Developing from a single mold

Almost every company wants to significantly increase the speed of application development at the lowest possible cost. A project duration of one year from the idea to the developed application with costs amounting to several million euros is something that only very few companies are likely to accept. Instead, the goal is to go from idea to production in just one day.

Using open source technologies and cloud-native development models, SAP users can both integrate innovations and new end-to-end processes with SAP and containerize Abap in-house developments. On the one hand, open source technologies are the basis for successful modernization.

They have already emerged as the central innovation driver in numerous areas such as big data, AI, and IoT. For some time now, SAP has also been increasingly going down the open source route, for example with Linux for Hana or with Kubernetes for SAP Data Intelligence Deployments. On the other hand, hybrid cloud environments are the ideal platform for SAP and non-SAP developers.

They support the automated provisioning and management of both traditional and new containerized SAP workloads as well as non-SAP applications. Such infrastructures are therefore indispensable for SAP users on their way to the intelligent, integrated enterprise.

Hybrid cloud environments and cloud-native developments are essentially characterized by microservices-based architecture, API-based communication, container-based infrastructure and DevOps processes. Service-based architectures such as microservices enable the construction of modular, loosely coupled services and thus accelerate application creation.

Services are delivered via lightweight, technology-agnostic APIs that reduce complexity and effort in deployment, scaling and maintenance. Cloud-native applications are also based on containers that enable operation in different technology environments. Last but not least, application development in cloud-native approaches follows agile methods with DevOps principles.

Such scenarios with open hybrid cloud environments as the target architecture for SAP and non-SAP workloads have long since ceased to be fiction; they have long since become reality, as many examples demonstrate. For example, there are integration gateway solutions based on Red Hat OpenShift that provide more than 2500 SAP BAPIs (Business Application Programming Interfaces) as Restful endpoints. This allows users to easily create, deploy, and integrate SAP customizations as microservices.

The advantages of a cloud-native architecture are far-reaching for SAP and non-SAP developers: They can more easily perform SAP upgrades and develop new business services; new solutions can often be integrated in a matter of minutes. At the same time, there is little dependency on Abap, so no specific Abap development know-how is required. A significant advantage for developers is also that they can use their own infrastructure and preferred programming language such as Java or Python.

Last but not least, both user groups benefit from an agile development methodology. Thus, the DevOps concept can also be easily applied by decoupling the end-to-end processes from the SAP core. The switch is also worthwhile when modernizing existing Abap in-house developments - leaner, more modern and significantly more secure code is the result.

IT silos continue to hinder companies in the flexible and future-oriented design of their IT infrastructure. A clear trend is therefore the search for a uniform technical basis that supports the seamless connection of existing and new applications and services - and does so without adaptation in all cloud platforms and simultaneously on-premises. The means of choice here is the enterprise Kubernetes platform Red Hat OpenShift, certified by SAP.