So I attended TechEd last week – there was a
lot of good stuff to learn, and you’ll be unsurprised to read that it all had a
somewhat “Cloud”-y focus, with a twist of HANA / S4 in there too…
I tended to categorise what I saw into 2 blocks :
1 : Newer ways of doing essentially the same job, but
adapting to SAP’s new development mechanisms…
Including :
- Developing using Eclipse rather than SE80
- Developing using WebIDE
- CDS views on the HANA Database
- More interaction between Development, Functional and
End-User as an app is developed, using tools like BUILD. (This one’s an
interesting one, as it might mean we need to change the way we consult a
little, as we’ve traditionally not embarked on much work till we’ve got a
proper spec)
2: Cool things that you can do with Cloud Services…
Including :
- Training a ChatBot using recast.ai
- Using AI to recognise images
- Connecting IoT devices to SAP
I’m highly conscious that there’s a degree of scepticism as to whether it’s worth learning any
of this stuff if our customers don’t adopt it, or SAP suddenly come out with
another new product/methodology that supercedes what we’ve just learnt. I’m
less concerned about this now, as SAP haven’t changed their tune on
Cloud/HANA for a while now, and it’s starting to stick, as we get more and more
customers using S4 and Fiori, I think it’s only a matter of time before we see
Cloud adoption.
I’m also aware that, as with any training, it’s done in a
very hygienic environment. A demonstration of developing in the Cloud had a
step where you “select the backend system from a dropdown”. The reality would
be more like “Required system not in dropdown…. Go and bother BASIS team… Set
up Cloud Connector… have arguments with people about what can/can’t be exposed
to the internet… need upgrade/patching to get backend to the point it can
connect… then select system from a dropdown”.
All that said, I'm looking forward to trying a lot of this stuff out, and will drop some links / tuts here as I make them.
