Subscription process for SAP BTP

[former_member74493]

Hi all,

I have some questions regarding what happens after a customer subscribes to an application.

Say, I have created a multi-tenant app according to this example & I started selling it in the SAP store.

A customer sees the app, subscribes to it, but what happens after that?

1) Do we receive his account information immediately[what info? In what form? How?]
2) Do we need to manually-create his subaccount?[can this be automated?]
3) Is there a way to auto-assign him a role for his subaccount?

I'm wondering if it's possible to automate all these steps & link them to subscription button click in the store.

Thanks

[SridharRaju]

It seems the questions are mixed up with two different elements, SAP Partner Apps that can be commercialized through SAP store, and a SaaS application developed in your account and deployed onto your own space/tenant.

The topics has 2 different entities. For the later part, Only other peers(Other sub accounts) can be able to see/access your application if it is published under provider tenant. That means, you have to add them manually as a subaccount holder under your global account, Then they can consume/access your SaaS application. There is no automated process available at this moment as of today.

For the first part[What? Which? How?], There is a lot of documentation on the store with regards to the process of listing a solution, getting an opportunity from a customer and processing a deal.

And finally, about auto assigning a role to the sub account, I would recommend to check SAP BTP Account Model , especially subaccount and User and Member Management. In your scenario, the consumers use the applications(Tenant provider via subscription) that are deployed to the BTP out of your subaccount. So, you have to develop a security mechanism, create and deploy application-based security artifacts for business users(Consumers). SAP provides security templates or predefined roles or role collections for applications that are delivered by SAP for platform users, but not consumer specific as this business logic is proprietary to subaccount MTAR application.

[gregorw]

Hi Sridhar,

thanl you for jumping in an provide your insights. Thanks a lot for the links to the details for the SAP Store. Maybe you can reformart your answer and add som paragraphs to better structure it.

Regarding the more technical topic I would like to describe my point of view regarding the options how to provide a partner solution to customers on BTP:

1. Deployment in the existing Subaccount of the Customer
2. Provisioning of a Subaccount which is part of the partner Global Account for the Customer with the subscription to the Multitenant solution

Option 1. has of course the requirement that the customer has an existing BTP Global Account. But when that is already in place the chances that Authentication and also Backend Connectivity via the Cloud Connector is also already setup. The downside for the customer is that they must provide all the needed resources. For option 2. this might be the biggest challenge to setup when the partner solution isn't just working out of the box without the need to integrate to other systems.

What I'm still missing in the SAP BTP Cloud Foundry environment is the option to allow the subscription to a partner SaaS solution from within a Subaccount of the Customer. As far as I know that is possible in BTP Neo. This would add a 3rd option which would combine the easy onboarding for existing BTP customers with the better scaling of a multitenant SaaS solution.

Please give me your insights if I got something wrong here.

Best Regards
Gregor

[former_member74493]

Hi Sridhar,

thanks for your reply. It has been very helpful.

1 question:

As a consumer, after submitting my request & seller accepts it as described here, will the application then appear under "Service Marketplace" in my own SAP BTP? After which, I presume I will just need to follow the steps as described here to get it up and running?

[MustafaBensan]

Hi weiquan,

In answer to your questions:

1) What happens when I create a multi-tenant app & decide to sell it to consumers? Will it appear here?

When you deploy a multi-tenant app to SAP BTP, it does not automatically get listed in the SAP Store. This optional and you need to decide whether this is of benefit to you. As a minimum, in order to list in the SAP Store, you need to complete the Application Readiness Check (ARC) for your app.

2) If Yes, then what happens when a consumer is interested in our app? Do they have to fill up a form & contact us for more info? [like this example here where a consumer needs to click on the "Get It Now" button]

As far as I know, with the simple approach of listing on the SAP Store, the "Get It Now" button just collects prospect information from a form and emails it to you so you can follow-up with the prospect. This does not help in automated provisioning. I expect there should be a more sophisticated SAP Store option where you can configure your provisioning web hook to be triggered by the "Get It Now" button to kick-off the subscription process. It would be good if someone from SAP chimed in to elaborate on this and provide references to the relevant documentation.

3) If Yes, then do we follow the steps here & proceed to create subaccounts for them?

You should try to automate as much as possible the provisioning of a new subscriber using the BTP APIs. Here's a blog that you may find helpful: Multitenancy – Develop and Register Multitenant Application to the SAP SaaS Provisioning Service on ....

Regards,

Mustafa.

[former_member74493]

Hi Mustafa,

thanks for the info.

Based on the information gathered so far, I would like to confirm the flow:

1)[If we list app on SAP store] Consumer clicks on "Get It Now" button > We accept the deal as described here > Application appears under "Service Marketplace" in consumer's SAP BTP account > Consumer creates app instance to use
2)[If we DO NOT list app on SAP store] Consumer has to somehow contact us to express interest?? > We create subaccount for consumer in our own SAP BTP account as described here > We assign roles for consumer

Is this correct?

[gregorw]

I hope that someone from SAP will also join this discussion. Maybe some questions can be answered via the documentation Architecture and Development Guide for Industry Cloud Solutions it contains a chapter on Commercial Offering.

[gregorw]

I would suggest you read Is SAP Business Technology Platform Ready for Developing Industry Cloud SaaS Applications?

[former_member74493]

I'm afraid the article isn't helping much.
For starters, I would like to know the following:
1) What happens when I create a multi-tenant app & decide to sell it to consumers? Will it appear here?
2) If Yes, then what happens when a consumer is interested in our app? Do they have to fill up a form & contact us for more info? [like this example here where a consumer needs to click on the "Get It Now" button]

3) If Yes, then do we follow the steps here & proceed to create subaccounts for them?

Thanks

[MustafaBensan]

Hi weiquan,

Even for a standalone (non multi-tenant) app, you cannot deploy it to the BTP "Service Marketplace". You must provide a "package" for the customer to manually deploy in their own BTP account. However, I would suggest that this is not the most effective way to distribute SaaS applications, both from a customer onboarding perspective and upgrade/release maintenance perspective.

What is the use case your planned application is addressing?

Regards,

Mustafa.

[MustafaBensan]

Hi weiquan,

Further to your additional questions:

1)[If we list app on SAP store] Consumer clicks on "Get It Now" button > We accept the deal as described here > Application appears under "Service Marketplace" in consumer's SAP BTP account > Consumer creates app instance to use

Deployment of multi-tenant apps to the customer's SAP BTP account through the Service Marketplace is not supported as far as I am aware, even if listed on the SAP Store. Multi-tenant apps must always be deployed to the customer's Consumer subaccount in the Partner's BTP Global Account. The deployment process is as per Option 2 below.

2)[If we DO NOT list app on SAP store] Consumer has to somehow contact us to express interest?? > We create subaccount for consumer in our own SAP BTP account as described here > We assign roles for consumer

If you do not list on the SAP Store, my recommendation would be to implement a subscription sign-up page on your company/product website which then triggers an automated deployment and onboarding process as per the referenced blog.

Regards,

Mustafa.

[former_member74493]

Hi Mustafa,

thanks for the reply.

Am I right to say that the process described in 1) will be correct if it is just a normal app[non multi-tenant]?

Thanks