In the era of digital transformation, enterprises are increasingly adopting multi-cloud strategies to drive flexibility, resilience, and innovation. As organizations leverage various cloud providers to meet specific business and technical requirements, SAP Leonardo emerges as a powerful enabler of intelligent enterprise solutions across diverse cloud landscapes. This article explores how to architect SAP Leonardo solutions effectively within multi-cloud environments, ensuring agility, scalability, and seamless integration.
SAP Leonardo is SAP’s digital innovation system that integrates next-generation technologies—including AI, machine learning, IoT, blockchain, and advanced analytics—into the SAP ecosystem. It is designed to extend the capabilities of core SAP systems like SAP S/4HANA, enabling intelligent enterprise applications that drive automation and insight.
SAP Leonardo operates predominantly on the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), which is cloud-native and supports deployment across major cloud hyperscalers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Alibaba Cloud.
A multi-cloud strategy allows enterprises to:
For SAP Leonardo, multi-cloud architecture ensures that intelligent applications can scale globally, leverage localized cloud services, and remain interoperable with other enterprise systems.
SAP BTP provides the abstraction layer necessary for SAP Leonardo solutions to operate across multiple clouds. Services like SAP Integration Suite and SAP Extension Suite ensure cross-cloud connectivity and extensibility.
Best Practice:
Design applications with containerized microservices (e.g., using Kubernetes), enabling portability and consistency across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
A critical component of SAP Leonardo solutions is real-time data ingestion and processing. Multi-cloud environments must support robust data integration with SAP HANA, data lakes, and third-party systems.
Best Practice:
Use SAP Data Intelligence to orchestrate, integrate, and govern data flows across hybrid and multi-cloud systems, ensuring a unified data layer for AI and analytics.
Multi-cloud deployments introduce complex security landscapes. SAP Leonardo solutions must adhere to enterprise-grade security standards and comply with regional regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, or local data sovereignty laws.
Best Practice:
Implement cloud-native security controls (e.g., identity federation, encryption, firewall rules) while leveraging SAP’s security services such as SAP Cloud Identity Services and SAP BTP Trust Center.
Each cloud provider offers distinct services for autoscaling, failover, and disaster recovery. Architecting SAP Leonardo applications to utilize these features ensures high availability and performance.
Best Practice:
Deploy SAP Leonardo workloads in multi-region and multi-zone configurations using container orchestration tools like SAP Kyma Runtime on Kubernetes.
Multi-cloud environments demand a unified approach to continuous integration and delivery. SAP Leonardo supports modern DevOps pipelines through integrations with tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and SAP Continuous Integration and Delivery service.
Best Practice:
Adopt Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with Terraform or Ansible, and use SAP BTP CLI and APIs for environment provisioning and deployment automation.
A global manufacturer leveraged SAP Leonardo on SAP BTP to integrate IoT sensor data from factories worldwide. By deploying edge processing on AWS, analytics on Azure, and customer portals on GCP, they enabled real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and adaptive production planning—demonstrating how SAP Leonardo thrives in multi-cloud ecosystems.
Architecting SAP Leonardo solutions for multi-cloud environments is not just a technical necessity—it is a strategic advantage. By combining the intelligent capabilities of SAP Leonardo with the flexibility and scale of multi-cloud infrastructure, enterprises can build resilient, future-ready systems that accelerate digital transformation. The key lies in designing with interoperability, data integration, security, and automation at the forefront.