I had a privilege to attend
SAP TechEd this year again. It was possible through SAP
TechEd 2019 Tutorial Mission contest.
This year due to my workload
within project work, I almost forgot about the contest and I finished it very
late in August. I think it was even on very last day for the contest's mission
- a few hours before deadline. Then I forgot about it again. I thought that I
was lucky enough on last year so there is no chance for me to make it happen this
year too. Sometime in mid of September a tweets from people who succeeded with
the contents started to pop up. I again assumed the TechEd would not be for me
this year. How big my surprise was when an email from Developers@sap.com showed
up in my mailbox. That was approximately 2 weeks before the event. Afterwards
it went very quickly, booking flight ticket and hotel in Barcelona, building an
agenda...
So I was there, attending the
SAP TechEd again. I flown in a night before it started to be fresh for a
conference. From last year, I knew what to pack to take with me. This time there
was a nice present to all attendances - a reusable bottle for water. Which served
very well, all participants helped conserve a water. Although I saw a one small
drawback. The phone app needed separate registration to take a part in water
refill program. I can understand that the registration thing hold some people
back from participating. Perhaps it would be easier to make an authentication
via some social network ID (twitter/facebook/google) or even via SAP ID...
The TechEd started with
opening keynote on Tuesday morning. I think it is a kind of tradition to kick
off such event with great visual presentation supported by music. It feels like
one is on rock start concert and not on the conference. For TechEd veterans it
is perhaps normal for me it is still amazing to experience it. I liked Juergen
Mueller attitude shown during the key note. Bringing 17 years old programmer
girl on a stage was great thing. The future of the world belongs to the youth of
the world - also SAP gets that. At her age, I was trying to program some very
basic graphic things in Pascal language on 286 type of computer at high school.
She did her programming for her school assignment in cloud environment - very
different times.
What was announced during
the key note? I just focus on things that were related to topics I followed –
data warehousing/analytics, integration and ABAP.
At first, an Intelligent
Enterprise (IE) was discussed focusing on four examples of End-to-End processes
(like Design to Operate, Total Workforce Management, Source to Pay and Lead to
Cash). All this was described while emphasize an X data that is flowing around
Experience part of the IE and O data flowing around Operation part of the EI
whereas Intelligence is central part of the IE.
Later a BTP - Business
Technology Platform (reference architecture) was introduced. It
is next evolution of SAP’s digital platform. More less umbrella term comprising
of four pillars: DB & data management, Analytics, App Development & Integration
and finally Intelligent Technologies that are underlying technology foundation.
Now into more details of four
pillars of the BTP. Within first pillar - DB
& Data Management it was nice to see that SAP BW/4HANA has still a
prominent spot within SAP business architecture in a category of on-premise
apps. In cloud category there is a brand new solution called SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. I
do not know how to call it better I tend to refer it as "DWaaS". This
abbreviation can be seen in URLs pointing to UI of this solution e.g.
https://*.hanacloudservices.cloud.sap/dwaas-ui/ so I guess I am not that far
from naming it correctly. The DWaaS aims to be logical DW solution for
dynamically changing landscapes. It can consume data coming from SAP BW, BW4, SAP
SQL DW, SAP HANA etc. It is SAP’s response to new DWH requirements in cloud
world. It is not a product coming out from project blueberry that I heard about
on TechEd
2018. However, from what I understand it leverages part of functions that
were developed during the blueberry project. More than 2k customers registered
for DWaaS already at the time of the key note. Needless to say the DWaaS is in
GA as of Q4 this year and DWaaS is one of services of the SAP HANA Cloud.
Concerning second pillar – Analytics. SAP Analytics Could (SAC) will
be as of Q4 this year embedded into SuccessFactors. This follows announcement
from Las Vegas TechEd where same thing was announced just in case of S4/HANA.
The SAC is now primary analytics tools across SAP product portfolio. One more
announcement with regards SAP’s BusinessObjects portfolio. Beta version 4.3 of
SAP BusinessObjects BI platform will be available in December this year.
Next, the third pillar App Development & Integration. I
liked how CPI – Cloud Platform Integration is developing. Especially within
integration of SAP solutions and 3rd-party apps via SAP Cloud Platform Open Connectors.
Integration flows and data mapping are available on API Business Hub
(api.sap.com) now. This is similar to what other integration (IaaS) companies
are doing like mulesoft with their templates or built.io (now part of software
ag) with flows. ML is used here to suggest best mapping fields by ML based
content advisor. There is currently Open Connectors available to provide
integration with 160+ systems.
The fourth pillar intelligent technologies. These
comprises of Conversational AI, Intelligent RPA, IoT Cloud, IoT Edge. It was
announced that will be 200 ML cases live by end of 2019. There was an
interested demo show cased for automated user behavior mining. It started by
identifying processes that can be automated. There is a tool called “spotlight
by SAP” that provides overview of process (e.g. transactions in SAP ERP) that
require a lot of manual effort. KPIs like total time spend in UI can be
analyzed. Once the process candidate for automation is identified via Intelligent
RPA tool, a bot can be created based on data from the user behavior mining. These
solutions are coming from SAP spotlight. That is internal SAP startup focused
on tools for process transparency and data-driven actions that developed the Spotlight by SAP
tool.
Now to the TechEd’s
sessions. Unlikely to my first year at the TechEd I was this time more picky
while building my agenda. As rule of thumb, I always had a backup session
scheduled in case some session would not be interesting enough for me. Anyhow,
I attended approximately 20+ sessions, again related to topics I followed –
data warehousing/analytics, App development / ABAP. Below I mention few of
them.
Data
warehousing/analytics
I enjoyed session about “SAP Analytics Cloud, Analytics Designer:
Road Map (AIN828)” by David
Stocker. I appreciate David’s sense of humor for example while mentioning
that lady sitting close to him in the plane on the way to TechEd that had whole
P/L printed with her and studying it whole trip :) yeah who on the earth would
print the P/L :)
“Integrating
SAP Analytics Cloud in SAP Applications (AIN103)” I
learned that SAC is now strategic analytics platform for all core SAP business
applications. Interesting demos were presented related to Digital Boardroom.
Although it is separated product but it is based on different content in the
SAC. Normally there are two flavors of the SAC implementation. One is embedded
– means it sits on the same system just different tenant is provisioned to
customer. Other one is cross app where data is coming from multiple apps to the
SAC.
“Modeling
a Data Warehouse with SAP Data Warehouse Cloud (AIN378)”. A
hands-on session on administration, creating data models and reporting in SAP Data
Warehouse Cloud.
“One
Data Management Strategy with SAP DW Cloud and BW/4HANA (AIN207)” –
presentation on how DWaaS fits into business and IT user’s needs.
“SAP
Data Hub: Data Integration with Enterprise Applications (DAT202)” – Data
Hub is gaining traction also with newly ABAP, BW, SCP integration and SAC Push
API.
“Intelligent
Planning with SAP Analytics Cloud (AIN105)” – session so called
SAC for planning. It was nice to see all what the SAC is capable of in terms of
planning. We will see how all this will cope with current SAP portfolios of
planning solutions like BPC (standard/embedded/optimized/simplified, ...)
“Integrating
SAP Analytics Cloud in Third-Party Applications (AIN370)” -
hands-on session on integration API for SAP Analytics Cloud. We build simple
JAVA SCP app that consumed SAC’s API.
“SAC,
BW/4HANA, and SAP Data Warehouse Cloud (AIN376)” - hands-on
session. I tried examples on how to consume BW/4 query in SAC. This seems to be
important feature as BW queries (former BEx queries) will be only objects that
the SAC can consume out of the BW/4.
“Overview
of SAP BW/4HANA 2.0 (AIN208)” and “SAP BW/4HANA: Road Map
(AIN832)” – BW/4 is around for some time its 2nd version was introduced
earlier this year. My only regret is to see that BW/4 simplifications (see
BW4SL SAP Notes) are fixed and there are no plans to bring more functionalities
of classic BW (like Analysis Process Designer) to BW/4.
App
Development & Integration
Session “Unboxing SAP Cloud Platform (CAA115)”, I learned here that SAP
Business Application Studio will replaced Web IDE going forward. How subaccount
can be created for one account on SCP. In addition, there were interesting
information about Neo part of the SCP although it is still supported but as SAP
wants to give its customer option to go to any of hyperscalers so focus will be
on CloudFoundry part of the SCP.
“Optimize
Your Custom ABAP Code for SAP HANA (CAA104)” – For me a many new
ABAP concepts were presented like: host expressions (here ABAP can derive
correct type of variables from context), CTE - Common Table Expression
(temporary results sets in SQL queries that can be accessed in other SQL
statements), ABAP SQL Windowing (dividing data sets into subsets), hierarchies
within CDS views, new built-in ABAP types, and so on.
“Road
Map: ABAP Platform (CAA800), ABAP Strategy (CAA100) and
Get the Big Picture of the ABAP RESTful
Programming Model (CAA103)”. From product direction point of view, there
are two main forks:
1. On-prem = SAP NW AS for
ABAP7.5 (versions 7.50, 7.51. 75.2), these are only in maintenance mode
2.
Cloud =
2.1 SAP S/4HANA Cloud or ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA
2.1 SAP S/4HANA Cloud or ABAP Platform for SAP S/4HANA
2.2 SAP Cloud Platform ABAP
Environment (steampunk), not innovation code line
More on steampuk. At last
year’s TechEd there was RAP (RESTful ABAP Programming) model introduced. That
was with so-called unmanaged scenario where programmer need to code all (e.g. CRUD)
operations. Now there is managed scenario where some of functionality like
Insert/Update/Delete is delivered out of the box. This certainly speeds up
developing of Fiori apps. ABAP is still evolving but now with strategy = “cloud
first but not cloud only”.
I spent some time at show
flor too. SAP was running many interested things there. Few of them to mention:
“unconference” meetups, community lounge, developer garage, community talks / community
theater, app space where attendees had a chance to work on SAP tutorials, open source
bar where few OSS projects that SAP contributes to were presented, learning zone,
SAP runs SAP and others. SAP and especially people from SAP Developer and
Community Relations team did pretty good job in here.
Funny thing happened on Tuesday
night. I was so focused and in rush to complete tutorials in app space that I
did not notice that people are leaving for the day. Security people had to kick
me off from there :)
In closing, I want to say
that it was great experience to be at the TechEd this year again. I met some
people I know from different SAP gatherings (like Inside Tracks and/or Code
Jam) there at the TechEd too. Not mentioning meeting strangers over morning
coffee or during a lunch. Simply the TechEd is the place where community comes
together. So thank you SAP community for having me.
PS: One more thing I want to
mention waste management at the TechEd facility. I was very surprised to see
that there were no dedicated bins for recyclables (paper, glass, metals,
plastics). All the waste produced by conference attendees was just thrown into
one type of bin for common trash. I do not think they separate and recycle it
later. If the facility operator does not care about it – SAP should. Even it would
mean to pick different operator/location IMHO.
- image credits: twitter -
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