Architecting Solutions with SAP Business Technology Platform: An architectural guide to integrating, extending, and innovating enterprise solutions using SAP BTP

Good Book with lots of Information, Please read the book 3 times to become expert in BTP.

Thank you Serdar and Eric for bringing this great book on SAP BTP. Covering all aspects and features of the SAP business technology platform including design examples. Great book to get familiarized with SAP BTP and design/architect solutions using SAP.

Book content is good, image screenshot not visible (not Good Quality image printed in book)image screenshot printed in gray color its very poor quality..

SAP, the corporation standing for “Systems Analysis Development,” is a significant company with over 105,000 employees worldwide. The SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is a significant push from this company to provide an end-to-end development platform that incorporates existing platform technology to help companies succeed in a changing environment. “Architecting Solutions with SAP Business Technology Platform” (Packt) by Serdar Simsekler, Eric Du offers a conceptual overview of how different SAP products could be architected to solve various commercial problems. The biggest challenge is that the book never dives past the architectural level. A full explanation and diagrams are offered for how various blocks, all named with some “SAP” attached to the name, like SAP Enterprise, SAP Build, SAP Kyma, SAP connect, SAP Integration, and others, link to other portions of the cloud. The book is divided into five sections, each introducing different aspects of the overall SAP architecture. The five sections are SAP BTP, foundations, integration, extensibility, and data to value. Each covers a different area, but many are repetitive in their approach. While advertising the architecture, many diagrams show the same block and link with different names substituted in the boxes. Since the book works at the architectural level, it is frequently challenging to understand how the different pieces interact and where the change occurs between the previous picture showing a connection from one SAP element to an ICAM solution and another element showing connections between Cloud Foundry and Integration. Building these connections requires a deeper technical understanding than in this work. Sections One and Two covers the foundations of SAP BTP and the basics of building architecture. This covers how SAP built an empire based on various software applications and enterprise areas to link across multiple functions. The system also offers extensibility through classic, in-application, and side-by-side extensibility to support various functions. Each is conveniently named with “SAP” as the first part of the tool name. Architectural concepts introduce the four runtime environments, NEO Environment (HTML, JAVA, JS), Cloud Foundry (All coding languages), Advanced Business Application Programming (a unique SAP ABAP language), and Kyma (Kubernetes), as well as non-functional areas like security, continuity, observability and data management. The third section begins an integration discussion. This describes the high-level connection between the various SAP tools through event integration, service mesh, and business hubs. The section then moves to adjusting the various applications to a cloud environment and keeping the same meshed connections running appropriately. As before, each type of integration offers an SAP-branded solution to find the answer. The final element suggests integrating data across multiple platforms through operators, ports, protocols, and connectors. Some screenshots appear throughout, but they mainly reference connecting one SAP function to another in pursuing integration. Moving into development, Section Four offers SAP solutions for applications, digital processes, and containerized solutions. Even in this section, technical descriptions still need to be included. The book provides the conceptual linkages between various development areas, again conveniently SAP branded, but needs more details to suggest why any of these applications might be better than a current solution. The few examples given are littered with SAP-specific items at every workflow block, suggesting that once the BTP solution is in place, these functions will be automated. The Kyma instance for Kubernetes introduces a new SAP tool called Gardener, duplicating existing Kubernetes structures with new names. Finally, the last section discusses how SAP BTP manages data through data warehouses and lakes, a fairly typical approach for any data architecture. The SAP HANA cloud offers, not unusual at this point, several SAP-branded applications to interact with the data. Encryption models are also offered. At this point, pricing is introduced with SAP charging by 16 GB block, with a minimum of two blocks purchased. Suppose one puts all their data into the SAP enterprise. In that case, several solutions are also offered to interact with the data, including Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence solutions to get the most out of the data. Again, although some analysis examples are included, the actual ways these tools might improve applications need to be included, with a significant lack of use cases. This book covers the basics for a technical architect or business owner to ask the right questions from an SAP-BTP vendor. Having sat through several vendor conversations with SAP, the real value appears when one begins to see the technical solutions and time savings from consolidating onto a single enterprise platform. The sheer number of SAP unique applications and the extensibility options means the training bar to use the platform will likely be extremely high. If you are thinking about using SAP for your business, this book might be an excellent place to start before scheduling time with a vendor. Suppose you want to know more about how SAP might benefit your business. In that case, this text offers extremely conceptual and buzzword-heavy approaches needing more context for any experienced architect to derive significant benefit. Recommended only for business professionals who desire a basic understanding of the depth and breadth of SAP offerings.

Disclosure: I did receive a free digital copy of this book to reviewSAP BTP is no small thing to tackle. There is a lot of new terminology, concepts, diverse services, different runtimes; all of which any architect, developer or admin needs to understand to fully leverage SAP BTP. If you are feeling a little overwhelmed or behind when it comes to understanding everything SAP BTP has to offer, then this is the book for you.It does an excellent job of laying everything out and walking you through all that you should know to get started with SAP BTP. While you aren't going to get an in-depth implementation or development guide on each aspect of SAP BTP in this book, you also don't get just a surface explanation. There is just the right amount of detail here to help the reader sort out all the capabilities and how they are beneficial to their company or client.This is the ideal entry point into everything SAP BTP.