Extending SAP Partnerships with SAP C/4HANA Founda...

thomashertz · ‎05-08-2019

We are happy to share the news about SAP C/4HANA Foundation and introduce several pilot partner solutions designed to extend SAP C/4HANA. These are quite exciting development in the SAP C/4HANA universe, and we hope these testimonials will inspire you to join our partner community!

Yesterday we announced SAP C/4HANA Foundation, and as previously blogged, we have launched a flexible extensibility framework as part of SAP C/4HANA Foundation that lets you connect and extend enterprise applications in a cloud-native world. This innovative offering is based on the modern cloud-native stack of Google Knative, Kubernetes, and our own SAP-sponsored “Kyma” open source project. It enables loosely coupled, open solutions for complex IT infrastructures. The concept helps partners and customers create a flexible foundation for microservices and super-lightweight serverless functions, that connect to SAP C/4HANA as well as other SAP and 3^rd party applications.

There are 3 main advantages coming from this framework:

Capability to build serverless functions that run in response to events or http requests that can scale up or scale down automatically

A catalog of reusable, integrated SAP and 3^rd party services for developers which is made of both internal and external third-party services.

Pre-built integration with SAP applications and ability to connect to already running partner existing systems in the cloud.

Once an application is ready, partners will have the ability to publish their applications leveraging the SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory concepts into the SAP App Center. The SAP C/4HANA extensions provided by our trusted partners can then be discovered and deployed by customers from SAP C/4HANA cockpit. At a later point in time, there will be automatic provisioning and “try-before-you-buy” functionality.

Pilot Partner Solutions

Customer Loyalty for SAP Customer Experience Powered by Annex Cloud
Annex Cloud have integrated their loyalty solution - end users can gain loyalty points for the whole SAP C/4HANA suite starting with SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Marketing Cloud and others following at a later stage. The partner solution guides customer behavior by offering rewards for a variety of actions including purchasing, referring friends, writing reviews, signing up for newsletters and more. Usage of the SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory enabled the partner to integrate with the SAP C/4HANA suite and all the events triggered there, for granting loyalty points in a unified way instead of doing point-to-point integration and learning different extension concepts.

Digital Asset Management from Celum
The CELUM Content Collaboration solution for SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory can streamline the usage of any digital assets (like images, videos, documents, CAD, etc.) in SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Marketing Cloud, further SAP solutions or any kind of 3rd party applications. Using CELUM covers the whole asset life cycle from agile collaboration around content to the orchestration into all the enterprise channels. This enables enterprises to grow into a proactive controlling position, to break down silos, to reduce costs and to save resources. Through the usage of SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory and its serverless functions, the API is easily consumable and extendable to the customer’s liking while the native Kubernetes support of SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory ensures scalability and reachability.

Digital Lights
To enable more efficient SAP Commerce Cloud implementations on the Central and Eastern European market, Digital Lights delivers a “Market Accelerator” package based on SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory. The “Market Accelerator” allows customers and partners to implement faster and higher quality new SAP Commerce Cloud brand solutions, as well as new country rolloutprojects. The package includes out-of-the-box integrations with local payment providers, logistics providers and other services to achieve maximum implementation speed and quality.
Camp is another solution by Digital Lights enabling businesses to connect, exchange perks and manage corporate benefits. Merchants are empowered to easily offer perks to Companies, which, in turn, provide those perks to their Employees. SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory is leveraged to allow easy integration of Perks.Camp with existing SAP Commerce Cloud based online shops. Based on the “extension factory” logic, employees of a given company can automatically see the discounts given to them by a Merchant while browsing SAP Commerce Cloud based online shop.

Headless CMS from ContentStack
Contentstack Headless CMS simplifies and accelerates content delivery across mobile, web and IoT channels by decoupling code from content. Business users easily manage content in an intuitive interface, while developers create cross-platform apps and take advantage of a modern API architecture. Usage of SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory allows the partner to expose APIs to both SAP Commerce Cloud and the Contentstack application, while syncing data between them bidirectionally. Using the SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory application connector, developers can blend both C/4HANA services and headless content to create compelling digital experiences.

Intelligent Personalisation platform from myWave
MyWave integrated MyWave’s Intelligent Personalisation platform with SAP Commerce Cloud over SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory. The overall case is learning about an individual customer and the people they buy things for. MyWave AI Brain remembers context and learns in real time which allows for proactive cross sell and upsell based on preferences, desired experience, what the person has just done, the outcome they want and their intent of what they want to do next.
The partner leveraged the pre-built trusted connection with SAP Commerce Cloud and the Kubernetes support in SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory.

NS8 Protect and Fraud Detection
NS8 Protect works by assessing site users, scoring them based on their potential likelihood for fraud, and then by letting the merchant decide to accept or decline the order or submit verification for further authentication. Whenever a user approaches the storefront, the solution utilizes a variety of metrics to assess the possibility of the shopper being a real customer, and identifies any discrepancies that might be indicators for fraudulent or suspicious activity. By utilizing NS8 Protect, merchants can dramatically reduce their number of chargebacks by flagging suspicious users long before the order is even shipped or possible revenue can be lost. The use of SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory and its native support for serverless functions and pre-integrated events like FraudCheck from SAP Commerce Cloud was a very good architectural fit.

These examples are just the beginning. There is a lot more to come. The SAP Partner Program is specifically designed to let you become a partner and create extensions of your own. Our SAP Cloud Platform Extension Factory of the SAP App Center serve as the marketplace for the extensions for SAP customers, and we encourage you to see what is already available. Welcome to the new world of extensibility! It is here and is growing fast!