SAP TechEd 2019 - tips. impressions. trends.

I recently returned from the four-day action-packed event connecting with many SAP enthusiasts at SAP TechEd 2019 in Las Vegas. I picked up a different vibe at TechEd; on the geekier end of the scale and a chill out that I haven't experienced at previous SAP conferences.

Given that there are 1047 possible lectures, showcase demos, roadmaps, hands-on workshops, CodeJam-, code review sessions and more, it can be a little intimidating for a first-timer. What should you do? What should you absolutely not miss? There will be overlaps, you will for sure miss some sessions, sometimes because you might be held up talking to somebody during the coffee break about the production issue at company XYZ and actually this might be a good thing. Be prepared to pivot, and your Plan B can even turn out to be better than your Plan A!

So, "What is #SAPTechEd? My company is still utilizing SAP R/3 4.6c." You think to yourself, "Why should I go? I will have no use for any of this!" – Please reconsider!

Don't panic, for starters. Firstly, I have never used the most recent version of SAP shown there. I highly doubt a lot of people have. SAP is pushing the latest technology and versions at an alarming pace. Let's step back and remember that staying up-to-date still remains essential in today's digital age. Depending on your company's SAP Integration strategy you should feel the pulse what’s new and strategic at SAP. Where should you invest and where not. Be critical with your questions, ask yourself and the peers what you're trying to accomplish before you start investing at all.

To pick up the question I raised earlier – TechEd is like the Disney World for tech people. You want to find some third party software? There are many vendors who would love to talk to you. You want to get your hands on the latest and greatest? Hands-on exercises and interactive discussions guide you through extending, integrating and managing SAP/non-SAP solutions easily and quickly. The idea is that you get to play with something new and different and see if you like it, or not. However, it is a mini training session given by the best of the best. What other time can you have them as an instructor? This experience is priceless if you want to develop your own products and get the paying customers in the end.

Secondly, it is amazing how much everyone knows and how easy it is to talk to them. Even if you are one of the shy people. If there is one takeaway from this blog it should be this – use TechEd as an engineering repository, professional network and forum all rolled into one - basically StackOverflow in real life.

The best way to meet people is the hands on. You sit by someone you don’t know and you pretty much have to talk to them. Conversation flowing and you can just listen and join if you feel comfortable or just listen and learn. 

If nothing helps, just go to the puppy section to pet some pooches and support a great cause.

Back to business. SAP's vision is to provide a Business Technology Platform – making it easier for customers to consume SAP technology needed to solve business problems efficiently. But where to host, what to host on, with whom and how to integrate all the different components?

I believe that Integration Management is one of the significant areas of potential and creates competitive advantage over the next few years if you do well in this field. I don't refer to Integration as a point-to-point connection. Rather integrating by putting together different constructs of technology to deliver an outcome that was not designed that way.

You should have SAP's value proposition (see the illustration below, focusing on Integration) in mind in order to put all these pieces together in the next passages: SAP Cloud Platform (SCP), Digital Core, SAP HANA, SAP Analytics, Data Intelligence, Analytics, Integration and hyperscaler.

As I traversed the show floor, participated in various hands-on workshops, and engaged directly with other tech enthusiasts and experts, I walked away with great insights particularly by attending the following four sessions (incl. session #ids).

1. Integrate It All with SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite #INT101

A major criticism of SAP's service offerings was in the past years that SAP is not even seamlessly integrated within it's own Intelligent Enterprise Suite, not to mention with other integration platforms. Well if you explore in this session the SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite closely, the integration platform as a service from SAP. You will quickly see its evolved capabilities for process integration, workflow, API management, Internet of Things connectivity, and more, as well as how they support all integration domains for today's digital enterprises. You will also learn how customers have implemented SCP Integration Suite to support their integration needs in cloud and hybrid environments. Cloud Integration can be so simple and appealing. Intelligent Enterprises are integrated enterprises!

2. SAP Graph – Building Extension in Minutes #LTI22

For me SAP Graph was the most interesting new thing based on the experiences from TechEd this year. Graph is a new SAP endpoint which allows users to browse all their SAP data via one harmonized, simple API. It means you will get a canonicalized version of data. You can ask the API for a customer and as a user, you could care less about if data is coming from C4C, S4 or Sales Cloud. It will all be handled by the Graph Project.

To paraphrase, SAP Head of Central Engineering Jan Schaffner from his speech in LV, imagine SAP Graph as a curated museum experience (with selected paintings/APIs) instead of visiting totally filled out rooms with exposed paintings/APIs from the SAP API Business Hub.

Another cool feature which I noticed was the seamless access via a unified Authentication. The APIs can be accessed across all the different SAP Line of Business (LoB) solutions using the same OAuth Token. In a sense, that you only get access to the data you are authorized to.

It will certainly speed up integration and UI development because you don’t need to consider where the actual data is coming from and how to fetch it. On the website graph.sap, there is an example of how the service works. You can request an early access to beta. SAP Graph is still in early development status, though. So there is a long way to go before users will be able to work with it on the real systems. Anyways, check out the lightning talk #LTI22 providing great overview and a plan for SAP Graph going forward.

3. Best Practices to Integrate SAP Analytics Cloud into Your IT Landscape #CTI32

According to SAP's BI strategy – the goal is to provide an all-in-one analytics for not just BI, but also planning and predictive analytics. Moving away from the need of having multiple products. SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) will be SAP’s primary solution for data discovery moving forward. New data discovery investments will be focused heavily on SAC, where you can discover, analyze, plan, predict, and collaborate in one seamless experience that integrates with both on premise and cloud-based data sources and applications.

In this session, an SAP Community member shared tips, tricks, and best practices on how to integrate the SAC solution into your existing on-premise and cloud IT landscape. With information based on experience from multiple customer cases, the session gave me a quick start to set up connectivity, authentication and authorization for smooth integration.

We as EY look forward to leveraging the power of SAC to create new value propositions that help clients to not only elevate their gaming strategies (see the main picture above), but also their transformation journeys, and we explored ways to leverage that power in existing EY solutions to unleash innovation on their digital platforms. If you have any questions: lets talk, understand, deep dive on #sapanalyticscloud; as well as on our packaged solutions for the SAC extension – SAP Digital Boardroom. We have 60+ solutions enabled and are willing to share our experiences with you.

4. Build a Node.js Extension for SAP S/4HANA Cloud with Minimal Effort #CAA371

SAP's extensibility strategy is based on two pillars: in-app extensibility and side-by-side extensibility. As the name implies, in-app extensions are implemented using key user tools directly inside the SAP S/4HANA system, while side-by-side extensions leverage the SCP as extension platform. I was particularly interested in the last one.

In this hands-on session, I leveraged the SCP Extension Factory, as the go-to cloud-native extensibility framework for the Intelligent Enterprise. In specific SAP Cloud SDK for JavaScript to quickly build and deploy a cloud-native, side-by-side extension of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Therefore I wrote an application that interacts with SAP S/4HANA Cloud and leveraged continuous delivery out of the box. DevOps is a key enabler for shipping high-quality, value-adding software as fast and as often as possible.

Similarly, SAP Cloud SDK can help to consume services and messages of many SAP solutions from Java and JavaScript. For example to access services of SCP such as SAP Cloud Blockchain service.

"Can I opt to pursue the extensibility strategy, innovate and deliver value in a cloud based environment while finishing up my major transformation project? Whether and, if so, how?" It probably won’t come as a surprise to many of you that I would be a big fan of SCP in this case – suggesting a BI-modal approach! No modifications to on premise environment, no additional technical debt to maintain within ECC/S4 going forward, completely decoupled from digital core using APIs and delivered via cloud services which in many cases aren't even available on premise.

Of course, there is much more to see at SAP TechEd, which hasn't been covered in this blog. I welcome your own insights to this blog, and look forward to staying connected with you. If you have any questions or require further clarification please feel free to reach out to me.

! In case you want to get my entire personalized agenda from TechEd, simply dm me or drop a comment on this blog. It can be time-saving to get prepared for the next TechEds in Barcelona and Bangalore with a cheat sheet !

The views expressed by the author are not those of Ernst & Young LLP, SAP or other members of the global EY organization.