Platforms are the new "client/server" in the SAP world

After the Hana Cloud Platform (HCP), Hana Enterprise Cloud (HEC) and SAP Cloud Platform (SCP), the platform metamorphoses are far from over. Platforms seem to be the solution for every digital transformation.

The preliminary highlight and freshly presented at SAP TechEd in Barcelona: SAP's Business Technology Platform for the intelligent enterprise.

This is a high-quality technical platform for business processes. Which raises the question: What drives the platform and how does it present itself to the user?

Naturally, the "engine" of the Business Technology Platform is the SAP Hana database with its numerous engines. At this year's TechEd, the spotlight was focused particularly intensively on the graph engine.

This is a graph database based on the principles of graph theory. This graph database will in turn become the platform for SAP Graph, a semantic API layer that will enable data exchange between SAP applications, similar to the well-known SAP Data Hub.

This virtual interactive access layer "SAP Graph" is planned across all data from all sources with a scalable query engine in order to decouple data usage and management.

The aim is to provide users with a simplified, standardized data access layer. This could enable them to optimize data processing and at the same time consolidate and harmonize data integration in their intelligent applications.

SAP Hana Cloud - a Hana instance including the graph engine - can be used either as a standalone solution or as an extension of an existing on-prem environment.

The visible part of the Business Technology Platform will be Quartz Light, the new design of the Fiori 3 user interface. All SAP product teams have been involved in the design and development of SAP Fiori 3. The design should now be more consistent and better integrated into the entire SAP portfolio. This may also reduce the amount of training required.