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The Sign-Off Table

Lesson 2 of 5

Entitlements, service plans and quotas

8 min

Having a BTP contract does not mean every subaccount can use every service. Use is controlled by entitlements. SAP defines an entitlement as the right to provision and consume a resource: a specific service plan of a service. A service plan is a variant of a service with its own features and price, for example a free plan for evaluation and a standard plan for production. A quota is the numeric limit on how much of a plan may be consumed, such as an amount of runtime memory or a number of instances.

  1. ContractThe commercial model determines which services and plans the global account is entitled to
  2. Global accountEntitlements and quotas arrive here
  3. Directory (optional)A share can be assigned to a directory to distribute to its subaccounts
  4. SubaccountConfigure Entitlements: add service plans and set quotas
  5. Instance or subscriptionA service instance is created, or an application is subscribed
  6. AccessRole collections give users access; usage is metered against the contract
How a service becomes usable in a subaccount.
The Sign-Off Table · thesignofftable.com/academy/sap-btp-101

Commercial models in one paragraph

SAP sells BTP in two broad ways. In consumption-based models you buy access to eligible services and pay for what you use: the SAP BTP Enterprise Agreement (BTPEA) and the older Cloud Platform Enterprise Agreement (CPEA) are prepaid cloud-credit models with an annual commitment, and pay-as-you-go has no upfront commitment. In the subscription-based model you subscribe to specific services at a fixed price. Consumption-based accounts can also use free tier plans of selected services for trying them out inside an enterprise account. The model matters to a release manager mainly because it decides which plans exist to assign, and what a test environment costs to run.

Instances and subscriptions

Once a plan is entitled, it is used in one of two ways. A service instance is created inside an environment, for example in a Cloud Foundry space, and bound to applications or given a service key so external tools can call it. A subscription is used for multitenant SaaS applications: the subaccount subscribes, and users get access through role collections. Some services offer both. SAP Cloud Transport Management, for example, has an application plan you subscribe to for the user interface and instance plans you create when you need programmatic access.

SubaccountExample entitlementsWhy
cmc-ext-devCloud Foundry runtime (small memory quota), SAP HANA Cloud (small), SAP Build Work Zone, free tier plans where availableDevelopers build and unit test
cmc-ext-testThe same services and plans as production, with smaller quotasTest results must predict production behavior
cmc-ext-prodProduction plans and quotas sized for Great Lakes Fleet Services usersLive use with support and service levels
cmc-central-servicesSAP Cloud Transport Management, SAP Alert Notification serviceShared tools used across stages

An illustrative entitlement plan for Contoso's BTP subaccounts. Service and plan names vary; check the SAP Discovery Center.

Entitlements as a governance tool

Entitlements are where cost control and quality meet. Assigning too much quota to development wastes credits; assigning too little to production causes failures at peak. Free tier plans are excellent for experiments, but SAP notes that free tier plans come with community support only and are not covered by service level agreements, so they do not belong in production. And because a test environment's job is to predict production, the test subaccount should use the same service plans as production, even if quotas are smaller.

Lean developmentSmall quotas, free tier where available. Right for building and experimenting.
Overprovisioned developmentLarge quotas nobody uses. Wasted credits; pull back.
Starved productionToo little quota for real load. Failures at peak; fix before go-live.
Right-sized productionPaid plans with service levels and quota for peak load plus headroom.
Entitlement sizing by subaccount criticality.
The Sign-Off Table · thesignofftable.com/academy/sap-btp-101

What would you do?

The fleet order status app passed all tests in cmc-ext-test. On the first morning in production it fails to start, and the log says the service plan it needs is not available in the subaccount. What happened, and what should Luis do?

Key points
  • An entitlement is the right to use a service plan; a quota limits how much of it can be consumed.
  • Entitlements flow from the global account, optionally through directories, to subaccounts.
  • Services are used as instances (in an environment) or subscriptions (SaaS apps), sometimes both.
  • Consumption-based (BTPEA, CPEA, pay-as-you-go) and subscription models decide which plans exist.
  • Free tier plans have no SLA; test should use the same plans as production.

Check your understanding · not graded

Lesson check

  1. 1. What is an entitlement in SAP BTP?

  2. 2. What does a quota define?

  3. 3. How are multitenant SaaS applications typically used in a subaccount?

  4. 4. Why should the test subaccount use the same service plans as production?