BBP and IDES are both the pre-installed data packages in an SAP system, such as fictitious companies, customers and other sample data.
The big difference is that BBP is a much smaller data set. Instead of thousands of available customers or suppliers in IDES, BBP contains only a few dozen of such data.
IDES was available for the releases SAP R/3 and SAP ECC
BBP is now included from S/4 HANA
SAP IDES (Internet Demo & Evaluation System) consists of a set of basic configuration settings for all standard SAP modules and also contains large amounts of sample data (i.e. customers, suppliers, companies, transactions, etc.).
IDES was first published in 1995 and was available for the SAP R/3 and SAP ECC releases. However, IDES no longer exists for the new SAP S/4 HANA system. It was replaced by SAP BBP, Business Best Practices.
BBP (Business Best Practices) packages are very similar to IDES - they also contain basic configuration settings and sample master data and sample transactions. The big difference is that BBP is a much smaller data set. Instead of 1000 available customers or suppliers in IDES, BBP contains only a few dozen such data.
SAP Best Practice (also known as SAP Rapid Deployment Solutions, SAP RDS) is a standardized content database to support implementation projects with executable business processes. It is based on the comprehensive and flexible model that the SAP Best Practices team has cultivated from implementations in more than 50 countries with over 10,000 customers.
When we log in to both systems, ECC and S/4 HANA, and look at company and customer data, for example, the difference becomes visible:
IDES Data in SAP ECC
BBP Data in S/4 HANA
So we see that the large amount of sample data in IDES has been significantly reduced in BBP, and perhaps SAP has realized that you don't necessarily need thousands of customer and company data - some selected sample data is probably sufficient to test, try, learn and work in an SAP system.
What do you think?