Landscape Management Process - the Big Picture

Your IT landscape consists of all entities needed to run your business. Depending on the deployment model, these are systems or tenants, servers, software products, and so on.
To keep your business running and continuously improve your processes, both servers/tenants and software are changing constantly. 
We can speak of three states of IT landscapes:

  • Currently used version - here, ideally, a project is running where the landscape is analyzed to provide input to change planning.
  • Next version of the landscape, which is in the phase of detailed planning followed by the implementation on the system level.
    Often, it will introduce "natural" changes, such as the next Support Package or enhancement package.
  • Future vision of the landscape to implement your strategy for the long-term planning often with more fundamental change, such as the deployment models used.
    Here, specifically, exploring fundamentally new options and getting recommendations on the implementation on the landscape level is key.

The landscape management process helps you, run and evolve your IT landscape providing:

  • Information on IT landscape's status quo as a basis for both landscape operation and change planning of SAP centric solutions 
  • Ways to change your landscape comprise installations, updates, upgrades, and conversion to SAP S/4HANA and SAP BW/4HANA  
  • Information required to integrate software you subscribed to 

The following figure shows the landscape evolution and its phases: 

Figure 1: A landscape going through a change process in iterations to adapt to emerging business opportunities and new technologies. 

In the picture, you see a landscape evolving from an pure on-premise to a hybrid landscape including cloud systems. The question where the landscape's layers are running, and who is responsible for which layers, is described in Deployment Models and SAP Offerings - On-Premise, Cloud, and Hybrid.

The steps to move from one state of the landscape to the next are based on the status quo to find the required changes to reach the next level. Having reached it, the cycle starts again. These iterations, are, of course, not clearly separated: Running in cycles, in the next step, the "new landscape" being planned becomes the one you use, and the next level gets into the details planning phase.

The steps shown for one cycle of planning and implementing changes are performed by different people in a company, fulfilling different roles. In this document, you'll find the roles involved and a list of key components and tools they need for their tasks.  

Roles, Their Tasks, Tools and Entities in the Landscape Management Process

To manage the required changes, people in different roles are involved. The main roles in landscape management are from the areas of:

  • Business
  • IT Architecture
  • Basis Administration
  • Development

So Business, IT Architecture, and Basis Administration need to work closely together in planning changes to their company's landscape to identify required changes, plan and evaluate them based on the current landscape description, and prepare the implementation of new or additional software product versions.

Figure 2: Main roles and their tasks in the process of landscape management - the big picture.

The picture describes roles involved in the landscape management process and their tasks on the level of functional areas: Business, IT Architecture, Basis Administration, and Development. 
The inner circle describes the tasks in the existing landscape, the outer circle describes the phases of planning and implementation of changes.

In the next figure, the steps in changing a landscape are shown. 

Main Steps in Planning and Implementing Landscape Changes

In this example, the company is evolving its landscape from a pure on-premise set-up to a hybrid landscape. New options offered are identified by mapping required functions to new offerings; the plan for changes is created and implemented:

Figure 3: The functional view on planning changes - where tasks overlap, coordination is highly recommended and supported by the tools. 

Note that this process will run the better, the better the communications between people in the different roles work. The tools you will use in planning landscape changes support communication.

In the next section, you'll get information on the entities and tools involved.

Main Entities and Tools in Landscape Management

There are several tools that help in people in involved roles to perform the different steps during the planning of landscape changes. The most prominent is SAP Solution Manager, which integrates mandatory tools and provides data for the whole landscape management and related processes in SAP Solution Manager, so it's the first in the list:

  • It is the provider of landscape data consumed by the Maintenance Planner (which is provided as a service of SAP Solution Manager)
  • It offers functions that help you to run the systems in your landscape and supports the planning of changes

For more information available at the SAP Support Portal, see Application Lifecycle Management in general; you'll find SAP Solution Manager, its Cloud Extensions, SAP Cloud ALM, Focused Solutions, and a Community link. 

Figure 4: An IT landscape comprising systems of various deployment models with tools and steps of the landscape management process.

The picture shows a customer landscape and the tools used in landscape management. The green frame at the center shows its core functions: System Landscape Directory and SAP Solution Manager Landscape Management Database provide data for various other processes like monitoring. Also see  a comparison of SAP Solution Manager, SAP Focused Run (FRUN), and SAP Cloud ALM (CALM).

The Maintenance Planner allows planning of changes for SAP systems in your landscape. Several functions have been integrated with the Maintenance Planner as utilities:

Also see "Plan and Prepare Changes of Your IT Landscape - Maintenance Planner & SAP Solution Manager" on this page.

 

Left and right of the Landscape Management Process you find the main tools related to or supporting the process: 

The lower part of the landscape comprises systems directly managed by the customer installed on-premise or in a private or an IaaS cloud. The upper part comprises cloud solutions (mostly) managed by the provider as managed private cloud, PaaS or SaaS cloud. These deployment models are described in the details section.

On the left-hand side of the above figure, you see the planning of a new landscape version. You can get recommendations, freely browse for innovations, and map your findings to your business needs.

Note that the Transformation Navigator is planned to go to read-only-mode and-phase-out and has been replaced with "Process Discovery" - for details, see "Map New Functions and Deployment Models to Your Landscape" on this page. To learn more about Process Discovery, see Signavio Process Insights, Discovery Edition (ondemand.com)

The result will to a subscription to software and services and/or to planning new installations, updates, upgrades, or system conversion to be downloaded and applied to your landscape.
As described in the section on deployment models, systems or tenants of the different models are addressed with in different depth of responsibility by customers and providers. As an example, for the IaaS cloud, you will only subscribe to the infrastructure but handle the installation of systems running on-top of it yourself – that's why you find it described as being a “direct” part of your landscape. As we will see later in the section on connecting all parts of your landscape, from that perspective, the view on IaaS is different.

Entities, Steps, and Tools in Detail

In this section, you will find details on the elements shown in figures 3 and 4: Deployment models, landscape entities, tools for involved roles, and services in or related to SAP Solution Manager are explained.
The sections are described as tasks and follow a "natural" sequence, leading from understanding and describing hybrid landscapes, finding new options, mapping them to your needs to define a new landscape version, getting recommendations and detailed planning and implementation of the results. The list is closing with a offering that help you manage your landscape.

Project Set-Up & Prerequisite Knowledge

The SAP Activate methodology is designed to support project teams in the new implementation, or conversion, etc. of SAP solutions on-premise or in the cloud environment. It can be used as standalone or as part of an SAP Premium Engagement:

Figure: Main phases of the SAP Activate methodology.

The methodology is structured into project phases, each containing a list of deliverables and supporting tasks. Within the project phases hierarchy project teams will be able to find accelerators like project plans, templates and examples to support their SAP implementation project. 
Implementation Roadmaps for on-premise and cloud are available in the Roadmap Viewer. 

More information can be found in the SAP Activate Methodology Jam group. This group has been created to guide you through the SAP implementation and delivery methodology, SAP Activate. This group provides two sub-groups for SAP Activate...

Each methodology sub-group is in its own individual Jam collaboration group that users can join according to their preference and level of access.

 

The following table explains the deployment models mentioned above, their purpose, names combinations and provides example of products in an SAP system landscape. Note that there are different sorts of public cloud offerings, that you can get from SAP and partners. (Just to also mention this term: Getting cloud services - even with the same deployment model and purpose - from different vendors often is called a multi-cloud approach.)

On-PremisePrivate CloudPublic Cloud

Pick your software
versions:
Install what you need and add custom code.
Fully manage your own landscape.

Offering, examples:

- SAP S/4HANA

- SAP ERP

Build and manage your cloud.
Offer services for users inside your firewall.

Offering, examples:

- Any SAP software you install and run behind your firewall

- SAPoffers a similar scenario in a managed private cloud

IaaS: Consume infrastructure as a service (network, CPU, DB, etc.); deploy SAP systems & your own software.
- Examples offered by SAP partners: Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, ...
PaaS: Consume a platform as a service using services managed by SAP; build and control your own apps.
- Offering: SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)
SaaS: Consume software as a service and benefit from operations being handled for you including provisioning, updates, and security handling.
- Examples: SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition; SAP SuccessFactors
Hybrid Landscape

Combining any cloud offering with your on-premise systems, you will get a hybrid landscape.
A typical use case would be to use your on-premise ERP system (for example SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA) and connect it to SAP SuccessFactors.

 Hybrid Cloud
 

Combining two or more cloud deployment models to build your landscape, you'll get a hybrid cloud.
A typical use case is to enhance your SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition (SaaS) using the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) (PaaS).

Deployment Models and Responsibilities for Stack Layers

The big difference between the various deployment model are not necessarily different technologies, but the responsibilities and level of control that you have. The following picture shows this in a generic, simplified way - concrete offerings can differ slightly from this:

Deployment models, some of their variants, and responsibilities for stack layers.

In IT-landscapes, you can find, more or less, the following deployment models and variants:

  • On-premise:
    - On-premise systems only
  • Private cloud:
    - Systems deployed by the customer on-top of a cloud infrastructure owned by the customer
    - Tenant-based / cloud native software solutions deployed by the customer on his own infrastructure
  • Managed private cloud:
    - Dedicated systems or cloud native solutions and infrastructure run by the provider for the customer 
  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud:
    - Systems deployed by the customer on-top of a cloud infrastructure of a provider
    - Tenant-based / cloud native software solutions installed and run by the customer on-top of a cloud infrastructure of a provider
  • Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud:
    - Tenant-based cloud software, usually, run by the provider, offering infrastructure plus services
    - Software developed and deployed by the customer or partner on top of the platform using its services
  • Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud:
    - Tenant-based cloud software, usually

So, from a landscape management view, it is necessary to clearly state not only if you are talking on on-premise or cloud, but also, which type of cloud you use for a specific part of your landscape.
From the different levels of control that you have, you can get to the fact that the more control you need for differentiation purposes for a certain function, the more probable your choice will be an on-premise or private cloud solution. With SaaS solutions, on the other side, you get predictability of costs and benefit from managed standardized services. All options, as shown in the table above, can, of course, be combined selecting services from the SaaS cloud for standard functions and having your core functions in your private cloud, plus putting certain functions into the PaaS cloud, for example. 

But note, that differentiation is also possible when consuming, for example, ERP as a service with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition:
Using the PaaS services of SAP Business Technology Platform, you can develop on top of the digital core.
For more detail, see section Enhance SAP S/4HANA - SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) Development & Partner Add-ons further down this page. 

In the following, you will find examples for SAP products in various deployment models. For a complete list sorted by portfolio categories, see All Products.
In addition, while information for on-premise systems regarding security, availability etc. is obviously available to you. To learn about SAP's offerings in the cloud on data centers, agreements, and availability of cloud products, see the SAP Trust Center.

SAP Offerings in Various Deployment Models and Their Purposes in the Landscape

As we can see from the table above, there are more ways to deploy software as there have been before. The reason to choose a hybrid setup lies in the functions offered by the vendor and in the level of control need for the functions - think of specific versions you want to use or maintenance windows. These requirements, by the way, will not be the same for all areas in your whole IT landscape: While you might go for maximum control for your core applications that you use to differentiate in the market, for other applications you might want to benefit more from consuming highly standardized cloud services that helps IT concentrate on your core tasks.

Products Offered per Deployment Model

Examples by deployment model:

  • Managed Private Cloud: Utilize SAP's offering to innovate at your own pace. Use the full power of SAP HANA in a private, managed cloud environment from infrastructure to applications.
  • SaaS offerings cover a wide range of business services: They offer business functions to be consumed with the least manual effort in landscape management. SAP offers cloud based solutions to manage HR with SAP SuccessFactors, selling, buying, and marketing with SAP Ariba and SAP Customer Experience, or manage travel costs with SAP Concur, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud - for the latter see paragraph "ERP Software Offered in Different Deployment Models".
    You also find SAP Business ByDesign, an ERP solution for the mid-market business and other solutions.
    Usually, you will use these services in addition to your ERP solution.

ERP Software Offered in Different Deployment Models

SAP's next generation ERP SAP offering - SAP S/4HANA / SAP S/4HANA Cloud -  is available in a variety of different deployment models: 

  • on-premise, 
  • in a private or IaaS cloud 
  • in a Managed Private Cloud 
  • as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) 

For details, see blog-post SAP S/4HANA Cloud and On-Premise Deployment Options.

SAP Business One - ERP for Small Businesses

Like SAP's ERP for enterprises, SAP Business One can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud.  

SAP Data Custodian - Protect Your Data On-Premise, in the Cloud, and in Hybrid Landscapes

SAP Data Custodian offers a wide range of data protection features to helps you protect your data on-premise, in the cloud, and hybrid environments: 

  • SAP Data Custodian offers full stack transparency and control features including data residency controls, contextual data access control, and customer-controlled encryption key. 
  • These features help you meet your data protection regulations, data sovereignty and business compliance requirements. 
  • You can flexibly configure monitoring and control policies to restrict storage and access to cloud data based on data category, geo-location and user context, for example, user location, citizenship, department, employment type, etc.  
  • With the SAP Data Custodian key management service, you as a customer are provided full control of the encryption keys of your SAP applications and the infrastructure layer services. This key control feature is critical to prevent data access without your authorization. 
For further information see SAP Data Custodian @ SAP Help Portal.

Describing your IT landscape is a prerequisite for planning changes, its maintenance and monitoring. "Managing Technical System Information" in the SAP Help Portal describes terms, which are central in landscape descriptions - technical system, product instance (version), software component (version), and product (version).

In the following you'll find a selection of blog posts that shall help you better handle you landscape data, which is a prerequisite for running business applications, systems, and Application Lifecycle Management processes alike.  

Maintaining Products - Product Systems and Maintenance Dependencies

Here, you find explanations, how products are maintained even if they have been installed on more than one system:

Find Availability Dates, Technical Details, and Documentation - SAP Product Availability Matrix

Here, you can find details about SAP software product versions, including availability and end of maintenance dates, upgrade paths, and technical release information (database platforms, Java platforms, operating systems, etc.).

Access the SAP Product Availability Matrix

Status Quo Analysis

Data describing your current landscape status is required to manage running processes and plan landscape changes.
The tools, what data you get, and what purpose you need to use them for, depends on the deployment models you use in your landscape.

Landscape information retrieval for various deployment models. Note that the SLD is optional for the Landscape Management Process.

Following the responsibilities for the stack, landscape data are handled accordingly in customers' or vendors' tools:

  • Data from on-premise, private cloud, and IaaS installations are registered in the SLD and synced into the LMDB. Data from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition when managed by SAP  (formerly called SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC)) can also forwarded to an SLD in your landscape.

  • For HEC, PaaS and SaaS, the data (tenant and data center) is handled by SAP in a Cloud Landscape Directory (CLD) and made available in SAP for Me and displayed in various apps like the Cloud Availability Center.

    For monitoring purposes, HEC, PaaS and SaaS data additionally can be represented by external services created in the LMDB and used like technical systems then. In the Wiki on Interface and Connection Monitoring Setup with SAP Solution Manager 7.2, under Channel Creation in Interface and Connection Monitoring you'll get an overview of where to use and create external services.

Gathering Your Landscape Data in SLD, LMDB, and Customer Profile

To plan landscape changes on a systems level, you need data from systems that you run yourself on-premise, in a private cloud, or on top of an IaaS cloud. In addition, for monitoring of the whole landscape you need data from HEC, PaaS and SaaS as well. To learn more about the tools to gather landscape data follow the links to System Landscape Directory (SLD), and SAP Solution Manager Landscape Management Database (LMDB).
Data from SLD and LMDB is increasingly used in the SAP Support Portal, especially the Customer Profile used by the Maintenance Planner; this, however, will only work, if SLD and LMDB and/or Landscape Information Services are used and connected correctly in your landscape and to the Customer Profile - we call this their topology. To learn about the topology recommendations, read... 

Also see System Landscape Data Supplier (SLD DS) Payload Distribution.

Verification of Landscape Data

Verification of landscape data is an important step in having a valid landscape description, now integrated in the Maintenance Planner for landscape data in the Customer Profile. For more information see:

Accessing Information on All Your Systems or Tenants

While SLD, LMDB, and Customer Profile focus on the systems run by your company or directly assigned to it, you can directly access information on all your systems including those you consume in the cloud in SAP for Me.

Access SAP for Me

Landscape Data Strategy

With the upcoming changes described in SAP Note 2881788 - End of SAP Business Suite 7 mainstream maintenance there are new ways of gathering and handling landscape data in Application Lifecycle Management.
Note that the System Landscape Directory, which has been made optional for ALM quite some time ago, is affected as part of SAP NetWeaver. For details, see Options for System Landscape Directory (SLD) Scenarios.

Landscape Data Strategy for Customers Using SAP Cloud ALM (CALM)

Technical systems run by the customer are registered and distributed via SAP Cloud ALM (CALM) and Landscape Information Services (LIS):

For details…

Landscape Data Strategy for Customers Using SAP Focused Run and SAP Cloud ALM (CALM)

Technical systems run by the customer are registered and distributed via SAP Focused Run and CALM and Landscape Information Services (LIS):

For details, see SAP Focused Run - Supported Products for "simple systems integration” with SAP Focused Run; for information on Public APIs, see LMDB Public REST API. 

Also see Run and Get Deeper Control of Your IT Landscape - SAP Application Lifecycle Mgmt. & SAP LaMa on this page.

Process Management is offered by SAP Solution Manager. As of SAP Solution Manager 7.2 we regard all the systems in your landscape and all your processes your solution: This comprises processes running in your systems, SAP and non-SAP, plus manual processes.

From this point of view the solution is what you address when you improve your business processes. Use Process Management to manage your solution bringing information of business and IT architecture together. This will help you draw the new landscape version that maps new functions to landscape entities; or simply: putting the right product version to the right system: You can now model your processes graphically, and you can manage their lifecycle holistically, based on your solution documentation. You can create artifacts that are shared between multiple processes efficiently.

Process Management is divided into two parts to plan the structure of your company's solution and administrate it. 

Process Design and Modeling - Solution Documentation

SAP Solution Manager 7.2 offers a comprehensive structure to manage your company's solution:

  • Document the operational processes, application landscape, and system landscape to apply to your solution.
  • Manage your operational processes for better business communication, increased consistency, and improved efficiency.

To accomplish this, leverage the SAP Solution Manager 7.2 process modeling capabilities to create Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) diagrams. In addition, model the relationship between processes to better understand how your processes are interrelated.

Through new process management capabilities, you can also call for subject matter expert assistance to document a company's core business processes. For detailed information see:

Categorization of the Systems in Your Landscape - Solution Administration

This is about the solution administration part of Process Management: The system landscape comprises all your applications and systems. Systems fulfill different purposes related to the products installed, - for example SAP S/4HANA - in different roles, like development, test, production, etc. To make documenting your landscapes easier, SAP Solution Manager offers a flexible grouping mechanism called logical component groups to define the Logical System Architecture: These groups allow you to categorize systems according to their purpose and role, and to create abstraction layers that make it easier for non-technical users to link processes to systems or sets of systems.

Discover New Options

Before implementing an SAP product, you have to decide what to use in the future, how the main components of this product will be deployed in the system landscape, how custom code or your developments can be integrated, and how the new landscape is configured.

Apart from the planning steps described on this page, there are specific options available to change your  landscape offered by SAP:

  •  RISE with SAP offers a holistic on-your-terms and on-your-timeline transformation to an intelligent enterprise. You can remove complexity with a simplified engagement and guided journey through your business transformation:
  • GROW with SAP - adopt cloud ERP with speed, predictability, and continuous innovation:

The mentioned sources address various angles of planning. In the following, you'll find sources of information specific for the roles involved in landscape management.
Additionally, for using SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), see Try and buy SAP Business Technology Platform.

Recommendation for Roles involved in Landscape Management

Recommendations on the Business Process

Understand your current business process performance and get information on use cases.

Recommendations on Implementation Options and Prerequisites

Before implementing an SAP product, customers have to decide how the main components of this product will be deployed in the system landscape.

Typically, now, the products have various deployment models (see above), which result in different system landscape architectures with different characteristics. It is therefore up to you as the owner of your landscape to decide which deployment option best suits your IT and business needs.

To find recommendations and tools to plan a new landscape state - which will very probably be a hybrid one - in advance and including its integration, see:   

For information on custom code handling, see the recommendations for development.

Recommendations on New Development Options & Custom Code Handling

In most implementations of SAP systems, modifications exist. They need to be analyzed for being still necessary, compatibility with the new implementation, etc. For details on how-to manage custom code in conversion projects, see:

For SAP's new options for development, further down on this page, see Enhance SAP S/4HANA - SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) Development & Partner Add-ons.

Recommendations on the Handling of New Landscape Components

Usually, as a basis administrator, you will have to deal with the landscape planned mostly by business and IT Architecture; but - as discussed for the roles in landscape management at the beginning of this page -, you should be part of the discussions.

This is especially important when it comes to systems managing systems of your landscape: The topology of SLD, LMDB, and source of information on cloud systems. This is described in the following sections of this page:

There also is a series of documents to better understand the usage of SAP BW powered by SAP HANA and SAP BW/4HANA. Furthermore, these documents deliver additional information on the implementation aspects of SAP BW on SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA:

The first process steps that lead - bigger - changes to your landscape are those of the discovery phase. To find new options for your business, you need to browse the options available, learn about them - for very important changes, you might want to test the application in question. 

Tools supporting discovery and evaluation of new functions and product versions on-premise and in the cloud.

The process steps in the discovery phase are these:

  1. Browse  the solution catalog of SAP Cloud Appliance Library 
  2. Choose Appliance Templates or SAP S/4HANA Software Stacks to spin up Systems for Evaluation or Production use.
  3. Work with your own system environment on top of the cloud provider of your choice:
    • Create an dedicated Appliance from a Template to experience and evaluate new product capabilities making use of a free trial period
    • Install an SAP S/4HANA system with High Availability and run it for production use making use of our free deployment wizard (available for Microsoft Azure)

For more information, see SAP Cloud Appliance Library Community.

SAP Road Maps support the journey to SAP's future product portfolio and the Intelligent Enterprise.

Access the SAP Road Map Explorer tool
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Quickly Set-Up Evaluation Environments for Products - Trial Accounts and CAL

Try and buy SAP Business Technology Platform lets you try SAP BTP before you take a decision and shows additional ways using it.

SAP Cloud Appliance Library offers a quick and easy way to create SAP workloads in your cloud infrastructure. With a few clicks you can set up a fully configured demo environment or deploy standardized system layout for an SAP product based on default or custom SAP software installation stacks.

  • Instant access to a library of latest SAP (on-premise) business solutions
  • Preconfigured test, demo, trial and development systems
  • Fully automated deployment into your own public cloud account
  • Start your SAP project within few hours

Access the SAP Cloud Appliance Library

In most cases, new functions have to be seen in the context of the ones currently used. To learn about how to map the new functions to the existing landscape, see the next section Map New Functions and Deployment Models to Your Landscape.

Plan on System or Tenant Level

To get started on your digital transformation journey, you need to map your business needs to the functions and ways to implement them offered by SAP.

The Transformation Navigator is planned to go to read-only-mode and-phase-out and has been replaced with "Process Discovery" -  for details, follow the link to the blog-post.

Access Process Discovery

The Maintenance Planner combines functions required to plan system updates, upgrades, new installations and system conversion to SAP S/4HANA and SAP BW/4HANA. As has been discussed in the section on deployment models, this also applies to systems run in a private or IaaS cloud.

All calculations of changes affecting existing systems are based on system information mostly provided via System Landscape Directory and SAP Solution Manager Landscape Management Database.

The Maintenance Planner offers maintenance dependencies as a successor of product systems - learn about scenarios of using one or the other: 

The Maintenance Planner is constantly developed adding with new functions and integration of related steps.   

The following functions of SAP Solution Manager are related to landscape data or Maintenance Planner output and support your planning process:

Access the Maintenance Planner

Implement Changes

As shown in figure 3, there are several ways to make big changes in your landscape. The following picture shows the ways to get from an on-premise Business Suite around SAP ERP 6.0 to an SAP S/4HANA-centric landscape. 

Ways to get from an SAP ERP 6.0-centric landscape to an SAP S/4HANA / SAP S/4HANA Cloud-centric one.

So, as shown in the figure above, there are several deployment options on your journey to SAP S/4HANA:

  • You can keep the system in your on-premise landscape converting it into an SAP S/4HANA system
  • You can use a private cloud setup and install SAP S/4HANA there 
  • You can subscribe to the infrastructure of an IaaS provider and install your SAP S/4HANA on top (with the same "note" as for a private cloud)
  • You can use the on-boarding process to have your SAP S/4HANA managed in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition
  • Or you could subscribe to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition SaaS offering

New Installation, Updates, Upgrades, and System Conversion

New installations, updates, upgrades, and conversions are planed with the Maintenance Planner.

If you're going to plan a conversion to SAP S/4HANA, use SAP Readiness Check to identify the relevant Simplification Items and get information on many other relevant aspects such as:

  • SAP S/4HANA sizing simulation & Data Volume Management
  • Required project activities related to Simplification Items
  • Simplification Item relevancy and consistency checks 
  • Business Process Discovery analysis
  • Recommended Fiori Apps
  • Integration topics (IDoc Interface Analysis, Business Warehouse Extractors, ...)
  •  ...
  • If you additionally want to identify data inconsistencies, which need to be solved before SAP S/4HANA conversion, please follow the instructions of SAP Note 2502552.

Data validation during conversion, SAP S/4HANA upgrade and update:

Data Transition and Validation is a tool that allows users to compare business data before and after system conversion from SAP ECC to S/4 HANA. Additionally, the tool can also be used to perform data validation during S/4 HANA upgrades and updates. See DTV Central Note for further information.

Migration and Subscription

Migration in Detail

In many cases, the change of your system would include taking over data from your former system. For detailed information on the ways to handle the move to the new ERP, see

Subscription in Detail

For subscription information, you need to visit the vendor's product page. For you to get an overview of the differences of the deployment models, see Deployment Models and SAP Offerings - On-Premise, Cloud, and Hybrid. Here is examples of products offered for subscription with links to the product's pages (for a complete list sorted by portfolio categories, see All Products):

SaaS

There is a wide area of functions offered by SAP as software as a service - besides SAP S/4HANA Cloud, there are other functions covered by SaaS offerings: 

PaaS

Usually, you will use these services in addition to your ERP solution. SAP has one platform as a service offering:

IaaS

SAP does not offer infrastructure as a service as a vendor.

Managed Private Cloud:

Tools handling installation, update, upgrade, and conversion of systems and SAP HANA DB in various deployment models.

 

Note, that using a stack.xml file is highly recommended to keep your landscape description up-to-date.

Find out more about the tools:

A comprehensive list is available at the Software Logistics Tools page.

Configure & Adapt

In a typical landscape, you have to manage cloud systems as well as on-premise. You will find two major tasks:

  • Configuring the connection to services you consume from an SaaS cloud, which are exchanging data with other systems or tenants
  • Managing applications you created yourself in SAP's PaaS cloud SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)
You'll also find more information on that topic:
  • Integration Architecture Guide for Cloud and Hybrid Landscapes based on SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology: Consult this guide to understand how enterprise and integration architects can evolve their existing integration architecture based on SAP Business Technology Platform and the SAP technology offerings available today. Learn about the integration services available that cover all integration needs in heterogeneous landscapes.
  • SAP Integration Solution Advisory Methodology: Guided approach for defining and executing an enterprise integration strategy and increase the integration maturity level in your organization. Benefit from a proven methodology that includes integration patterns, architecture blueprints, and additional best practices for cloud and hybrid landscapes.

Configuring Connections between On-Premise, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS clouds

While configuration of on-premise systems is well known, for many people integration with the cloud may be new but becoming increasingly important. Until today, the scenario integration of SAP Cloud solutions was based on integration guides and go through them from beginning to the end.

Connections in hybrid landscapes offered by the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).

As shown in the figure above, the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) (formerly SAP Cloud Platform) is a central part of the connectivity in hybrid landscapes: It handles connections that go via the Internet into your on-premise landscape.
In addition, message-based communication to other businesses, can also be handled by the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).
For connections within the hybrid landscape, to connect systems you run on-premise to the cloud services you use, you need to install SAP Cloud Connector, As stated earlier, from a connectivity point of view, IaaS being a public cloud is working like a SaaS offering.   

Connectivity Service, Cloud Integration, and API Management

The Connectivity Service is always needed for the integration of Application development and integration (previously offered as SAP Cloud Platform) as part of the Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to other systems -on-premise or the various cloud options.
In addition, depending on your scenario, Cloud Integration Service or API Management can be used or create a pure point-to-point connection using the Connectivity Service.

For more information, see the SAP Integration Suite page.

Cloud Integration Automation Service (CIAS)

Cloud Integration Automation Service provides guided work flows for selected cloud scenarios:

Invoking a work flow for a hybrid cloud integration scenario.  

They make use of:

  • Customer specific system information (e.g. target URLs)
  • Reusable configuration settings between tasks, and
  • Automated execution capabilities

For more information, read Cloud Integration Automation Service – What is it? 

Integration Implementation with SAP Integration Advisor

SAP Integration Advisor uses innovative machine learning algorithms and a centralized knowledge graph to help you simplify and streamline the implementation and adaptation of your integration process requirements for B2B, A2A, and B2G scenarios. It helps, for example, integrating multiple business partners who use different industry standards such as UN/EDIFACT, SAP IDOC and ASC X12.

SAP Integration Advisor - process and related tools.

 

SAP Integration Advisor makes use of APIs as well as Standards & Libraries. The use of SAP APIs is included with the subscription to SAP Integration, while other content can be purchased for a nominal monthly fee. For more information, see 

The following picture shows, which tools are available for planning and implementing changes by transports:

Tools for planning and implementing changes and performing/managing transports (TR = transport request, MTA = Multi Target Archive).

As shown in the figure, for the same task, no matter in which deployment model, in most cases the same tool is used - the list focuses on systems handled by customers:

Change Management in Hybrid Landscapes

SAP Solution Manager offers tools for change management in hybrid landscapes:

  • Quality Gate Management (QGM) provides an integrated and consistent quality process for managing changes and their deployment over all operational units across the various organizations of a company. 
  • Change Request Management (ChaRM) enables you to manage your SAP Solution Manager projects from end to end in an ITIL compliant way.

SAP Solution Manager uses the Change and Transport System (CTS/CTS+) or the Transport Management Service (TMS) for content deployment. For more information, see blog-post How to use the integration of SAP Cloud Platform Transport Management into SAP Solution Manager Change Request Management and Quality Gate Management (SAP Cloud Platform is now named SAP Business Technology Platform)

Heterogeneous Systems: Install & Transport - XSA Product Installer 2.0 & CTS+

Cloud applications can be heterogeneous. To come to a combined, working deployment, transports need to be harmonized. To achieve this, SAP introduced Multi-Target Applications (MTAs) to enable hand-over artifact between development and operation plus delivery construct for partners.

SAP BTP - Managing Applications, HANA DB, and Transports

Transport for SAP HANA and SAP BTP - HTA and TMS

  • Hana Transport for ABAP (HTA) allows transporting native SAP HANA objects with CTS:
    - ABAP stack with HANA XSC. No configuration after a SAP NetWeaver update/upgrade
    - ABAP stack with SAP HANA HDI (HANA Deployment Infrastructure)
    For more information, see HTA for HDI at the SAP Help Portal.

  • SAP Transport Management Service (TMS), like CTS, allows transporting:
    - Development objects
    - Application specific content
    For more information, see SAP Transport Management service generally available.

Managing Applications and Transports - SAP BTP Cockpit

Using the development environment of SAP Businees Technology Platform (SAP BTP) is the recommended way to create your applications for an SAP S/4HANA backend system. In the SAP BTP Cockpit, you can:

  • Get an overview of your applications
  • Manage transports from DEV to QA and from QA to PRD

For more information, see the SAP Help Portal on the SAP BTP Cockpit.

Access the SAP BTP Cockpit

Extend & Run

One very important aspect of SAP systems lies in the option to enhance functionality by partner software or custom development.

Development using the SAP BTP to enhance capabilities of on-premise, private, or public cloud functions.

Use development with the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) (formerly SAP Cloud Platform) against another system in on-premise or cloud providing data or having other dependencies to differentiate without modifying the system you develop against.
You can set-up sub-nodes in SAP BTP development according to the tiers in your landscape. The example shows a three-tier landscape in on-premise and private cloud/IaaS. 

For more information, see Explore our featured use cases for the SAP Business Technology Platform.

Adding Functions to Your SAP S/4HANA Implementation

To get an overview of the topic, there are two practical guides for senior IT leadership:

As a developer, you can add functionality to SAP S/4HANA as you did in SAP ERP. Here are some pieces of information:

For more information, see SAP offerings for Application development and integration (previously offered as SAP Cloud Platform) as part of the Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). For details, see SAP Business Technology Platform or check the SAP Extensibility Explorer.

Access the SAP Extensibility Explorer

Managing Applications and Transports in the Cloud - SAP BTP Cockpit for DEV

Using the development environment of SAP BTP is the recommended way to create your applications for an SAP S/4HANA backend system. In the SAP BTP Cockpit:

  • Get an overview of your applications
  • Manage transports from DEV to QA and from QA to PRD

For more information, see:

DevOps with SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)

In the SAP Help Portal you'll find information on DevOps with SAP BTP with the following sections explaining the idea behind it, tools to be used and the relation to digital transformation: 

  • Discover
  • Use
  • Learn and Get Certified

Using Third-Party Add-Ons

Add-ons from 3rd-party vendors play an important role in SAP's ERP solutions for a long time. During and upgrade, it's very important to check the compatibility of add-ons and see if additional packages are needed. We find:

  • For Add-Ons provided by SAP or sold through SAP's pricelist
  • Add-On solutions are provided by independent 3rd party software vendors or partners

For details on the handling of these, see blog post List of certified ABAP Add-Ons for SAP S/4HANA and SAP Note 2861669 - List of certified ABAP Add-Ons for SAP S/4HANA, which also link to SAP Certified Solutions Directory.

SAP Solution Manager, SAP Focused Run (FRUN), and SAP Cloud ALM (CALM)

There is a dedicated area on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), so this section only shall guide you there. Offerings here are growing with the enhancements in deployment models (see above), playing an important role in managing IT landscapes:

* Evaluate SAP Cloud ALM for available and upcoming functions

Service Providers can monitor the customer landscapes of many products and deployment models centrally with SAP Focused Run, including SAP S/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA Cloud:

Here, you'll find more information on the ALM offerings - note that the pages also inform on Expert Wikis:

  • SAP Solution Manager: An on-premise solution to support on-premise applications as well as hybrid landscapes supporting all aspects of ALM. 
  • SAP Focused Run, addressing service providers, who want to host all their customers in a central, scalable, safe, and automated environment and customers with advanced needs regarding system management, user monitoring, integration monitoring, configuration, and security analytics
  • SAP Cloud ALM, addressing customers using only (or at least predominantly) cloud solutions from SAP, and do not want to deploy their own ALM platform on-premise for managing these applications.

SAP Solution Manager allows to monitor systems on-premise and in the cloud. The following monitoring types are available with SAP Solution Manager 7.2:

  • End-User Experience-Monitoring for availability monitoring of SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) applications
  • Exception Monitoring for error messages from SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) applications
  • Integration Monitoring for Cloud Integration Service

For more information, open the SAP Solution Manager 7.2 Application Operations – Expert Portal.

Also see 

SAP Landscape Management (LaMa)

SAP Landscape Management (LaMa) helps you automate repetitive tasks and gain visibility of and control over SAP and non-SAP systems in both traditional, virtual, and cloud infrastructures. In particular, LaMa provides system copy with fully automated post-copy steps. As a result, you can boost efficiency and agility and lower operating costs.

Note: After a name change the product SAP Landscape Management (LaMa) might be mixed with the topic of this page but is part of the process described here.

Use LaMa to perform activities/tasks to change your IT landscape on-premise and in the cloud:

  • Automate and standardize operations on SAP systems such as system clone/copy/refresh activities including automation of post-copy tasks, mass operations on systems and hosts; get landscape visualization plus dashboards
  • Manage and operate SAP HANA in automated tenant move/copies, tenant visualization, as well as mass operations on tenant systems, performing critical HA/DR operations for SAP HANA such as takeover; includes near-zero downtime maintenance procedures for SAP HANA
  • Manage hybrid SAP landscapes with cloud adapters for Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2, and Open Stack

The following figure shows an example of a task including several steps being available with LaMa:

Example of a task performed with LaMa: Automated take over of secondary HANA DB in case of an error on the primary.

As shown in the figure above, in case of a required landscape change, LaMa can be used to apply the change. LaMa executes the task/activity you picked. Even complex tasks can be automated substituting error-prone manual steps.

Tasks and activity are available with LaMa; additional tasks creation is supported.

For more information, see SAP Landscape Management.

Best Practices Guide to Planning Landscape Changes

We are working on this process in a group dedicated to Release Management and Innovation Adoption. The recommendation for the complete process is described using the example of the EHP-update of an SAP ERP 6.0 system in a Planning Landscape Changes - a Best Practice Guide. 

Tools and activities involved in the best practice process of innovation adoption to update or upgrade installations of SAP Business Suite products taken from the best practices guide are describes below.

Roles, their steps and tools involved in the process of planning landscape changes taken from the best practices guide.

The example chosen for this document is a EHP update of an ERP 6.0 on-premise system. As discussed earlier, the process will be involving the tools also used for systems deployed in a private cloud or in an IaaS cloud.    

This guide is reflecting the progress in process described and exist in different versions. Therefore, the links to the versions are available via an overview page: Planning Landscape Changes - a Best Practice Guide.