The 5 most important answers to get started with SAP BTP

Has your company purchased a license for SAP Business Technology Platform and now needs guidance given the variety of functionalities and options? In this blog post, we answer the 5 most frequently asked questions from companies that have just got started with SAP BTP.

How to create an app on SAP Business Technology Platform in three steps

Question 1: How is SAP BTP structured and what are the best practices to follow when setting up the account?

On the very top of SAP Business Technology Platform structure is the global account, which is given to every company that has signed a contract for SAP BTP. Within this global account, there are directories that structure the platform according to the needs of the company. On the bottom of the hierarchy, there can be multiple sub-accounts to subscribe to services and to develop and deploy custom applications and extensions.

In principle, you can set up as many sub-accounts as you like. However, it is recommended that you keep the number of sub-accounts to a minimum so as not to create unnecessary confusion. Generally, it is best to divide your sub-accounts into development, test/quality assurance, and production environments. These environments should look as similar as possible so that you can develop your applications in an environment that is as close as possible to the final production environment. 

Question 2: How are users managed on SAP BTP?

SAP Business Technology Platform does not authenticate its users itself. User authentication is handled by an identity provider. With SAP Universal ID, there is a default identity provider, but you can also subsequently integrate the identity provider that is used in your company (for example, Azure AD). This has the advantage that no passwords are stored on SAP BTP itself.

There are two types of users to distinguish: Platform users (developers, administrators, etc.) and business users (users of applications and services running on SAP BTP). Platform users are usually authenticated by the default identity provider, while business users are authenticated by the identity provider used in the company.

Question 3: How do services work on SAP BTP?

SAP Business Technology Platform offers many predefined and configurable services within the service marketplace. Companies can select the services they want to use, subscribe to them, and integrate them into their applications. Most services are available as free-tier offerings. This means they can be tested and used in development first before being deployed in a production scenario. Of the 96 services available on SAP BTP, the following are particularly noteworthy:

• SAP Identity Authentication Service (IAS) – for connection to an identity provider.

• SAP Connectivity Service – for integration with back-end systems

• SAP Business Application Studio – for provision of a development environment in the cloud

Question 4: What are my options for application development on SAP BTP?

There are several approaches to developing an application on SAP Business Technology Platform: no-code, low-code, and pro-code. Each approach is tailored to users with different programming skills. For users with little programming experience, SAP BTP offers a set of no-code/low-code tools through SAP Build that provide visual development environments to create applications or workflows without writing a single line of code. If programming experience is available – either with ABAP or with open source programming languages such as Node.js/JavaScript or Java - suitable frameworks are available to apply this knowledge in a cloud-native context.

Question 5: How can I deploy my applications on SAP BTP?

SAP Business Technology Platform offers different containerized runtime environments for all types of applications. Depending on the application that is to be developed, the appropriate runtime environment must be selected. For an SAP RAP application (RAP = ABAP RESTful Application Programming Model), you must use the ABAP environment. For an SAP CAP (CAP = Cloud Application Programming Model) application, on the other hand, you need the Cloud Foundry environment. Large parts of the deployment process can be automated using the SAP Continuous Integration & Delivery Service. With this, you configure a predefined CI/CD pipeline that builds, tests and deploys your applications directly on SAP BTP.