On 08.05.2018 a partner event of the SAP on the topic cloud platform took place in Munich, and the HONICO Systems took part at the event. SAP wants to continue to establish itself as a “platform as a service” (PaaS) provider in order to provide partners and customers with a basis for their “Software as a Service” (SaaS) solutions. Therefore, SAP introduced its strategy as a platform provider.
With the “embedded platform as a service” (ePaaS), SAP offers a solution for software providers and their customers, in which a preconfigured platform can be equipped with software and completely made available to the customer. This greatly simplifies the entry into the cloud for the end customer, while offering an exclusivity similar to the on-premise world, which is occasionally desired or required by companies.
Alternatively, partners can rent platforms for their SaaS services to run multi-app management for many end users. Such scenarios are more cost-effective, and the administration remains completely with the service provider, so that the customer has no administrative overhead.
These new variants make the SAP Cloud platform much more flexible than before. Whether the pricing model is profitable for partners and customers, time will tell.
However, issues that are not one-to-one with the on-premise world remain unresolved in the transition to the cloud. This includes e.g. the deployment landscape for software. Transport rails as usual are not available here. At present, it is recommended to use multiple rental instances and export / import within these instances.
The topic of updates is also more difficult in a PaaS scenario because the platform provider partly sets the update cycles. This can strongly influence the updating and acceptance processes of the end customer.
The ability to set up new services quickly and at short notice also significantly simplifies scenarios that were previously difficult in SAP’s on-premise world. These include e.g. providing bridge services for maintenance windows or building temporary services for development projects.
In addition to the ePaaS model for the SAP platform, the division of the SCP into the two platform types “Neo platform” and “Cloud foundry” was also presented. Neo focuses more on web applications in Java and Javascript, which should then communicate with the S / 4 Digital Core or work completely independently. Neo offers new services such as its own virtual machines for apps or Git integration. An overview of the individual services of the various platforms can be found here.
