FAQ
YaaS Overview
What is SAP Hybris as a Service (YaaS)?
SAP Hybris as a Service is an Innovation Workbench and Microservices Marketplace. The workbench is for building and assembling data-driven front office microservices and SaaS applications to enable new commercial models and digital products and services. The marketplace is for the consumption of customer engagement and commerce apps.
What is a microservice?
A microservice architectural style is an approach to developing an application as a set of process-isolated and independently deployable and scalable services, such as those used by Amazon and Netflix. Today most applications are built with a monolithic design where most components that comprise the solution are deployed to a single process. Each microservice is implemented as a cloud service and carries out a specific function and is independently replaceable and upgradeable and may even be running a different technology stack.
How does YaaS fit into the overall SAP Cloud strategy?
YaaS is SAP Hybris’ entry into the emerging business application IT model of microservices which provides an additional, innovative cloud based solution deployment option. This goes beyond the traditional on-premise (up-front purchase) and public cloud application (multi-tenant architecture, multi-year leasing, annual contract values) models. Based on a concept of developing applications as a suite of small services, each microservice runs its own processes and communicating with lightweight mechanisms (often HTTP REST API, stateless). Microservices are built around business capabilities and are independently deployable. The microservices packages can be used as an extension to all existing SAP products or any other third party applications.
What is YaaS.IO? Is it just a market place?
YaaS is SAP’s commercial, legal, billing, development and operating framework for micro and packaged services. YaaS.IO supports a consumption based cloud services model. Microservices are subscribed to via YaaS.IO on a per-usage model and monitored and invoiced monthly. This allows for a flexible utilization of services and a highly productive, agile and dynamic application environment. In addition to a marketplace, YaaS.IO also consists of a development portal, project builder area, YaaS community and the knowledge hub. It is a complete environment to discover, develop, and collaborate around microservices based applications.
Is YaaS Software as a Service (SaaS)?
No, YaaS is not SaaS. In fact, it enables others to build ‘Software as a Service’ applications and services faster on top of it. YaaS enables SaaS.
Is YaaS a Platform as a Service (PaaS)?
No. While YaaS has some PaaS type services (e.g. services that may be offered in a PaaS environment such as document storage, media, search and event queues) it is in general a consumer of PaaS services vs. being positioned as a PaaS. There currently are no hosting options or PaaS solutions that we offer through YaaS, although a Cloud Foundry offering from the Hana Cloud Platform (HCP) team is in the works.
How is YaaS positioned vis a vie the SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP)?
YaaS is part of the overall HCP strategy. YaaS belongs to the business services area of the HCP. We also intend to co-develop services with the HCP team. HCP in future will also allow an optional hosting option for SaaS services that are built on top of YaaS.
Does a customer need a hosting platform for the front office or does YaaS provide that service as well?
YaaS hosts the SAP & SAP Hybris Services, however, for customer and partner built services a hosting provider is required. YaaS is deployment platform agnostic and while we recommend the use of Cloud Foundry on HCP you are free to choose any platform.
Why can SaaS services and apps be developed so much faster with YaaS?
- Autonomy: Development teams are much less dependent to encourage adoption and foster application development on other teams.
- Community: Development teams can benefit from services that other teams have written.
- Simplicity: Releasing software isn’t a punishment anymore. Anyone who has ever watched a team around release date will appreciate that YaaS supports continuous release cycles.
- You do not start from scratch: The community and us will provide sophisticated services (i.e. a product service) that makes it easier and faster to write a new app that wants to do something with products for instance.
- We offer a backend UI framework that makes it easy to build management/business tools user interfaces.
What is different about a consumption based cloud software model YaaS enables vs a traditional cloud business model?
The key differences are in the areas of accessibility, payment and contracts. YaaS services are instantly accessible and are pay-per-use with no upfront costs and a monthly based usage payments and monthly contracts.
What are the generic characteristics of YaaS microservices?
- Instant provisioning – you can help your customers to subscribe to microservices in no time and scale their businesses.
- Pay as you go – no upfront fee, no hidden charges and a free tier that lets you evaluate the value of a service.
- Auto Scale – YaaS services auto scale so you do not have to worry about availability at peak times.
- No long-term contracts – if you are not happy with a service you can cancel the subscription at any time.
YaaS Partner Business Opportunities
What revenue opportunities does YaaS enable for you as a partner?
- You can sell smaller, faster time-to-market projects into your customer base.
- You can leverage usage based, agile, flexible, elastic software consumption to deliver new functionality to help your customers to be innovative and fast.
- Help your customers increase their ROI from existing investments in SAP Hybris products by creating extensions.
- Support the Digital Transformation projects of your customers by using YaaS Innovation Workbench to build and assemble front office applications using microservices based services.
What is the business opportunity for partners in detail?
Partners can utilize the YaaS Innovation Workbench and services as a digital transformation tool for innovation projects. The pay-per-use model is specifically designed for businesses who want to test some innovation projects or are evaluating new commerce channels. The flexible API integration makes it easy for partner development teams to build SaaS offerings on top to offer to their customers. Partners can expand their implementation services options by adding a microservices piece to their existing implementation for a customer. Partners can productize and monetize their own IP by combining their microservices with ours. Our partners can use YaaS to help businesses rapidly augment and build new, highly flexible solutions to grow revenues and increase customer engagement.
Can a Partner list and sell their own microservices and packages through YaaS Market?
This was the original intention of YaaS Market and it is still work in progress. We’ll update you when we have concrete dates.
Can a partner develop on YaaS?
Partners can start developing services with the YaaS SDK or simply build with the technology of their choice, however, we can’t offer these partner-developed services via YaaS Market at this point.
In which countries is YaaS currently available?
YaaS services are available globally in beta, however, commercial services are currently available only in US and Germany. The UK and Switzerland are next up and the goal is to continue the roll out on a country by country basis. Please keep checking YaaS.IO for updates.
How does a microservice get metered and how does a Partner get invoiced?
The API proxy, which sits in front of all services calls irrespective of whether they are YaaS or partner-hosted, ensures that all requests are authenticated and provides metering services. The clear intent of the partner model is to offer, in the future, billing capabilities for the metered usage for Partner services. For services Partners subscribe to the will receive monthly invoices based on the usage of these services.
Do I need a partner contract to work with YaaS?
Currently, any partner or customer can start building on YaaS and start consuming YaaS services by just subscribing for the service on YaaS.io and accepting the YaaS.io standard terms of use. Each subscription comes with a subscription agreement which the partner needs to accept as part of the process. No additional partner contract is needed at this point.
What does YaaS cost?
YaaS is free to everyone, including customers. They will, however, pay for any subscription they make to a service offered on YaaS.
If you are a VAR or SI and are already working with SAP Hybris Commerce how can YaaS be beneficial for you?
YaaS, and specifically Commerce as a Service, represents additional opportunities for SAP Hybris partners to respond to their customers’ digital transformation requirements and needs. With YaaS Commerce packages, partners have a flexible and extensible API-based solution to extend brands and merchants’ sales channels on top of existing SAP Hybris system, and/or launch innovation projects from scratch with limited risks and investments.
How can existing SAP Hybris customers benefit from YaaS?
Existing customers mainly benefit from new functionality made available to them outside of standard release cycles. They won’t need to invest into additional hardware or other resources to make use of this functionality. They can make this functionality very quickly available with a little help from their implementation partner.
Enablement and Resources
What do I need to do to get started with YaaS?
Register on YaaS.io, review the partner webinars, develop a YaaS agenda for your business. Engage with your local Partner Business Managers or get in touch with YaaS partner Go-to-Market team at yaas.partners@sap.com.
Are there any trainings available on YaaS?
Currently, partners can find YaaS Essentials, SAP Hybris Profile Essentials, Development Guidelines and YaaS Webinars on YaaS.io. Also, SAP Hybris Education has created a full microservice training curriculum, available here.
How can I get support on YaaS?
Currently, partners can find help on dev portal on YaaS.io or via YaaS Expert Forums. If your query is not answered there and you are a member of a commercial project, you can send an email to gethelp@yaas.io.
YaaS Packages and Microservices
What is SAP Hybris Commerce as a Service (CaaS)?
CaaS is an API-first approach to building Commerce Apps across multiple channels and devices. CaaS offers commerce service packages that can be subscribed to and used individually or combined to create comprehensive digital commerce transactions. Learn more in our Basic Guide for Commerce as a Service.
What is SAP Hybris Customer Engagement Center?
SAP Hybris Customer Engagement Center provides you with phone, chat and video chat channels to support your customers throughout the customer journey. It integrates with SAP Hybris Commerce as a Service storefront, enabling service agents to support customers already at early stages of the buying process. Your service agents can help the customers with their shopping carts, add/remove products to the carts and create new carts – improving customer experience and driving revenue. Find out more HERE.
What is SAP Hybris Loyalty?
SAP Hybris Loyalty enables the delivery of integrated loyalty programs across multiple channels working in harmony with Commerce and Marketing capabilities. It enables organizations to create their own cloud based loyalty program in minutes and gain valuable consumer insights and offers points for signups, purchases, referrals, ratings and reviews. Find out more HERE.
What is SAP Hybris Profile?
SAP Hybris Profile captures and analyzes customer interactions, contexts, and behaviors to create a continually-evolving intelligent profile, which enables a deeper understanding of the customer's motivation and intent, in real time. This allows customer-facing touchpoints such as commerce and marketing to react and interact in much more personal ways. Built on YaaS, Profile provides unique extensibility so you can easily add functionality from the YaaS Market or create new functionality. Find out more HERE.
What is the relationship between SAP Hybris Commerce, Marketing, C4C and the YaaS packages?
Packages on YaaS market can be used to augment and add functionality to these applications and increase the ROI in your existing investment in them.
For example, a leading Fashion Brand extended their SAP Hybris Enterprise Commerce implementation with SAP Hybris Commerce as a Service to offer Uber Rush shipping on bestselling product lines. They could deploy rapidly and test and evaluate the new service with minimum up front commitment. They’ll be able to scale up (or down) at the end of the test period and can answer the question about whether customers are willing to pay for the service.
Profile is a service that enables a consistent and contextual customer profile enabling applications such as SAP Hybris Marketing and SAP Hybris Commerce to provide more relevant information and engaging customer experiences. Customer Journey Manager adds functionality to SAP Hybris Marketing to orchestrate various activities and monitor their performance. There are also a set of Integration services for C4C enabling key data to be created and fetched.