Dubbed as the foundation of the Intelligent Enterprise, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) derives insights from data and provides a single platform for extensibility and integration across the SAP solutions portfolio and third-party applications. According to the German software company’s Q2 2021 financial report, it already has more than 8,000 productive SAP BTP customers and over 4,000 SAP partners actively engaged within its ecosystem.
During this year’s SAP Global Partner Summit Online, the tech giant announced its investment in training and education for SAP BTP partner consultants and developers to help drive the development of cloud offerings, integration services, industry information, accelerators, and industry reference architectures. New initiatives have also been added to the SAP Partner program to assist partners in adopting solutions and successfully managing processes using the platform.
Recognising the growing number of partners leveraging the platform and the uptake in customers embracing business transformation using the solution, the company has recently launched a new licensing model for partners to have free-tier access to SAP BTP services. This announcement marked the latest in a series of developments to streamline SAP partner engagements.
Karl Fahrbach, Chief Partner Officer at SAP, explained in a blog post that the company aims to “ease the financial component” and that the new pay-as-you-go option will make it easier for partners to get started on the platform. He added that the solution enables partners to adapt quickly to the current cloud environment.
“With this payment model, partners can have a lower barrier to create their own intellectual property (IP) on SAP BTP that answers specific customer needs and their specific industry knowledge. By using one platform, partners can offer their IP to many customers at once on marketplaces like SAP Store, which provides additional revenue opportunities,” Fahrbach detailed.
More Flexibility for Partners in Demonstrating Solutions Using SAP BTP Services
SAP BTP is a set of about 90 products and services that include artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, the internet of things (IoT), and blockchain capabilities. The unified, business-centric, and open platform for the entire SAP ecosystem provides a holistic experience across a variety of applications involving integration, creation of value from data, and extensibility for processes in 25 key industries.
The German enterprise software giant has so far licensed SAP BTP to partners either through a subscription license or an enterprise agreement annual contract. However, Jagdish Sahasrabudhe, CTO of the SAP Global Partner organisation, has told CRN that this can be a problem for partners as they develop and deploy solutions for their customers. Detailing more about how partners worked with previous enterprise agreements and subscription license options, he said:
“You buy capacity and then you figure out how you’re going to use that capacity. But you don’t always know what the final solution is going to be for the customer.”
Aiming to address this problem, the new pay-as-you-go licensing option allows partners to purchase only the BTP capacity they require during the early stages of customer engagement, such as needs assessment and solution design and development. Additionally, SAP stated that partners now have access to the same free-tier model for the Business Technology Platform that it has introduced for pay-as-you-go customers on July 1. This allows them to try out BTP services like SAP Business Application Studio, SAP Mobile Services, and SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (SAP iRPA) for a limited time.
According to Sahasrabudhe, the new pay-as-you-go model, along with free-tier access and the ability to license specific services, gives solution providers a lot more flexibility. In addition, partners may create more solution prototypes for customers, increasing the chances of developing the most optimal solution.
“And that is really the higher revenue opportunity for partners,” he stressed.
Last month, SAP also released three new services to enable customers to implement a hybrid cloud environment using SAP BTP. Services for exploration, process optimisation, and innovation, as well as re-platforming and extension development, are all part of the new offering.
