Use Cases for the Cloud – How companies use the cloud in
their real-life scenarios .. Cloud for Business
In the previous blog posts, we have started by describing what is the cloud, the benefits
we expect/get from the cloud and different models that companies can use the cloud
services as infrastructure.
This post is to introduce you to how in real life, companies use cloud services; in what
type of business scenarios/the real use-cases of the cloud.
Use cases are analyzed from 3 main perspectives:
- From a technical and architectural point of view which matches cloud use cases with
technical capabilities - From a line of business perspective to explain how different departments (sometimes
multi-cross department) may benefit from the cloud. - Industry based categorization to describe how different industries use the power of the
cloud and cloud-based services to create business value.
Although we cannot cover all use cases, this post aims to give you the starters for
using/evaluating the idea of cloud services in your own scenarios. Note that the same
use-case can fall into multiple categories/industries / functional areas.
USE CASES BY TECHNOLOGY AND ARCHITECTURAL PERSPECTIVE
I believe as a technical consultant, the most strategic approach for IT is to enable business
operations as much as possible and nowadays go beyond enablement and be in the heart
of operation/business itself. Examples are; being an online channel for sales, and developing an
app to provide the main functionality of your services to your customers. That requires having
an always-ready-to-go infrastructure to respond accurately, faster, in a “low-cost” manner,
and being connected-open to your stakeholders all the time. Which means better computing,
integration, and development capabilities. Some of the examples that the cloud provides you in
this area are as follows:
Integration – Connectivity capabilities of the cloud allow you to connect to multiple systems
(maybe SAP and/or non-SAP) in a holistic approach. By using open connectors, for instance,
you can exchange information from third-party systems, with adapters gather & process this
data in technical backends and provide them to other applications and business users.
While doing this you can benefit from providers’ prebuilt out-of-the-box integration scenarios.
SAP for instance currently has 1500+ integration scenarios combining not only its own on-prem
and cloud systems(S/4HANA, SuccessFactors, Ariba, etc.) but also many third-party industry
applications (SalesForce, Workday, ServiceNow, Sharepoint,.. and many more). With this, you
can jump-start your workflows and build applications without reinventing the wheel and start
from scratch.
Even if you already have many applications working very well, old methods are mostly slow,
more expensive, and heavy; the ones you want to communicate are evolving and forcing you
to change; so why not use the new technology to adapt easier and use the power of modern
methods and cloud’s strong muscles. (create apps faster, test faster, publish faster at the same
time more secure(monitoring-governance), cheaper and more integrated)
SAP API Business Hub environment is a platform where you can find many ready-to-go examples
of these scenarios such as connecting your S/4HANA system to for instance a SalesForce
application; build a flow&an app in the cloud to trigger a Sales Order, generate a document in
S/4HANA with the required information gathered from customer and SalesForce which is not
very easy & integrated in the past. Your technical and solution architects may have a look at
the APIs provided and can model their own apps/workflows easier by using these artifacts.
Developing and Publishing Your Applications: Exposing your on-premise data with APIs are a lot
easier with the cloud.
Think of a scenario where it takes a lot of time to create a mobile app for using internal data
provided by your SAP system. With a well-developed API Strategy, you can generate APIs
from on-prem systems, without duplicating the data, you can provide them to your suppliers,
customers, etc in a secure manner(API security) and build your own applications on top of the
same platform. You can even let your partners/suppliers use your services and build their own
applications to utilize and enrich this data but controlled by you.
Application testing, simulations, backing up – clustering:
As systems in the cloud can be easily expanded, new systems for copies of your applications
can be provisioned within minutes for running parallel in case of disaster scenarios in a different
location; backing up these systems are a lot easier and you don’t need to plan ahead multiple
years of strategy and invest in huge amounts earlier.
Big Data, DataMining/TextMining: BigData calculations are scenarios where collecting, storing,
analyzing, and presenting data are different contexts. Those need to be integrated. With the help
of cloud capabilities, you can connect to multiple inside and outside providers, collect and store
and compute without thinking about the limitations, and present to inside and outside
stakeholders in a secure and flexible manner. You can use your on-prem data, use your code as
a function even from multiple cloud providers and publish them to your end-users with the same
platform.
Providing document content, media, and information to different geographies, stakeholders,
and parties easier with the multi-location capabilities of the cloud platform.
Machine Learning capabilities of the cloud may be used to analyze the information and respond
to events before they even occur, Why not help your customers and your company in this way?
Think of a manufacturer which collects information from its products directly with IoT services,
analyzes the information with cloud platform services, more importantly, learns from it, and
predicts the maintenance times more effectively or within the company use the information to
proactively minimize outages.
USE CASES BY LINE OF BUSINESS
Different use cases can be applied within the same company in any line of the business area and
these scenarios can be cross-domain where multiple departments benefit from the same flow
simultaneously which creates more value.
Another point is to extend these to multiple geographies.. Remember from my previous articles
where I discuss the cloud giving you the extensibility to design your services for multi-countries
in a lot easier manner
Procure-to-Pay: Using the power of the cloud to open cloud portals to suppliers, make their
onboarding / transactional processes easier so that they are more willing to work with your
company and spend less effort.
Catalogue Management: Expose your data in a controlled manner to outside parties, let them
enhance their data directly, with no duplications, more benefits. You then can use it as well in your
own systems for reporting and other purposes as well
Plan-To-Produce: Expose your data via a mobile application to field workers to collect data from
the field online. Use the computing power of the cloud to analyze collected data from IoT devices
and from these apps, use this BigData and combine it with cloud data services for predictive
planning/maintenance scenarios-using the planning applications provided- and plan your future
production and budget, calculate future supply balance, workforce demand, and execute
production and human resources policy accordingly for the next period(a cross-domain scenario).
Finance: Use computing power provided by the cloud to make complicated calculations –
faster-easier closings, leave time for strategic decisions. Use RPA services to automate standard
data entries
Hire-to-retire / Human Resources: Onboarding processes that need to integrate with other
applications. Such as workflows/applications provisioning the employees, open records in other
systems: For instance employees email from email systems, systems, other requirements related
to employees department (if sales for instance in a SalesForce system for instance with necessary
permissions) without worrying about if you miss anything. Note that this type of coordination can
be applied from the cloud and have an end-to-end scenario with minimum change efforts to the
original applications and with the help of integration, development, and workflow capabilities.
Possible with a good architecture & design
CASES BY INDUSTRY
Let’s have a look at some use-case examples that can be applied in different industries where you
and your customers are a part.
Manufacturing: Collect production information from devices and machines via IoT services, create
preventive maintenance applications to proactively respond to events, use this information in the
mobile applications and collect information from the field to enrich and report – use the
information to build your future products, strategy, and do not worry about the scaling, timing
because of the power of the services from the cloud.
Energy: IoT scenarios- digital twins – Collect IoT data from sensors, analyze them, and report about
statuses, and usage. Find insights and execute a strategy such as determining real-time energy
consumption from IoT devices, analyzing and through an application recommend new pricing.
Use cloud platform for computing power, application development, and integration
High Tech: Where there are many industry standards for using and exchanging data, combine
the data from suppliers to your systems, provide them mobile applications via APIs to easily
provide you the valuable data and be a part of your organization. There are industry standards
that are already implemented in cloud-based solutions as adapters like SAP’s B2B adapters for
SAP Cloud.
Finance & Insurance: Use your on-prem data to easily create new applications – new products
and service offerings to customers, respond to the market conditions in a quick manner. Integrate
with your corporate customers/end-users and integrate your applications to their systems easily.
Think about a credit scoring application that can easily be used by customers of your customers.
With the information gathered from these end-users, and also from your corporate customers, you
can provide many new services to your corporate customer and let them indirectly use your logic
(for their end-users). This partnership can allow your business to extend beyond the corporate users
and lets you reach the end-users as well.
Healthcare: Inform the patients, with given permissions, to analyze their data with the cloud’s analytical
power to find insights
Retail: Computing power which is required in campaign times, scale easily without worrying, and
develop quick applications and service them to your customers. Use ChatBots, and RPA and combine
them with your cloud services to collect information directly from your customers. Another promising
scenario would be using blockchain technologies with the integration capabilities of the cloud
platform, enabling your customers to track the products that are sold from the production to the
tables, and houses.
These of course are not all the cases. The number of examples can be increased in other 20+
industries or the same scenarios can be possibly implemented in different industries.
WHAT TO DO NEXT, TAKEAWAYS
As technology should be an enabler, not a stopper for the business to be successful, we as
technology providers and business users should be responding fast and accurately to the
changing world. These use cases are just some examples; more and more innovative ideas
are coming from businesses every day, therefore what we need to do is build a platform to
make businesses run faster, add more bricks day by day to this platform for new challenges,
and start doing, building today with a good plan. .. Why not start picking one-or-two business
cases and make a pilot in the cloud.
Why not start exploring ready-to-use scenarios and create architecture, combine it with your
own on-premise systems & on-premise applications, and build new and effective services.
Please have these cases and capabilities in your mind next time you are planning.
Published by
SAP Integration & Development Consultant | SAP Integration Black Belt | Cloud,
nonSAP&SAP Development, Integration, Architecture & Strategy | Cloud solutions.
SAP CPI, SAP BTP, SAP PO – Process Orchestration