Setting Up SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) Services

In the cloud, SAP applications run in an environment called the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). The SAP BTP provides a structure for application processing, data management, maintenance, and customization. As a System Administrator, you would be responsible for setting up this structure.

One of the major differences between running applications on-premise versus in the cloud is system provisioning.

In an on-premise system, the customer is responsible for:

• Planning and setting up a data center.
• Plan for logistics, disaster recovery, physical security, and so on.
• Acquiring, installing, and maintaining hardware.
• Installing platform software, including operating systems, databases, and other system software.
• Planning, installing, implementing, and maintaining the application software.

In a cloud environment, all of that is the responsibility of the cloud vendor. The customer is only responsible for:

• Sizing and planning the application.
• Subscribing to the necessary hardware and software.
• Functional implementation of the application.

These steps are performed within an SAP tool called the SAP BTP cockpit. See below a screenshot of SAP BTP Cockpit.

SAP's cloud architecture in the SAP BTP consists of global accounts, subaccounts, and directories. These are organized into a hierarchical structure.

A global account represents your signed contract with SAP. It is the parent folder for all cloud processing for your organization. It possesses entitlements, which are the purchased rights to access regions, create run-time environments, use cloud tools, consume cloud resources, and run applications.

As a System Administrator, you would log on to this account using a Web browser. You will then set up your landscape using the SAP BTP Cockpit.​

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A subaccount is the actual environment where your application will run. All the necessary hardware and software is already installed. You subscribe to the systems required to use them.

Using the SAP BTP Cockpit, you would create your subaccounts. Subaccounts are independent of each other and you would typically have several of them, for development, testing, production, and other purposes.

In between the global account and the subaccount lies directories. A directory allows you to organize your subaccounts. For example, you may have different divisions running different SAP applications. A set of directories would allow you to keep these subaccounts separate for corporate organization, resource use, or security. You would create them using the SAP BTP Cockpit.

Entitlements are the specific set of hardware and software resources available to your organization. Since all the hardware and software systems are already installed and running in the cloud, entitlements restrict the usage of these systems to what is specified in your customer contract. Quotas represent the numeric quantity that defines the maximum allowed consumption of that resource.

Entitlements include:

• Runtime environments such as Cloud Foundry, Kyma, and ABAP
• Tools such as the Business Application Studio (a development environment) or Cloud Identity Services (a security service)
• Databases such as SAP HANA 

The administrators plan the entitlements and quotas and assign them to particular subaccounts using the SAP BTP Cockpit.

A region is the geographic location where the applications, data, and hardware are located. This can be any location supported by the cloud vendor. 

Specify regions using the SAP BTP cockpit.

The runtime environment provides the context in which the application will be run, maintained, and possibly customized within a subaccount.

SAP BTP runtime environments include:

• Cloud Foundry - An open source, cloud-native application execution and development environment
• Kyma - An open source, cloud-native environment based on Kubernetes
• ABAP - SAP's native development environment

Once you've created your runtime environment, you would subscribe to the software and tools needed for that subaccount.

As a System Administrator, you would be responsible for using the SAP BTP cockpit to establish, monitor, control, and maintain all of these structures in the SAP BTP.

Thanks to this lesson, you're now able to describe the architecture of SAP BTP and its components.