SAP S/4HANA + HCP = Business Platform of Innovations and Choices

[peter_schlaak]

As the brochure about the extensibility of SAP S/4HANA has been published recently it is obvious for me that SAP is offering a wide range of choices for all partners for their own software of today and tomorrow.

http://www.sap.com/bin/sapcom/en_us/downloadasset.2015-07-jul-08-12.sap-s4hana--extensibility-for-cu...

Everybody has its own pace and priority when it comes to his own piece of software. Some are driven to rapidly innovate due to market demand and some can remain for a longer period. It depends on the application area, industry and country, educational and budget in the individual case.

In this situation the duo SAP S/4HANA and HCP play together as a team where each one has specific strengths.

The HCP is our first recommendation when you look for a development environment to start from scratch with limited upfront investment (edge applications). Additional use cases to that are if you want to

1. Reach out to external users and consumers, enable an external Fiori and Mobile user
   experience (e.g., customer service portal)
2. Enrich standard processes by before and after steps (e.g., customer service)
3. Manage choreography of several systems and data sources for new business processes
   (e.g., sensor data, IoT, Big Data)
4. Bridge applications between Cloud and On-Premise

The nature of these use cases is to be on the side of the business application SAP S/4HANA, so that we call it the Side-by-Side Extensibility.

If you are looking instead more in the direction of the following use cases like to

1. Enable an internal SAP Fiori user experience (desktop)
2. Create variants of standard processes and business logic (e.g., micro vertical
   solutions, localization)
3. Focus on company owned business documents (e.g., legal compliance and company
   policies)
4. Extend analytics, e.g., tailored operational reporting
5. Manage choreography with focus on S/4 HANA data and processes

you are actually working in the business application SAP S/4HANA, which we call in-app extensibility. These two approaches are described in detail in the brochure named above.

The huge advantage of the team (SAP S/4HANA, HCP) is that every partner now can pick what fits best into his specific situation. He can choose

1. the development language in accordance to his educational situation
2. the deployment option serving his existing customers and opening up new markets for
   him
3. the development infrastructure on–site or in the cloud
4. the industry he is successful in but also to look for other new areas
5. local customer specific solutions or global reach

But to remind everybody you cannot choose when it comes to innovation. SAP S/4HANA and
HCP is and will be the place for ongoing innovation like

1. Business processes in financials, logistics, …
2. User experience (SAP Fiori, Configuration,…)
3. IoT
4. and much more…..

All in all the team SAP S/4HANA and HCP is a safe bet for customers and partners.