Explaining SAP BTP Account Model

SAP BTP cockpit (https://hana.ondemand.com/) is the central Web-based user interface for administrators, providing access to a number of functions for configuring and managing applications and connecting them to services on SAP BTP. Use the cockpit to manage resources, services, security, and perform actions on cloud applications.

The highest level displayed in the SAP BTP cockpit is a global account. Here you can connect hyperscaler resources and SAP systems or use analytics for monitoring application metrics.

Depending on your geographic location, you can choose one of the following gateways to improve the performance of the SAP BTP cockpit. These gateways only define how you access the cockpit. They don't restrict access to resources running in other regions in any way:

Americas

https://amer.cockpit.btp.cloud.sap

Asia-Pacific, Oceania

https://apac.cockpit.btp.cloud.sap

Europe, Middle-East, Africa

https://emea.cockpit.btp.cloud.sap

You can adapt the cockpit to your needs by changing the color theme and language. An SAP Universal ID is mandatory to work with the SAP BTP cockpit.

The user menu offers plenty of links to documentation and learning resources to help you with your tasks. Some of the most important ones are:

SAP BTP Community Page

https://pages.community.sap.com/topics/business-technology-platform

SAP Development Tools

https://tools.hana.ondemand.com/

SAP Discovery Center

https://discovery-center.cloud.sap/

SAP Help Documentation of SAP BTP

https://help.sap.com/docs/btp

Accounts in SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) are structured according to global accounts, directories, and subaccounts:

Global Account

A global account represents a contract with SAP.

Entitlement

The contract components result in entitlements of services.

Directory

Directories are used to structure a global account and may distribute entitlements.

Subaccount

Subaccounts provide services based on the assigned entitlements.

Region

Every subaccount runs in one region, which can be predefined in the global account.

The global account represents your signed contract with SAP. It's used to manage subaccounts organized in directories. The billing of this contract is based on the entitlements you order to use platform resources. These entitlements are distributed, via directories, to subaccounts for actual consumption.

Subaccounts are independent from each other and run in a certain region. The available regions for subaccounts can be predefined in the global account. A region is the physical location where applications, data, or services are hosted. The region assigned to a subaccount doesn't have to be directly related to the location of the user.

Global accounts, directories, subaccounts, and entitlements are managed in the SAP BTP cockpit. Accounts and directories can be visualized as table, tree, or tiles depending on what your current task is.

The purpose of directories is to organize subaccounts. This could be based on categories like regions or departments, services or solutions, technical aspects, or business topics.

The entitlements can be accessed via the menu on the left for the currently opened global account, directory, or subaccount.

A directory just needs a name, description, and parent object like the global account or another directory. The highest level of a given path is always the global account, and the lowest is a subaccount, which means that you can have up to five levels of directories.

A subaccount requires the same information as a directory, and also has the global account or a directory as a parent object. In addition, subaccounts also require a region and unique subdomain. The subdomain will become part of the URL for accessing applications in the subaccount.

In the Global Account Settings, default values for provider and region can be set. These defaults lead to proposed field values when creating a subaccount in this global account. This makes it not only easier but also safer to select the correct provider and region for your services. Neither can be changed later for a subaccount.

When creating a new subaccount, you can set the following advanced features:

Used for production

This flag should be set if your subaccount is used for production purposes. It's a meta flag used for your internal operation helping you to take appropriate action when handling incidents.

Enable beta features

This flag enables the use of beta services and applications in the subaccount. SAP shall not be liable for any errors or damage arising from the use of such functionality. Use beta features productive at your own risk..

Caution

Once beta features are enabled, they cannot be disabled in this subaccount anymore.

When having many subaccounts, you may want to add labels to easier search for subaccounts based on certain criteria. A label has a name and may have none or many values assigned to. It could be some scope about users, services, runtimes, apps, departments, solutions, connections, or anything coming to your mind.