can be deployed in different regions (each region represents a geographical location), which are in turn provided by SAP or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) partners such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure , Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud. Third-party regional providers operate the region’s infrastructure layer, while SAP is responsible for maintaining the platform and Cloud Foundry environment.

What benefits does the SAP Business Technology Platform offer?

Along with analytical tools, data and database management capabilities, intelligent technologies, and mechanisms to integrate and extend application functionality are among the most essential SAP Business Technology Platform features.

According to IDC FutureScape report containing IDC’s top 10 predictions for digital transformation, by 2025, due to global instability, 75% of business leaders will begin to leverage digital platform capabilities to align their value chains with new markets, industries and ecosystems.

Addressing these predictions, the comprehensive technology platform complements both SAP and competitor offerings by accelerating the overall transformation of an organization into an intelligent enterprise. What SAP BTP offers is primarily the ability to innovate faster, implement agile corporate solutions, and apply new business models.