Managing SAP BTP Shared Responsibility Model

Applying Shared Responsibility Principles and Best Practices

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to apply the SAP BTP Shared Responsibility Model.

Introduction

This lesson explains the Shared Responsibility Model for SAP BTP and how responsibilities are divided between SAP and the customer. This knowledge is essential for consultants because it defines what SAP secures and manages—such as infrastructure, runtimes, OS, and data centers—and what you must design, configure, and safeguard, including data, access, applications, and custom extensions.

You’ll also learn how to use the SAP BTP Guidance Framework, which provides the decision guides, reference architectures, methodologies, and best practices you’ll rely on when planning secure, scalable BTP landscapes. Understanding these resources ensures your solutions align with SAP standards and avoid misconfigurations that could affect security, performance, or compliance.

SAP BTP Guidance Framework

The Shared Responsibility Model between your company and SAP defines how responsibilities are divided. SAP manages the platform, whereas your company develops and manages applications and the corresponding data. SAP is responsible for the infrastructure, including the physical security of data centers, network controls, and operational security including monitoring. Based on this, SAP is responsible for:

  • SAP HANA Service Management

  • Runtimes and Services Management

  • Resource and Account Provisioning

  • Operating System (OS) Maintenance

  • Infrastructure Maintenance

  • Hardware Components including Setup

  • Provision of Data Center Facility

SAP BTP shared model: customer handles account, application evolution, creation, partial HANA; SAP manages runtimes, provisioning, OS, infrastructure, hardware, datacenter.

Customers are responsible for their data, access management, and applications and their security. This model ensures that both parties contribute to maintaining a secure environment, with SAP handling the underlying platform, in this case SAP BTP, and users managing their specific configurations.

Product Documentation: Shared Responsibility Model Between You and SAP

SAP BTP Guidance Framework is your compass for architecting, implementing, and operating solutions on SAP BTP. It provides a central access point for decision guides, reference architectures, methodologies, and many best practices. The framework consists of the following elements:

  • Decision guides helping you to identify the technology option that best fits your needs

  • Reference architectures that allow you to explore how to architect solutions on SAP BTP with the help of curated solution templates

  • Methodologies that offer a guided approach toward increasing your cloud technology maturity level, covering both technical and organizational aspects

  • Recommendations for different technology domains, helping you to evaluate and choose the right implementation option

  • DevOps principles that enable your development and operations teams to be more efficient

SAP BTP Guidance Framework showing guidance for architects, developers, administrators.

Get started with exploring best practices, grow your skills with learning and enablement offerings for SAP BTP, and engage with us in the SAP Community. Make sure to bookmark the SAP BTP Guidance Framework and keep an eye on it, as it gets updated and enhanced from time to time.

You can access the SAP BTP Guidance Framework here:

SAP BTP Guidance Framework

Guides and Recommendations

The following is a list of the most important guides and documents for administrators.

Note

We highly recommend you to have a look at the whole SAP BTP Guidance Framework. But for the scope of this learning journey, we summarize the most important guides and documents for administrators

Best Practices for SAP BTPExtension Architecture GuideIntegration Architecture Guide
  • Best Practices for planning, setting up, building, and managing SAP BTP.
  • Starting point for setting up application lifecycle management for your specific use case, business, and IT landscape.
  • For Architects: Plan your organizational setup and your account and security model.
  • For administrators and developers: Define the correct methodologies and tools for your projects.
  • For SAP Partners: Set up SAP BTP for your customers.

You can access the Best Practices for SAP BTP here:

Best Practices for SAP BTP

  • Helps determine the appropriate SAP technology for different extension scenarios
  • Offers tailored recommendations for enterprise architects and solution architects
  • Insights about the best technical extension building blocks for presentation tier and back ends
  • Helps to determine which extensions run on SAP S/4HANA as an on-stack extension and which on SAP BTP
  • Based on the SAP Application Extension Methodology (SAP Application Extension Methodology)

You can access the Extension Architecture Guide here:

Extension Architecture Guide

  • Detailed guide to integration technologies from SAP

  • Guidance along Process Integration, Data integration, and Analytics integration

  • Guidance on how to evolve their existing integration architectures with the SAP technology offerings available today

  • Based on the SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology (SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology)

You can access the Integration Architecture Guide here: Integration Architecture Guide

SAP BTP Developer’s GuideDevOps with SAP BTPSAP BTP Security Recommendations

The goal of the SAP BTP Developer’s Guide is to help you implement business applications on SAP BTP. The guide includes:

  • Blueprints with core SAP BTP services
  • An automated SAP BTP Infrastructure setup
  • Standard technologies for smooth integrations
  • Guidance for delivering cloud and suite qualities

You can access the SAP BTP Developer’s Guide here:SAP BTP Developer's Guide

This page is a collection of resources around the topic of DevOps with SAP BTP. There are references and cross-links for the topics of planning and setting up, development and testing, delivery and change management, and last but not least, for monitoring and operations.

You can access the DevOps with SAP BTP page here: DevOps with SAP BTP

Note: Next to this, there's a whole standalone learning journey on the topic of DevOps with SAP BTP.

You can explore it here: Discovering DevOps with SAP BTP

Security is a crucial topic in IT infrastructures, especially in cloud environments. SAP BTP fulfills a lot of security standards and certifications. You can get an overview about all certifications and attestations for SAP solutions in the SAP Trust Center: SAP Trust Center

Besides the security and compliance topics that are SAP managed, there are a couple of topics and services to consider where administrators are in charge of operating the services and extensions in a secure and compliant manner. For these Scenarios, SAP offers a collection of recommendations.

You can access them here: SAP BTP Security Recommendations

Summary

  • Shared responsibility roles define customer, SAP, and cloud provider duties for security and operations.
  • Customer controls include user access and data governance, while providers run infrastructure and networks; SAP safeguards the platform.
Learning

SAP FacebookSAP YoutubeSAP LinkedIn