Digital transformation, simply put, is approaching business in a different and innovative way by driving innovation through digital technology.
Systems and solutions are becoming more intelligent, smarter, and more cognitive, and changes in business processes and employee culture must be supported by technology. Digital transformation leverages these changes to boost business.
This transformation heavily relies on an enterprise’s willingness to become digital-forward. It needs to be interconnected, intelligent, and sustainable in order to address the current changes and challenges many businesses face. Let’s take a look at how an intelligent enterprise can provide the tools you need for a successful digital transformation.
If you’re part of an intelligent enterprise, your business runs agile and integrated business processes. They leverage the latest technologies—including AI, blockchain, automation, Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, edge computing, and more—by applying them at scale, which results in a change to the core of the organization. With the insight derived from the huge amount of data residing inside and outside the enterprise, technologies allow you to know what’s happening and why, and can predict what may happen next while recommending what you should do to stay ahead of the competition. Not only can intelligent enterprises personalize the customer experience, they can also provide an outstanding employee experience. All these goals can be achieved by collaborating with partners and engaging in the ecosystem for broader coverage and impact.
Intelligent enterprises, however, go beyond digitization and the leveraging of technology. For an intelligent enterprise to be effective, a culture of innovation, agility, and speed must be nurtured and promoted. The entire organization and ecosystem must be carried along this journey to ensure full participation and cooperation.
SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) was launched to help clients transform themselves into sustainable and intelligent enterprises. It offers the major capabilities required to create an intelligent enterprise, and provides prebuilt integrations and solutions for handling data, analytics, extensions, dashboards, workflows, and more.
SAP BTP provides the data layer (database and analytics) required by processes to be intelligent; the analytics layer, which allows enterprises to get real-time insights; the application development layer and integration capabilities for flexible integration, easy development, and extensions to standard SAP solutions—all leveraging intelligent technologies for automation, conversational AI, and IoT, among others.
The ability to use data to understand customers, partners, employees, events, trends, etc. has opened up new horizons for enterprises. More accurate and impactful decisions can be made after the fact as well as at the moment a transaction is happening, and enterprises can predict what will happen so that the right decisions can be made.
Application development is a key pillar of SAP BTP and the platform offers a variety of extensions and services that can be used to develop custom business applications. Our Application Development with SAP Business Technology Platform book is here to introduce developers like you to these tools and teach them how to run applications on SAP BTP.
Part One introduces you to SAP BTP and its components. Focus on how the needs of intelligent enterprises are supported by the capabilities SAP has introduced through SAP BTP. Explore the latest advancements in technologies and learn about the different extensibility options provided by SAP, and specifically, SAP BTP.
Part Two is where you’ll come to understand backend and frontend cloud application development. Learn the capabilities of SAP Business Application Studio for innovative application development, along with the SAP Cloud Application Programming Model for expediting cloud-based application development.
You’ll be introduced to Node.js for developing real-time, event driven, and scalable applications, along with the Java programming language. Then, see how ABAP can be used to develop cloud applications.
The book also illustrates the rapid development of applications using SAP’s serverless environment—SAP BTP, Kyma runtime—and demonstrates how to develop engaging client-faced applications using SAP Fiori.
Once you’ve covered application development, learn how to operate them in Part Three. Explore the different application lifecycle management options to determine the best way to approach efficient, fast, and secure development. Then, learn how to best monitor if the functionalities are working and generating the desired impact so further actions can be made if needed.
Part Four introduces you to intelligent technologies. First, learn how SAP Workflow Management provides low-code orchestration and visibility of work across applications. Then, see how business rules allow non-developers to define rule-based execution of processes.
Understand the capabilities provided by SAP BTP to interact with IoT and make things an integral part of end-to-end business processes, enabling them to be more intelligent, effective, and efficient. You’ll explore additional capabilities for SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation, SAP Conversational AI, and SAP Data Intelligence. Lastly, close out the book with a roadmap to see how the custom developer space will evolve in the future.
This book is for developers looking to learn how to develop applications on SAP BTP. It’s useful for those ready to discover how SAP BTP can bring digital transformation to an organization.
Gairik Acharya is a senior technical architect and associate partner at IBM with more than 22 years of IT experience. He is a recognized expert in ABAP, SAP HANA, OData, SAP Gateway, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Fiori, SAPUI5, and SAP BTP. In his role as senior architect at the IBM SAP S/4HANA Center of Excellence group in North America, he has architected solutions for several global implementations for IBM's top-tier clients.
Govind Bajaj is an SAP business intelligence solution architect with more than 15 years of IT experience in managing and delivering complex business intelligence solutions. He has worked extensively with the design and development of analytical solutions on the SAP HANA platform, both on-premise and in the cloud. His areas of interest include machine learning, integration of SAP solutions with open source technologies, and big data.
Avijit Dhar is a senior consultant at IBM India. He has more than 15 years of experience in leading the design and implementation of large-scale implementations, especially in the SAP manufacturing domain, and with growing IBM’s SAP Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning practice. He is a subject matter expert in user experience, IoT, machine learning, and other emerging technologies, and he has been involved in designing cutting-edge industry assets and solutions.
Dr. Anup Ghosh is an SAP chief technology officer at IBM Services Europe and director of enterprise application for the IBM Cloud Solution Center. With more than 23 years of experience in helping several Fortune 500 clients globally with IT transformations, Anup is an IBM distinguished engineer. He's an active researcher with a number of patents and is a regular speaker at SAP TechEd and SAPPHIRE.
Asidhara Lahiri is an enterprise architect at SAP. Asidhara architects for global clients in different industries such as consumer products, oil and gas, airlines, telco, and utility industries using complex SAP implementations. She has more than 24 years of work experience, more than 22 of which have been in SAP technologies. She advises client executives on transformation roadmaps for their SAP landscape. She worked as a lead architect for solution creation using SAP BTP and SAP S/4HANA for specific industries, and designed, developed, and reviewed client architecture. She has designed delivery services around new-edge technologies in SAP for one of the major SIs.
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