Extending with the SAP Business Technology Platform

Objectives
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Describe the Cloud Foundry environment in the SAP Business Technology Platform

Introducing the intelligent enterprise

We believe that the future belongs to intelligent enterprises, which use the latest technologies to constantly innovate and transform the way they do business. Organizations aim for integrated, end-to-end business processes, and not siloed systems. Intelligent enterprises are more profitable, they are able to run efficiently and drive long-term growth.

Key dimensions of intelligent enterprises include:

  • Assisted and automated business process execution
  • Actionable business insights
  • Innovative business models and practices
  • Collaborative networks
  • Experience management

Intelligent enterprises provide an overview of:

  • Lead to cash - including all aspects of the customer journey from the initial interaction, to order fulfillment, and service delivery.
  • Design to operate - capturing all processes in manufacturing and the supply chain.
  • Experience management - using the power of human insight to improve business processes.
  • Sustainability management - tracking your carbon footprint in all operations to ensure we leave a habitable planet for future generations.

Exploring SAP BTP

You are free to run extension applications on any platform of your choice, nevertheless SAP proposes and recommends to do it on the SAP Business Technology Platform. This way you can take advantage of the many high value services available in the platform itself.

You can find additional information about the services of the SAP BTP in the SAP Discovery Center at https://discovery-center.cloud.sap/viewServices.

Introducing Cloud Foundry

Introducing Cloud Foundry

Cloud Foundry is an open source, multi-Cloud application platform, which is a service (PaaS) governed by the Cloud Foundry Foundation.

The software was originally developed by VMware, transferred to Pivotal Software (a joint venture by EMC, VMware, and General Electric) but brought back into VMware at the end of 2019 with VMware's take over of Pivotal.

In SAP BTP, the Cloud Foundry environment is made available to host running applications. The environment can be administered via the SAP BTP Cockpit.

Reference Cloud Foundry documentation can be found at https://www.cloudfoundry.org and https://docs.cloudfoundry.org.

Additional information about the Cloud Foundry runtime in the SAP BTP can be found at: https://discovery-center.cloud.sap/serviceCatalog/cloud-foundry-runtime

Introducing the SAP BTP Cockpit

The SAP BTP Cockpit is a Web-based administration interface, which provides access to a number of functions for configuring and managing applications, services, and subaccounts.

You use the cockpit to manage resources, services, security, monitor application metrics, and perform actions on Cloud applications.

The cockpit provides an overview of the applications available in the different technologies supported by SAP BTP, and shows other key information about the subaccount. The tiles contain links for direct navigation to the relevant information.

Describing the Application Hierarchy

In Cloud Foundry, applications run within a fixed two-level hierarchical structure made of organizations and spaces.

The Cloud Foundry organization corresponds to the SAP BTP subaccount. Running applications can be displayed and administered within the SAP BTP Cockpit.

Introducing the Cloud Foundry CLI

The Cloud Foundry CLI is the official command line client for Cloud Foundry.

In SAP BTP, you can use the Cloud Foundry CLI to manage apps, service instances, orgs, spaces, and users in your Cloud Foundry environment.

Detailed information about the Cloud Foundry CLI can be found at: https://github.com/cloudfoundry/cli and https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/cf-cli.

Introducing Cloud Foundry Buildpacks

Cloud Foundry is designed to support Cloud-native application development using your choice of programming language. A Cloud Foundry language run-time environment is bundled as something called a buildpack.

Buildpacks provide framework and run-time support for apps. Buildpacks typically examine your apps to determine what dependencies to download and how to configure the apps to communicate with bound services.

Applications are deployed to the target platform by using the push operation of the platform API. For this reason, in Cloud Foundry parlance, applications are pushed to the platform.

Pushing an application works as follows:

  1. The application is uploaded to the platform.
  2. Cloud Foundry automatically detects an appropriate buildpack for it.
  3. This buildpack is used to compile or prepare your app for launch.

Detailed information about the Cloud Foundry Buildpacks can be found at: https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/buildpacks.

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