Domains

SAP cannot fulfill all demands, requests and inquiries from their customers. That’s were SAP partners add value. SAP has recognized this already decades ago. The SAP partner eco system is one of the reasons why SAP is still a success story. Being aware of this, SAP ensures their partners get the right attention and offers customers an easy way to discover partners and to get in contact.

To get in contact, SAP provides an easy-to-use partner finder app. From there a customer can search for a partner based on different criteria’s like location, get more information about the partner and how to get in contact. The app is missing out on some potential e.g. automatically showing partners that match the industry or used solutions or a customer. Recommending automatically to a logistic customer that also uses Signavio partners that match exactly this situation. Or let a customer swipe through a list of partners the app thinks may match to the customer (via AI, of course): yes, no, maybe.

All of this is not the reason for this blog post. The partner finder app is running on SAP BTP: https://pf-prod-sapit-partner-prod.cfapps.eu10.hana.ondemand.com/#/

As you can see, the URL is not using a custom domain, like finder.partner.sap.com or partner.sap.com. The app is running on BTP Cloud Foundry, location EU10. Domain: ondemand.com

Accessing the app for the first time, you must give your cookie consent.

Looking at the list of required cookies, SAP doing an excellent work and explains what cookies are needed. For the partner finder app, the required cookies are from sap.com for logon.

That’s OK, only that the list of domains is only listing sap.com. The partner finder app is running under the domain ondemand.com. As the app is running in SAP BTP, cookies are needed.

The list of cookies set in the ondemand.com domain is not short.

The cookie consent is the “standard” SAP cookie consent that is used in other sites hosted under sap.com. From the cookie consent it is possible to find additional information like privacy or cookie statement (privacy policy -> links to SAP’s cookie statement)

The cookie statement is for sap.com.

The table for required cookies is for sap.com.

That’s all perfect. Just: the partner finder app is not using a sap.com domain. It is ondemand.com.

sap.com <> ondemand.com.

I’d prefer to either configure a custom sap.com domain for the partner finder app, or to adjust the cookie consent and include ondemand.com in the domain list. No, actually, I think the apps SAP is running in BTP should all use a custom domain name. Every app, no exceptions. Please use a custom custom domain name and never the generic technical name. Customers follow this bad practice. SAP must set the standard here. Not using a custom domain name should not be the default and recommended solution.

The hana.ondemand.com names are ugly. They contain no valid information to end users. You have to adjust way more information around them than you think. For customers: why do you do free promotion to hana? Or BTP with the ondemand.com domain? It’s not like SAP is making it cheaper just because everyone sees that you are an SAP customer. SAP: everytime I am directed to a ondemand.com app I can almost feel that the team responsible for the app does not really care about their users. A nice name is the first thing to offer. It means the end user is in the center of the attention. It costs money? Well, SAP, than make custom domains available for free and easy to use. Others can do it, why not SAP?