Cloud Appliance Library – CAL

Do you remember what did it take to do simple PoC based on some SAP solution? Usually it is not that easy. While doing it on premise it is pain. Even in private cloud it is not that easy. To solve things related to such a deployment and basically to enable customers to deploy test, training, evaluation or demo systems easily SAP introduced Cloud Appliance Library (CAL) or sometimes called SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC).

How does it work? With the CAL it is possible to deploy SAP system from preconfigured SAP software appliance. The final system will run in one of cloud (hosting) providers. In most cases the provider is Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure. Of course one who does the deployment must have an cloud provider account upfront as there is a payment associated for running it on their infrastructure. But the point is to do not lose the time while deploying. An access to the system is via web interface so user needs web browser only.

What systems are available at the CAL:

There are following types of the systems to be deployed available in the library. Standard SAP solutions like Business Suite on HANA, Rapid Deployment Solutions (RDS) products e.g. ERP, CRM; technology components NW: ABAP Application Server.

NB: There is more to say about pricing. Two use cases are here. Trial – only fee for infrastructure to cloud provider exists. Subscription – It is bring in your own license (BYOL) for particular SAP solution type of thing. Plus the license for CAL is applied. Of course fee for using of infrastructure goes to the hosting provider on top of these.

  

Useful links:

CAL homepage

SCN CAL community

What is difference between HANA Cloud Platform (HCP) and HANA Enterprise Cloud Platform (HEC)?

These two terms are actually pretty tricky. There are plenty of articles available on web trying to explain those two. Actually none of them satisfied my curiosity to understand them. This is basically the reason why I wrote this post. One thing to consider is that these two SAP offering are rapidly changing. Also some of SAP definitions of cloud computing terminologies (like IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) are different from industry's perspective definitions.

Basic facts

Both HCP and HEC are cloud platforms and are built around SAP HANA. Very basic fact is that SAP started HANA as database. This database evolved over the time to platform. They both use the same infrastructure. What is different is their purposes and different types of users.

HCP - is cloud platform (Platform-as-a-Service) intended for independent software vendors and developers to create and test cloud apps on HANA using its infrastructure, database and existing app. The platform is Java-based, relies on open standards and leverages industry leading tools to accelerate ramp-up and maximize developer productivity.

Former name of the HCP was SAP NetWeaver Cloud or NetWeaver Neo (neo = SAP HANA Cloud Console Client) or OnDemand Cloud Platform.

more info on HCP

HCP community

SAP NetWeaver Cloud – We’re open!

HEC - private managed cloud as hosting service where SAP provides the infrastructure (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) and the services needed to host SAP apps (e.g. Business Suite) deployment. This can include HANA custom and out-of-the box applications and SAP NetWeaver Business Information Warehouse software, all on a single instance of the HANA in-memory database platform. Also customer having already HANA license can user by moving it from their on-premise to cloud. In case of not having license an subscription model can be used. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud runs on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform.

more info on HEC and also here

More details on the topic can be found in following ASUG article

What is SAP ID Service?

Within intensively rise of could computing there is a need to authenticate the users before accessing an could application. Moreover there is a business requirement to have single sign on so users predominantly want to avoid entering login credentials again to web browser while they attempt to access app in the cloud. To fulfill all of these the best option for developer of could app is to use identity management system. By this the cloud based app doesn't need to even administrate the users. By the identity management system another identify provider (IdP) system is used. This can be 3^rd party SAML IdP. SAP has some offering in the field as well. It is SAP NetWeaver single sign-on or SAP ID Service (IDS).

In further I will focus on latter one. IDS is SAP's identity provider in the cloud. It is used by SAP also e.g. to manage an access to SAP web sites like sap.com, SAP Store, SMP or SCN. As default IdP it is used by SAP HANA Cloud Platform (formerly known as neo). Basically what IDS does is to verifying user identity, grant authentication and enable secure single sign-on. User just needs to have maintain his/her profile once (it is so called identity) with one password and with that he/she will be granted to access the app. Once user access particular app which has access is managed by IDS via web browser first it is redirected to IDS service (accounts.sap.com). The IDs then checks weather user is authorized to access the app as per user profile/identity. Once it is authorized web browser is forwarded to particular app.

The SAP ID Service is hosted at accounts.sap.com. It has its own component on SMP as: BC-IAM-IDS SAP ID Service.

For more details see article: SAP Insider Enable Secure Single Sign-On in the Cloud.

Design Thinking at SAP

These days the term of design thinking became very popular buzz word. All companies are pretending to be following the pattern of design thinking. So what is it in nut shell?

Methodology commonly referred to as design thinking is a proven and repeatable problem-solving protocol that any business or profession can employ to achieve extraordinary results (from Wikipedia). It is discipline that uses designer's sensibility and methods to match what user's need and what is feasible to achieve with technologies. Basically within the design thinking has three essences: Human, business and technology. 

You may wonder what is the topic of design thinking doing on my SAP related Blog? Actually design thinking is actually used at SAP to transition SAP as software company to cloud company. It means that classic SAP which is knows (or even is famous) because of on-premise ERP systems now wants to turn it-self to SaaS model delivery of software. 

Well in SAP case it may also be just a buzzword. However it seems they consider this initiative seriously. One of SAP’s founders Hasso Plattner is involved in so called Hasso Plattner Institute of Design which is design school based in Stanford University. The school was founded by David Kelley who is well known as buddy of Steve Jobs. David’s company Ideo was behind of scenes of many famous Apple products. 

In closing I would just point that transition from purely on-premise software company to the cloud company will not be easy. SAP really needs to change its mindset. In today’s world where almost no companies do mind to store their data into the cloud it will be extreme competition with pure cloud companies. Similarly we can see how other companies not only SAP are struggling with that transition. As an example I mention SAP’s archrival – Oracle. Last week they reported not very promising result in 2^nd consecutive quarter. Well maybe SAP is better positioned for that transition with their HANA offerings. But that’s something which only future will tell us.

SAP resources dedicated to design thinking:

SCN’s area

Design Thinking with SAP

User Experience@SAP