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Non-Technical Assistance
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This section provides you with knowledge and information on organizational requirements and aspects, helping you shape your organization's structures towards a digital future. Discover how to identify and establish the right set-up for your enterprise in order to implement a new digital core or find out how SAP outlined its guidelines with regards to new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence.
There is a consensus among practitioners that the lack of alignment between business and IT strategies is one of the main reasons why companies fail to realize the full potential for their IT investments. Although it may seem trivial, business and IT alignment remain one of the key challenges organizations worldwide are faced with. To support SAP customers to bridge the gap between business management and their IT department, SAP provides services designed to help companies build a Customer Center of Expertise (Customer COE).
Please check this proven methodology of SAP based on the Customer COE capability framework:
Customer COE - Strategy, Governance and Organization
If you’re ready to move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud then SAP is ready to help, starting here, with our view on organizational readiness of the business and enterprise IT to ensure your successful transition. With the help of this whitepaper, you’ll gain a better understanding of the initial parameters and principles when starting your discovery journey for SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Through the right preparation of your organization, the digital transformation of your business model onto SAP S/4HANA Cloud will be a success.
Customer Organizational Readiness for SAP S/4HANA Cloud
This document helps you plan and set up your landscape and your lifecycle management for running applications on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). It contains best practices and recommendations for planning development projects – from setting up the correct organizational structure to creating an account and security model, to developing and operating applications.
Best Practices for SAP Business Technology Platform
Read how hyperautomation can turn your staff into citizen developers by combining business process management, robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, and visual features that require no coding experience (incl. Use Cases and best practices of several SAP Customers).
The Way Ahead with Hyperautomation
The notion of DevOps is often linked to mindset, culture, and collaboration, but beneath these aspects one needs tools and guidance that enable efficient development and operations.
SAP Business Technology Platform offers a rich set of DevOps-related services supporting the development and operations of cloud-native and hybrid solutions. Start your DevOps journey around SAP Business Technology Platform.
The DevOps community page harmonizes all existing DevOps information and offerings at SAP. There, you can find the latest blogs, Q&A, examples, and further resources.
Apply DevOps principles in your application development on SAP Business Technology Platform. Here you will find content that helps you gain a general understanding of the topic.
Get an overview of CI/CD, discover SAP solutions that help you apply it, and find links to further information. Get started with continuous integration and delivery and SAP solutions for CI/CD.
This guide is the starting point for setting up application lifecycle management for your specific use case, business, and IT landscape. It contains recommendations and best practices that give you an overview of what you should consider when planning development projects on SAP Business Technology Platform. It does not contain specific task descriptions, but does include links to step-by-step instructions when required.
If you're an architect or a development project lead, this guide helps you plan your organizational setup and your account and security model. It has an overview of processes, tools, and services available for developing and operating applications.
If you're an administrator or developer, this guide supports you in defining the correct methodologies and tools for your development project on SAP Business Technology Platform.
The Planning and Lifecycle Management Guide will enable you to:
SAP Business Technology Platform Planning & Lifecycle Management Guide
Companies face increasing pressure to adapt much more quickly thanks to new architectures and technologies, including the cloud. Adages such as “never touch a running system” are outdated. Successful cloud companies – including Amazon, Microsoft, and also SAP – demonstrate that it is possible to change and deploy continuously. The new trend is called DevOps, which is an artificial word built from “development” and “operations” to illustrate that they both grow together without a gap between them.
Discover how adopting DevOps principles can help your enterprise compete and thrive in the digital era through an ongoing process of digital transformation. Find out how DevOps can enable your development and operations teams be more efficient, innovate faster, and deliver higher value to your business and customers.
Introduction to DevOps and the Interaction with Innovation Adoption and Hybrid Operations
Cloud innovation promises to deliver speed, productivity, scalability, and business impact. But getting the most value from cloud software is not always clear. It’s even more challenging when your business needs to deploy new systems while maintaining continuity.
SAP Activate provides the solution with Innovation as a Service: a clear process of structured and solution-specific practices, carried out in a standardized environment, for your business to choose how to adopt and extend new and differentiating capabilities across your organization. A self-service approach keeps you in control of when and where you push innovations into the business. Ready-to-run business processes are more than a jump-start to cloud solutions − they are a foundation to deliver new innovations on a continuous basis. Gain new ways to adopt and extend the full benefits of cloud solutions across your business, delivering greater value through faster innovation when and where you need it most. Innovation as a Service delivers fast, business-driven setup, configured to meet your needs, that cuts through complexity.
Learn how SAP Activate delivers digital intelligence at cloud speed to help you run at your best.
Customer COE in SAP Activate Methodology for RISE with SAP, PCE
SAP Activate Methodology for Various Solutions (S-User required)
SAP Activate Methodology - Overview
For avoidance of doubt, all of the tasks and services itemized in this Roles & Responsibilities document are provided as a catalog of services. However, the relevance and necessity of each individual task or service will be unique to each customer's SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud Computing Environment. Customers are responsible to review and analyze these tasks and make the selection of such tasks/services in collaboration with the assigned SAP HEC Cloud Architect Advisor ("CAA"), or with their SAP Client Delivery Manager ("CDM").
SAP focuses on developing artificial intelligence (AI) to improve people’s lives by helping protect the environment and build fairer societies. Recognizing the significant impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on people, our customers, and society, SAP designed guiding principles to steer the development and deployment of our AI software to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. For us, these guidelines are a commitment to move beyond what is legally required and to begin a deep and continuous engagement with the wider ethical and socio-economic challenges of AI. We look forward to expanding our conversations with customers, partners, employees, legislative bodies, and civil society and to making our guiding principles an evolving reflection of these discussions and the ever changing technological landscape.
SAP believes that Artificial Intelligence has the potential to unlock boundless potential for businesses, governments, and society. However, AI may also create economic, political, and societal challenges, depending upon how it is used and implemented. Our brand-new SAP Global AI Ethics Policy therefore governs the development, deployment, use, and sale of AI systems at SAP, by defining clear rules of ethics that are aligned with SAP’s established guiding principles for AI and its core organizational values. The policy covers essential elements which are vital to build trust in AI solutions, such as transparency and explainability, human agency and oversight, addressing bias and discrimination as well as civic society.
As Hybrid System Landscapes become more of a reality for an increasing number of our customers, we at SAP have devised numerous guides in order to help your IT and entire organization with challenges such as maintenance and operations in a hybrid environment. Topics covered are Interface Management, Landscape Management or Process and Data Integration, amongst various others.
End-to-end business processes in the Intelligent Enterprise span across SAP’s Intelligent Suite, partner and third party solutions. SAP introduced distinct suite qualities that facilitate a seamless out-of-the-box integration of our Intelligent Suite, including enhancements by partner solutions. Open integration further allows us to connect any third party solutions. The SAP One Domain Model will enable easy out-of-the-box integration and simplify the development of customer, partner and third party extensions.
SAP’s Integration Roadmap in the Cloud
This CIO Guide represents a step on the way toward SAP’s long-term vision for integration, as it is described in "CIO Guide: SAP Vision for Integrating SAP Applications in Cloud and Hybrid Environments.” It is snapshot of where process and data integration in hybrid environments is now.
SAP pursues the goal of making integration in the cloud and hybrid landscapes easy and simple. This guide provides guidance on when to use which integration technology in a hybrid integration landscape. It describes the three pillars of SAP’s integration strategy – the API-first approach, SAP Business Technology Platform Integration as the strategic platform, and the integration solution advisory methodology – in detail and provides information about some of the latest developments.
After a detailed introduction to the integration solution advisory methodology, the guide provides guidance on when to use which integration technology in a hybrid integration landscape. For process integration, it guides integration architects when to use SAP Business Technology Platform Integration, when to use SAP Process Orchestration, and when to either combine both or one of them with additional technologies. These considerations extend from application-to-application (A2A) integration to the equally important field of business-to-business (B2B) integration, including a concise introduction to the SAP Ariba® Cloud Integration Gateway. Data integration with SAP Data Hub as the new central point, as well as new approaches to automating process integration, such as integration automation and the integration content advisor, are also covered.
CIO Guide: Process and Data Integration in Hybrid Landscapes
Integration has become the key enabler and competitive differentiator for intelligent enterprises. In the paper “Intelligent Enterprises Are Integrated Enterprises,” SAP has outlined its strategy and road map toward an integrated intelligent suite along end-to-end business processes with a focus on SAP-to-SAP line-of-business (LoB) integration scenarios. Based on SAP® Business Technology Platform, this document1 explains the strategy and provides enterprise and integration architects detailed guidance on how to evolve their existing integration architecture based on the SAP technology offerings available today. It focuses specifically on integration services used to cover all integration needs in heterogeneous landscapes. In addition, we provide the paper “CIO Guide: SAP’s Hybrid Integration Platform for the Intelligent Enterprise,” a management abstract to accompany this detailed integration architecture guide.
Integration Architecture Guide for Cloud and Hybrid Landscapes
Information security is a top priority for your business. With cyberattackers becoming more sophisticated and relentless, we at SAP are committed to continuously innovating our software to keep your information safe – both on premise and in the cloud. We prioritize security so that you can stay focused on running your business and managing your customer relationships effectively using SAP Solutions, safe in the knowledge that your data is secured.
The Secure Operations Map: Highlights and Best Practices for Securing SAP Solutions
This CIO guide is about SAP’s approach to identity and access management (IAM) in the context of the identity lifecycle. It explains how IAM software from SAP supports building successful system integrations in cloud and hybrid environments, with diagrams and a reference architecture included for illustration. By using well-established IAM-related industry standards, SAP improves system integration and helps provide a seamless user experience while also helping ensure security and compliance.
Identity Lifecycle in Hybrid Landscapes (Focusing on Identity and Access Management Services)
More and more customers move to the cloud and use Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. But they continue to operate business applications deployed on-premise or at hyperscalers as well. Their IT solutions are hybrid.
Application Lifecycle Management is an important topic for hybrid solutions. Both worlds (cloud and on-premise) have to be brought together.
To scale the knowledge transfer, SAP decided to collect best practices into a series of whitepapers:
Find out about the cooperation between SAP and the Hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google or Alibaba and the various deployment options offered for your organization.
Deployment Models by SAP and Hyperscalers
The guide has been composed by members of SAP product teams, subject-matter experts, and consultants – in collaboration with ASUG (Americas’ SAP User Group) and DSAG (the German-speaking SAP User Group). It has three parts: “Part One” is dedicated to the key decisions to be made when planning your approach to your SAP S/4HANA transition. “Part Two” covers the pivotal elements of a successful project setup. And “Part Three” provides you with the most essential technology knowledge. This guide is not about our product. It’s about you, our customers, and the challenges you face, the decisions you have to make, your aspirations, and your success. Get the expert guidance you need to successfully plan your migration to SAP S/4HANA. Access this practical, condensed, down-to-earth handbook for executives, project managers, decision-makers, and senior IT leaders that summarizes our combined experience from over 5,000 SAP S/4HANA migration projects we’ve seen so far.
Mapping Your Journey to SAP S/4HANA
Operations Guide for SAP S/4HANA 2020
You want to connect your SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) system to your on premise SAP Solution Manager? As you don’t have OS level access and you cannot install the required agents by yourself, it is not clear to you how to achieve it?
This guide describes the HEC landscape specifics you need to know. It guides you through the process of when to request what from the Technical Landscape Owner (TLO) on HEC side and which information you need to provide the TLO. It is not intended to replace existing guides and descriptions for managed system configuration, technical monitoring setup or any other configuration/customizing activity in SAP Solution Manager.
Connecting a HEC System to an On-Premise SAP Solution Manager
With digital transformation many aspects of business changed. Besides new technology and new opportunities stepping on the stage, running operations is a core topic for COEs. With these resources we at SAP want to help your organization in operating your solutions in cloud or hybrid system landscapes.
This paper analyzes the different operations platforms in the ALM portfolio of SAP. It describes the functional scope with a special focus on managing hybrid landscapes. You will get support for selecting the best-fitting operations platform for your SAP landscape. This gets more and more important for customers on their way becoming Intelligent Enterprises, where multiple cloud solutions and on-premise systems collaborate.
Operations of cloud-centric and hybrid SAP solution landscapes
Companies face increasing pressure to adapt much more quickly thanks to new architectures and technologies, including the cloud. Adages such as “never touch a running system” are outdated. Successful cloud companies – including Amazon, Microsoft, and also SAP – demonstrate that it is possible to change and deploy continuously. The new trend is called DevOps, which is an artificial word built from “development” and “operations” to illustrate that they both grow together without a gap between them.
Discover how adopting DevOps principles can help your enterprise compete and thrive in the digital era through an ongoing process of digital transformation. Find out how DevOps can enable your development and operations teams be more efficient, innovate faster, and deliver higher value to your business and customers.
Introduction to DevOps and the Interaction with Innovation Adoption and Hybrid Operations
Everyone is talking about “the cloud” and “the digital transformation”. But while these changes are coming, they are gradual, and in the intermediate term there will be a hybrid landscape. But what exactly is a hybrid landscape? What are the challenges involved? What do you actually need to operate a hybrid landscape? What will the IT operations of the future look like?
Learn how to ensure a seamless operation of your Hybrid Solution Landscape and to understand the impact of introducing cloud systems to your on-premise landscape.
This document discusses aspects that enterprises and SAP partners need to consider when designing, architecting, and operating SAP® software in an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud. It presents a point of view that places SAP software landscapes in the context of an IaaS strategy addressing the needs of chief information officers (CIOs), chief technology officers (CTOs), chief development officers (CDOs), enterprise architects, and IT decision-makers.
Discover the advantages of moving your applications to an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform and the aspects you need to consider when planning to do so. Find out how the SAP Product Engineering organization can help you along this journey to becoming an intelligent enterprise.
Innovate and Operate Your Landscape in an Infrastructure-as-a-Service Scenario
This blog post provides and refers to a list of Cloud Operations Knowledge Base Articles (KBAs) which address these operations topics, and which have been made available for SAP SuccessFactors. This article focuses on operations challenges for which the customer of an as a Service software is responsible for according to the simplified Cloud Responsibility Model.
Blog Post: Cloud Operations Best Practices for SAP SuccessFactors Run Operations
Run Operations for SAP software systems and services are typically embedded in the organizational and procedural models and practices of Customer Center of Expertise (Customer COE) and therein the Operations Control Center (OCC). The latter is responsible for the two main processes of Run Operations scenario Detect-to-Correct: Event Management and Continuous Improvement.
Blog Post: Cloud Operations Best Practices for SAP Integrated Business Planning
Run Operations for SAP software systems and services are typically embedded in the organizational and procedural models and practices of Customer Center of Expertise (Customer COE) and therein the Operations Control Center (OCC). The latter is responsible for the two main processes of Run Operations scenario Detect-to-Correct: Event Management and Continuous Improvement.
Blog Post: Cloud Operations Best Practices for SAP Ariba Run Operations
Optimize manufacturing performance with integrated production execution, visibility, and analysis to meet evolving demands of today’s market.
Improve operations visibility with the SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud solution, a manufacturing execution system (MES) of near real-time data and analytics. Execute manufacturing processes, analyze manufacturing and business data, and integrate systems with a cost-effective, high-quality, and resource-efficient method based on Industry 4.0.
Our Architecture and Technology Whitepapers offer the latest information on topics of interest for CIOs such as current Road Maps of SAP Solutions, Technologies and Industries or recommendations on various IT-related topics like the usage of maintenance & support tools or the deployment of a Fiori Landscape, guiding your journey to an agile, efficient and intelligent Enterprise.
IT organizations often struggle with agility when responding to business user needs. This often leads to a gap between the potential value of IT systems and the real value that these systems are delivering. With rapid adoption of cloud technologies in ERP systems, IT leaders have access to new, agile options to serve their business users better.
This document describes what it means to operate your business in the cloud, explains how successful companies embraced cloud technology for their ERP systems, show cases key business scenarios, and helps you start you transformation journey. It is written for business and IT executives, program directors, transformation managers, and implementation project teams who are planning and running their cloud transformation journey.
Two-Tier ERP Deployment for SAP S/4HANA Cloud - A Practical Guide for Senior Leadership
Learn the key concepts for extending SAP solutions and how to leverage new technologies in your SAP S/4HANA projects. Read how to handle custom code during a system conversion and get practical advice for running a new implementation of SAP S/4HANA. Explore architectural patterns for building custom extensions for SAP S/4HANA.
Custom Extensions in SAP S/4HANA Implementations - A Practical Guide for Senior IT Leadership
Why, how, and best practices for upgrading to a higher SAP S/4HANA release, based on lessons learned from customer projects. Use this guide to: create your business case, prepare/execute your upgrade, and drive more value from SAP S/4HANA system after your initial go-live. Supplements the official Upgrade Guide for your target SAP S/4HANA release.
The Platform for the Intelligent Enterprise Learn how SAP Business Technology Platform serves as the unified, business-centric, and open platform for the entire SAP ecosystem, so SAP developers, customers, and partners can integrate and create value from data and extend their SAP solution landscapes to meet evolving business needs.
This document provides an overview of the release and maintenance strategy of SAP and applies to standard software releases only. Other release types such as standard-related custom development project releases, custom development project releases, focused business solutions, or early adoption releases, follow a different release and maintenance strategy. Through the Product Availability Matrix (PAM), SAP regularly publishes key release and maintenance information about specific SAP software releases.
Specific software releases may be exempted from individual maintenance strategy rules. These exceptions do not apply to core application releases and their enhancement packages or to releases of the SAP NetWeaver technology platform.
SAP cannot support third-party software after the suppliers’ support has expired. In such cases, customers may have to upgrade to more recent releases of the respective third-party software (if available), provided those releases are supported by the release of the SAP software in question.
Manufacturing companies are challenged to increase productivity while producing high-quality individualized products in an environment of constantly changing and varying customer demand. Companies recognize Industry 4.0 as strategic priority to turn these challenges into opportunities so you can stay connected to customers & integrate partners. Industry 4.0, or the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), is about industrial transformation using new digital technology that makes it possible to gather and analyze data across machines and business systems, enabling faster, more flexible, and more efficient processes to produce higher- quality individualized goods at lower cost. Technology innovations like the IoT, edge and cloud computing, Big Data lakes, artificial intelligence, sensors, autonomous systems, and cobots are drivers for the change. Creating value from Industry 4.0 requires an industry-specific approach as business goals and challenges vary by industry – and even by company. Learn more about SAP's Industry 4.0 approach in the Whitepaper below.
The guide has been composed by members of SAP product teams, subject-matter experts, and consultants – in collaboration with ASUG (Americas’ SAP User Group) and DSAG (the German-speaking SAP User Group). It has three parts: “Part One” is dedicated to the key decisions to be made when planning your approach to your SAP S/4HANA transition. “Part Two” covers the pivotal elements of a successful project setup. And “Part Three” provides you with the most essential technology knowledge. This guide is not about our product. It’s about you, our customers, and the challenges you face, the decisions you have to make, your aspirations, and your success. Get the expert guidance you need to successfully plan your migration to SAP S/4HANA. Access this practical, condensed, down-to-earth handbook for executives, project managers, decision-makers, and senior IT leaders that summarizes our combined experience from over 5,000 SAP S/4HANA migration projects we’ve seen so far.
Mapping Your Journey to SAP S/4HANA
Operations Guide for SAP S/4HANA 2020
Product and Solution Road Maps
Solution road maps cover innovations that focus on business solutions and processes and span several products that are relevant for customer lines of business in their industries.
Product road maps describe how feature and function capabilities of an SAP product or technology are planned to progress over time.
Product and Solution Road Maps
Implementation Road Maps
The SAP Activate methodology is the SAP road map and guidance for implementation, enhancements, upgrades, or co-innovation of SAP solutions starting with SAP S/4HANA. It enables cost-effective, agile, and fast delivery of the SAP solution to the customer. It supports deployments in the cloud, on premise, or in hybrid deployment. The SAP Activate methodology builds on the SAP Launch methodology for public cloud and the ASAP implementation methodology for on premise and managed cloud.
Missing guidance and lack of clear recommendations about optimal landscape setups for SAP products belong to the prominent challenges often addressed by customers in the past.
What is the best trade-off between flexibility and simplicity as outlined in this Wiki before ?
How could individual optimization and general standardization be combined ?
It is not that easy to come up with a quick answer, but we developed a way out. Based on a common methodology that could be applied to any kind of SAP product, we are able to provide guidance on typical architectural decisions that have to be taken by customers, when planning and designing a system landscape.
System Landscape Governance at SAP strives for
Introducing SAP Fiori, there are several deployment options available. In the following document, you can find the main SAP Fiori scenarios, the recommended system landscape setup, and the SAP Front-end server deployment options. This document also includes insights into SAP Front-end server hub and embedded deployment and what aspects to consider. The FAQ section provides answers to common questions regarding the SAP Fiori deployment options.
In summary, the SAP Front-end server (FES) central hub deployment is still a recommended option for SAP Business Suite scenarios. For SAP S/4HANA the embedded deployment is recommended. You can also combine both options in a mixed scenario: an SAP Front-end server hub with a central launchpad and central services such as My Inbox, combined with system-specific local launchpads.
Fiori Landscape Deployment Options & Recommendations Whitepaper
Connect applications, services, and systems across different landscapes.
SAP Event Mesh is a fully managed cloud service that allows applications to communicate through asynchronous events. Create responsive applications that work independently and participate in event-driven business processes across your business ecosystem for greater agility and scalability.
API Management technology helps you to share digital assets and enable developer communities to consume these assets in new channels, devices, and user interfaces. Available in the cloud, the technology helps promote co-innovation among employees, partners, and the developer community. To gain better insights about consumer needs, you can empower employees and partners with access to critical information and increase reach to a wider customer base.
The SAP UX Explorer whitepaper provides an overview of the SAP UX Explorer site and describes it’s goals, benefits, and provides an example how to use it.
The SAP UX Explorer site is targeting IT decision makers, UX project leads, UX developers, and consultants to help identifying the user experience (UX) improvements options for their SAP landscapes. The SAP UX Explorer site provides content that clearly explains the availability and capabilities of user experience innovations, UI technologies, and related services. It describes the values of each specific item, how they relate to each other, and how they can be adopted in a customer environment.
SAP UX Explorer: Understanding Your Options for Improving User Experience
The SAP Fiori Design Guidelines reveal the philosophy of the SAP Fiori user experience and provide and overview of all relevant floor plans, patterns and control. The guidelines cover both the classic SAP Fiori web app based on SAPUI5 and native SAP Fiori apps built on iOS. You can also download high-definition design stencils for prototyping your own SAP Fiori Apps
The SAP Guidelines for SAP Web IDE are aligned with the SAP Fiori UX visual language and design principles. These guidelines are aimed at both designers and developers and provide valuable information for contributors who wish to harmonize the styling of their stand-alone tools to the SAP Web IDE.
SAP Web IDE Guidelines for Contributors
For more design guidelines, click here.