SAP : Partner Cuts App Development Time by 50 Percent using SAP S/4HANA Cloud SDK

One year after covering the launch of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud SDK at SAP TechEd, one of my first requests was for an update: Are partners using it and what else has happened since? The answer was simple.

SAP has continued to increase development opportunities for partners with a new innovation program, and many are using the software development kit (SDK) to innovate on top of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

In fact, during our most recent onsite video interview at SAP TechEd, Sven Denecken, senior vice president, head of Product Management and Co-Innovation at SAP, credited SAP S/4HANA Cloud SDK with helping partners more efficiently build quality microvertical solutions. Here's what two partners shared about their experiences.

Cut Development Time in Half

First up was Leonardo De Araujo, CTO at Beyond Technologies, a long-time SAP partner. His professional services firm is based in Canada, with offices in the U.S., France, and South Africa. Using SAP S/4HANA Cloud SDK, he showed me how Beyond Technologies is building a visual planner extension for SAP Plant Maintenance that reads data directly from SAP S/4HANA.

'SAP S/4HANA Cloud SDK has significantly enhanced our development process for extensions on SAP S/4HANA Cloud,' said De Araujo. 'Instead of manually implementing all the required code to handle OData services, the toolkit generates them automatically for us. With this, we have been able reduce development time by up to 50 percent.'

On a side note, I caught up with Alain Dubois, partner and chief marketing and business development officer at Beyond Technologies, during his roundtable session at last year's SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference. During that presentation, he shared how Beyond Technologies is benefiting from its own go-live of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Drive Financial Sector Innovation

Next up in the interview was Helmut Koenigseder, lead IT consultant at msg group, an SAP partner based in Germany. With over 7,000 employees, msg group is a self-described industry specialist, providing consulting and intelligent solutions for numerous sectors. These include customers in insurance and reinsurance, banking, automotive, and the public sector that are turning to cloud-based applications for disruptive growth. He demonstrated the company's native cloud app that automates processes for reinsurance customers.

'The magic happens around SAP S/4HANA Cloud SDK. It's our point for easily integrating with our customers' SAP S/4HANA back-end systems, giving us run-time and design time advantages,' said Koenigseder. 'When we develop an app, we base it on the continuous delivery and deployment pipeline provided by SAP S/4HANA Cloud SDK. This is helping us move from ABAP to a cloud-native solutions powerhouse.'

Some experts have called cloud the launching pad for advances driving intelligent technologies such as machine learning, IoT, predictive analytics, and blockchain. If that's so, then SAP S/4HANA Cloud SDK is the fuel developers need to create apps delivering industry-specific innovation for business value.

Follow me @smgaler