Foundational Setup and Architectural Design:
Once the initial project is approved, the focus shifts to establishing a robust and scalable foundation for all future BTP development. The decisions made in this phase have long-term consequences for governance, security, and cost management.
Establishing the Account Model
The SAP BTP account model provides the hierarchical structure for managing all resources, entitlements, and users. The setup of this model is not merely a technical task; it is a direct implementation of the organizations governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) framework in the cloud. The way directories and subaccounts are structured determines how costs are allocated, how security access is controlled, and how data is segregated. Therefore, this design must be a collaborative effort involving IT, Finance, Legal, and GRC stakeholders.
Best practices for the account model include:
- Understand the Hierarchy: The structure consists of a Global Account (representing the commercial contract with SAP), Directories (optional but highly recommended for organizing subaccounts), and Subaccounts (the actual runtime environments where applications are deployed).
- Start with a Staged Model: At an absolute minimum, a staged development process should be implemented by creating separate subaccounts for Development (DEV), Testing (TEST), and Production (PROD). This ensures that changes can be properly qualified before they impact the live business environment.
- Use Directories for Structure: As the BTP landscape grows, directories become essential for management. They should be used to group subaccounts based on stable organizational criteria, such as legal entity, geographical region, or major business unit. This structure simplifies the management of entitlements and provides clear visibility for cost reporting.
- Plan for Shared Services: To optimize costs and reduce administrative overhead, certain BTP services (like SAP Integration Suite or SAP HANA Cloud) can be provisioned in a central, shared subaccount and consumed by multiple development projects.
Designing the Technical Architecture
This step involves creating the detailed technical blueprint for the solution. Rather than starting from a blank page, architects should leverage the extensive resources provided by SAP to ensure their designs are robust, scalable, and aligned with best practices.
- SAP BTP Guidance Framework: This should be the primary resource. It contains structured, technology-agnostic methodologies like the SAP Application Extension Methodology and the SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology, which guide architects through a formal decision-making process to select the right technologies and patterns for their specific use case.
- Reference Architectures: The SAP Architecture Center provides a library of curated, ready-to-use reference architectures for common business scenarios. These templates illustrate how different BTP services interact and integrate, accelerating the design process and reducing the risk of architectural errors.
- Solution Diagram Repository: For creating the actual architectural diagrams, SAP provides a repository of standardized templates, icons, and design guidelines. Using these ensures that architectural documentation is clear, consistent, and easily understood across the organization.
Security and Compliance by Design
Security must be an integral part of the foundational design, not an add-on. This involves establishing the enterprise security model from the outset. Key activities include setting up authentication by configuring trust to the corporate Identity Provider (typically via SAP Cloud Identity Services), defining the strategy for authorization and role management, and planning for the secure lifecycle of user identities.
