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A Shared Language to talk about Technical Debt

2023-11-17T13:40:59+01:00

Everyone has heard of financial crisis where the economy is in trouble and where people and companies are overwhelmed with financial debts. The consequences can be disastrous. Did you know that such crisis happen often in software development? Technical debt is a sneaky plague that can hurt projects, deliveries, people, and sometimes an entire company. This blog is the first in a series of blogs on technical debt on what it is, where it comes from, and how to deal with it. It will shed light on something we too often ignore, but can take control over by being proactive!

The intention of this blog is to define the term and to provide a shared language to talk about technical debt.

What is Technical Debt?

Ward Cunningham: "Although immature code may work fine and be completely acceptable to the customer, excess quantities will make a program unmasterable, leading to extreme specialization of programmers and finally an inflexible product. Shipping first-time code is like going into debt. A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite... The danger occurs when the debt is not repaid. Every minute spent on not-quite-right code counts as interest on that debt. Entire engineering organizations can be brought to a standstill under the debt load of an unconsolidated implementation."

Technical debt, a term coined by Ward Cunningham, is a concept in software development that reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing a quick and easy solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer. It's a metaphor that equates software development to financial debt, illustrating the trade-off between short-term and long-term benefits. When a development team takes shortcuts, such as skipping parts of the coding process to meet deadlines or opting for a less optimal solution to save time, they incur technical debt. While these shortcuts might speed up the development process in the short term, they often lead to more work in the future as the team has to go back and fix the issues that arise from these shortcuts. This is similar to how taking on financial debt can provide immediate funds but requires repayment with interest over time. Technical debt can be categorized into two types: intentional and unintentional. Intentional technical debt is a strategic decision made with the understanding of the future cost. Unintentional technical debt, on the other hand, is accrued due to lack of knowledge or oversight, and is often discovered later when issues arise. It's important to manage technical debt effectively. If left unchecked, it can accumulate 'interest' in the form of decreased productivity, increased complexity, and reduced code quality. This can lead to a slower pace of development, making it harder to implement new features or fix bugs. However, not all technical debt is bad. Sometimes, incurring technical debt can be a strategic decision. For instance, a startup might choose to incur some technical debt to speed up development and get their product to market faster. The key is to manage it effectively and pay it off regularly by refactoring code, improving documentation, and investing in automated testing. Technical debt is an inherent part of software development that needs to be managed strategically. By understanding its implications and making informed decisions, development teams can balance the need for speed with the importance of code quality and long-term maintainability.

Technical Debt - Dilbert by Scott Adams

Types of Technical Debt

There are various forms of technical debt. The following list is not exhaustive, but it covers the most common types of technical debt.

Code Debt: A prevalent form of technical debt, code debt stems from shortcuts or subpar coding practices, resulting in inefficient or disorganized code, which is hard to read, maintain and test. This make all development and maintenance tasks slower and will degrade the "enjoyment" of writing code while demotivating engineers. More details on how to deal with code debt can be found in the blog post Clean Code: Writing maintainable, readable and testable code

Design Debt: Design debt emerges when the system design is compromised, often due to time pressures or inadequate foresight during the design phase, resulting in a system that's challenging to maintain and expand. Due to this kind of debt developers can’t get confidence quickly that their code will not break existing functionality and dependencies.

Testing Debt: Testing debt arises from insufficient testing, including a lack of unit, integration, or system tests. This can lead to unnoticed bugs and software issues. Another important type of testing are flaky tests. More details on how to deal with testing debt tests can be found in the blog posts:

Documentation Debt: Documentation debt occurs when system documentation is incomplete or outdated, hindering new team members' understanding and slowing down system maintenance and expansion.

Infrastructure Debt: Infrastructure debt arises when the supporting infrastructure, such as the operating system, database, development environment, build systems, and CI/CD pipelines, are outdated or inefficient.

Architectural Debt: Architectural debt occurs when the system's architecture fails to meet current or future functional and non-functional requirements, making the system difficult to maintain, adapt, or scale.

Knowledge Debt: Team lacks necessary expertise or the knowledge is not spread among the team, leading to "knowledge silos" and bottlenecks that can slow development and increase risk. This may be due to staffing gaps and turnover or inherited orphaned code/projects.

Dependency Debt: Dependency debt occurs when a system depends on outdated or unsupported third-party libraries or services. The Dependencies are unstable or rapidly changing. Teams are unable to take advantage of new improvements and remain vulnerable to security problems. This also can slow down the onboarding of new hires and cause frustration for current developers who are forced to work with older versions. More details on how to deal with dependency debt can be found in the blog post Keeping Dependencies Up To Date

Migration Debt: Migration is needed or in progress: This may be motivated by the need to scale, license issues, costs, to reduce dependencies, or to avoid deprecated technology. It can also occur when a migration was poorly executed or abandoned: This may have resulted in maintaining two versions.

Unused features / Dead Code Debt Dead and/or abandoned code: Code/features/projects were replaced or superseded but not removed. More features creates more conditions and more edge cases that developers have to design around, which erodes the delivery speed.

Reliability or Performance Debt: These can affect the customer experience as well as the ability to scale the business.

Tool Debt Inefficient tools (both proprietary and third-party) can introduce friction or overhead for developers, slowing delivery speed.

Manual Process Debt When a part of the product delivery isn't automated, it requires more manual time and effort.

Automated deployments Debt Automated deployment workflows enable the ability to deliver features to customers continuously and at will.

Coupling Debt Coupling between modules or services leads to teams potentially blocking each other, slowing down delivery speed. Domain Driven Design is a great methodology to deal with this kind of debt.

Duplication Debt Duplication of code, services, or functionality can lead to wasted effort and increased maintenance costs. On the other hand should duplication be balanced with the need for autonomy and independence of teams. Reduction of duplication can cause dependencies between teams, which can slow down delivery speed. So it is important to consider the trade-offs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the legacy codebase, while being a significant asset, also presents a formidable challenge due to the inherent technical debt. This debt, if not addressed promptly, can become a substantial obstacle in delivering high-quality solutions and adapting to the ever-evolving market needs. Therefore, it is important to implement measures to manage and reduce this technical debt effectively. In the forthcoming year, I will publish a series of blog posts, each focusing on different aspects of technical debt. These posts will not only shed light on the complexities of the issue but also propose potential strategies, tools, practices, behaviorus, constraints and other approaches to deal with it.

Resources

Defining, Measuring, and Managing Technical Debt

Bottleneck Tech Debt

Inside the World of PLM - Exclusive Insights from Industry Experts

2023-11-20T05:54:22+01:00

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software has become an essential tool for businesses across various industries. Everyone is seeking ways to streamline their product development processes to stay ahead in the contemporary business world. PLM software is a proven game-changer, enabling companies to accelerate time to market, enhance communication, collaboration and visibility, and ultimately drive innovation.

In this blog post I will be outlining few key points that I learned during the panel discussion video segment – “PLM Uncovered”. Where we had the following experts from SAP Partner organizations joining in:

James Keefe, Director of SAP PLM from LeverX

Horst Heckhorn, SVP SAP Solutions & Business Development Executive from CENIT AG

Matthias Gräuler, Project Manager & Team Lead from Gramont

Thomas Nørgaard Jensen, Director, Digital Supply Chain, PLM from NTT DATA Business Solutions

You can watch the full video segment linked at the end of the blog.

PLM software accelerating time-to-market for both discrete and process industries.

Time-to-market is a critical factor that can make or break a company's success. The ability to bring products and services to market quickly and efficiently can provide a significant competitive advantage. By providing a single source of truth, PLM software ensures that all stakeholders have access to accurate and up-to-date information, fostering collaboration and reducing errors.

PLM software provides enhanced communication, collaboration, and visibility into the product creation and change process, resulting in a drastic reduction in time to market. Historically, organizations had silos of information and serial process flows, where data was passed from one function to another. However, PLM acts as an integration layer that connects all functional areas, allowing for parallel processing and real-time visibility across the entire supply chain. This optimization is beneficial for both discrete and process industries, although there are some differences in how PLM is implemented in each sector.

While the benefits of PLM software are applicable across industries, there are specific intricacies when it comes to the discrete and process industries.

Discrete Industries: In discrete industries, such as automotive, aerospace, and consumer electronics, PLM software plays a crucial role in managing complex product configurations and variant management. With features like product configurators, bill of materials (BOM) management, and change management, PLM software enables organizations to handle the intricacies of configuring and managing multiple product variations efficiently. This capability is essential for meeting customer demands, reducing time spent on customization, and accelerating time to market.

Process Industries: In process industries, such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and food and beverage, PLM software focuses on managing recipes, formulations, and compliance requirements. By providing tools for recipe management, formula optimization, and regulatory compliance, PLM software helps organizations streamline their product development processes. This streamlining ensures adherence to safety and quality standards, reduces the risk of non-compliance, and expedites the time it takes to bring new products to market.

Discrete manufacturing involves managing complex multi-level Bill of Materials (BOMs) with intricate structures. Variant configuration is often used for similar products with minor differences. CAD integration is crucial in this sector to manage product models and integrate information with downstream processes. On the other hand, process industries focus on formulation and recipes, with strict regulatory requirements. Manufacturing plant variables and coordination with operations based on defined thresholds are essential. Despite these differences, both industries benefit from improved communication and efficiency enabled by PLM software.

PLM software bringing value to customers.

Streamlined Collaboration: PLM software facilitates seamless collaboration among cross-functional teams, including design, engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain. By breaking down silos and enabling real-time communication, PLM software ensures that all stakeholders are aligned and working towards a common goal. This collaborative environment significantly reduces time-consuming bottlenecks and accelerates decision-making processes.

Efficient Design and Development: PLM software offers robust design and development capabilities, allowing organizations to create, simulate, and validate product designs quickly and accurately. With integrated tools for computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE), designers and engineers can iterate on designs rapidly, identify and rectify issues early in the development stage, and optimize product performance. This efficiency in design and development translates into reduced time spent on rework and faster time to market.

Enhanced Supply Chain Management: PLM software integrates with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, enabling seamless coordination between product development and supply chain operations. By providing visibility into inventory levels, demand forecasts, and supplier performance, PLM software helps organizations optimize their supply chain processes. This optimization minimizes delays caused by material shortages, improves production planning, and ensures timely delivery of products to market.

PLM software plays a crucial role in customer success by providing a trusted database, ensuring consistent and reliable data throughout the product lifecycle. It enables the sharing and reuse of data, facilitating collaboration with external business partners, suppliers, and internal stakeholders. The transparency and workflow capabilities offered by PLM software allow for effective collaboration, leading to faster and more efficient processes. Success stories shared by the panelists highlight how PLM software has brought value to customers by streamlining processes, improving transparency, and enabling concurrent engineering.

The world of PLM is constantly evolving to meet changing business needs and regulatory requirements. There is a growing emphasis on sustainability and the adoption of digital supply chains. PLM systems are moving towards cloud-based offerings, enabling remote work and collaboration. Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are expected to play a significant role in PLM, although specific use cases are still developing. The panelists emphasize the importance of executive support, people, and process change in successful PLM implementations.

Listening to the valuable insights from the experts, it was clear that embracing PLM software is no longer an option but a necessity for organizations striving to thrive in product development space. PLM software has emerged as a transformative technology that empowers organizations to optimize their product development processes. By accelerating time to market, improving communication and collaboration, and enhancing visibility, PLM software enables companies to stay ahead in today's competitive market. Whether in discrete or process industries, the benefits of PLM software are undeniable. Embracing this technology can unlock new opportunities for innovation, efficiency, and customer satisfaction, ultimately driving business success.

PLM software is a critical tool for accelerating time to market, improving communication, and driving customer success in both discrete and process industries. It enables organizations to streamline processes, enhance collaboration, and ensure data integrity throughout the product lifecycle. As the PLM landscape evolves, organizations need to embrace change, leverage emerging technologies, and focus on sustainability to stay competitive in the market. PLM is not just a technology but also a mindset that can transform businesses and drive innovation.

If you want to build a risk resilient and sustainable supply chain that provides actionable information, supports product innovation and empowers people, check out SAP PLM software. Take your design processes to a new level and connect extended enterprise to contextualize decisions and collaborate easier with the suppliers. Learn how close feedback loop can accelerate innovation and explore the key role of product design in sustainability.

Learn about solutions from SAP’s PLM Portfolio:

SAP Product Lifecycle Management Software

SAP S/4HANA

SAP Enterprise Product Development

SAP Teamcenter by Siemens

If you found this post to be useful, do click the “Like” button, and share your thoughts using the comments section.

Rise with SAP S/4 HANA public and private edition: Bundled Cloud Services- Base Vs Premium Vs Premium Plus

2023-11-21T13:40:30+01:00

This blog is intended for presales and PCA (Partner Cloud Architect) consultants working with RISE deals and have a good understanding of RISE with SAP and its terminologies. In this blog I wish to highlight the differences in the latest Bundled cloud services offered under RISE with SAP : Base Vs Premium Vs Premium Plus along with an attempt to answer the below questions .

1. What is SAP Cloud Services under RISE with SAP public and private edition ?

2. What are SAP Cloud features and Bundled Cloud services under RISE with SAP ?

3. What are the differences between base, premium and premium plus under RISE with SAP S/4 HANa Cloud, private edition?.

4. What are the differences between base and premium under RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud (Public edition / SaaS)?

As a quick recap, Under RISE with SAP, we understand that SAP provides 2 main types of S/4 HANA Cloud options.

Private Edition:

Public Edition:

Not all the above classification/sub-classifications offer bundled cloud services. It is only available for :

A.SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition under the Standard option :

Source: https://assets.cdn.sap.com/agreements/product-use-and-support-terms/cls/en/rise-with-sap-s4hana-cloud-private-edition-supplement-english-v10-2023.pdf

B.SAP S/4HANA Cloud (Public / SaaS offerings).

NOTE:No premium plus under public edition offering

Source:https://assets.cdn.sap.com/agreements/product-use-and-support-terms/cls/en/rise-with-sap-s4hana-cloud-supplement-english-v11-2023.pdf

Before explaining the above information, we need to understand what are SAP Cloud Service Softwares provided under RISE?

SAP Cloud service software under RISE with SAP, are the software/services that are offered under RISE construct. Eg:RISE WITH SAP S/4HANA CLOUD, PRIVATE EDITION; RISE WITH SAP S/4HANA CLOUD, PRIVATE EDITION, BASE OPTION AND BASE; RISE WITH SAP S/4HANA CLOUD, PRIVATE EDITION, PREMIUM; AND RISE WITH SAP S/4HANA CLOUD, PRIVATE EDITION, PREMIUM PLUS, SAP S/4HANA CLOUD, DIGITAL ACCESS, PRIVATE EDITION etc. A detailed list of such services available are described under respective service description guides(SDG). Customers can use only the Cloud Service Software that they have subscribed to explicitly with RISE contract.

Link to latest SDGs:(NOTE: Below are direct link to the latest SDG document available as of 21st Nov 2023. Always use the latest version by downloading direct from the SAP's trust center)



A.SAP S/4 HANA Cloud, private edition SDG:https://www.sap.com/docs/download/agreements/product-use-and-support-terms/service-description-guides/rise-with-sap-s4hana-cloud-private-edition-service-description-guide-english-v11-2023.pdf



B.SAP S/4 HANA Cloud : SDGhttps://assets.cdn.sap.com/agreements/product-use-and-support-terms/service-description-guides/rise-with-sap-s4hana-cloud-service-use-descriptions-english-v11-2023.pdf

What are Cloud features and Bundled Cloud Service?

Some of the features integrated into the Cloud Service are known as “Cloud Features”. These are provisioned on the SAP Business Technology Platform, a multitenant cloud platform (“BTP”) and interact with the Cloud Services that are provisioned under RISE.

Once the customer subscribes to SAP Cloud Services, the customer will receive access to some of the additional, multitenant cloud services called “Bundled Cloud Services”.

As per SDGs "

Cloud Features may be provisioned on the SAP Business Technology Platform and in a different data center location from S/4HANA Cloud

Cloud Features do not include the same service elements that apply to the S/4HANA Cloud and

The Service Level Agreement does not apply to Cloud Features"

SAP has categorized these bundled services into base, premium and Premium Plus.

(NOTE:

In general, BTP services can be consumed using CPEA credit (Cloud Platform Enterprise Agreement) or Pay-As-you-go as a part of a consumption-based commercial model. Subscription-Based Commercial Model is also available for BTP services consumption

Use of each Bundled Cloud Service is subject to the supplemental terms located at http://www.sap.com/agreementscloud-supplement)

===========================================================================

Under SAP S/4 HANA Cloud, private edition, below are the differences associated with the bundled cloud services based on my understanding.

A.BASE OPTION:

This is targeted at RISE customers who have minimal usage of BTP offerings

This does not include any RISE entitlements like free CPEA credits

Under this option, SAP host the customer's RISE system in SAP's private DC only

No major changes in roles and responsibilities between base option, premium option, and premium plus option from SAP's R&R document for SAP S/4HANA Cloud , private edition (https://www.sap.com/docs/download/agreements/product-policy/hec/roles-responsibilities/rise-with-sap-s4hana-cloud-private-edition-and-sap-erp-pce-roles-and-responsibilities-english-v7-2023.pdf

Below BTP service is included in RISE with SAP, Base option:

B.PREMIUM OPTION:

All the old and existing customers of RISE construct will fall under this category

The CORE S/4 HANA environment can be hosted on cloud service provider of customer's choice eg:Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Alibaba etc

No major changes in roles and responsibilities between base option, premium option, and premium plus option from SAP's R&R document for SAP S/4HANA Cloud , private edition (https://www.sap.com/docs/download/agreements/product-policy/hec/roles-responsibilities/rise-with-sap-s4hana-cloud-private-edition-and-sap-erp-pce-roles-and-responsibilities-english-v7-2023.pdf

Below BTP and process credits are included in RISE with SAP

C.PREMIUM PLUS OPTION:

Introduced recently ( Oct 2023) https://news.sap.com/2023/10/sap-btp-with-premium-plus-package-for-rise-with-sap/#:~:text=The%20new%20premium%20plus%20package,transformation%20and%20accelerate%20their%20innovation

Premium Plus offers enterprises subscribed to Rise with SAP access to SAP’s latest innovations, including sustainability insights and generative AI capabilities. While the package presents a cost-effective option, the additional AI units and their pricing structure add a level of complexity for businesses assessing their ROI. https://ts2.space/en/introducing-premium-plus-saps-newest-innovations-for-rise-with-sap/#gsc.tab=0

Any existing premium customer can subscribe to this PREMIUM PLUS option via SKU below .

This is targeted at customers who need additional BTP functionalities such as SAP Data Sphere and SAP Analytics cloud along with sustainability insights and generative AI capabilities as a part of their RISE construct.

The CORE S/4 HANA environment can be hosted on cloud service provider of customer's choice eg:Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Alibaba etc

No major changes in roles and responsibilities between base option, premium option, and premium plus option from SAP's R&R document for SAP S/4HANA Cloud , private edition (https://www.sap.com/docs/download/agreements/product-policy/hec/roles-responsibilities/rise-with-sap-s4hana-cloud-private-edition-and-sap-erp-pce-roles-and-responsibilities-english-v7-2023.pdf

Below BTP and process credits are included in RISE with SAP

The package is cost-effective compared to purchasing the services individually.

============================================================================

Below are information available in RISE with SAP Private and public edition supplement.

A.Bundled Cloud Services offered under SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition:

Source:https://assets.cdn.sap.com/agreements/product-use-and-support-terms/cls/en/rise-with-sap-s4hana-cloud-private-edition-supplement-english-v10-2023.pdf

For more information refer the source URL provided

B.Bundled Cloud Services offered under SAP S/4HANA Cloud (Public edition / SaaS):

Source :https://assets.cdn.sap.com/agreements/product-use-and-support-terms/cls/en/rise-with-sap-s4hana-cloud-supplement-english-v11-2023.pdf

For more information refer the source URL provided

Adhoc information:

RISE with SAP S/4 HANA Cloud, private edition is now under two-year release cycle rather than 6 months . Also, the maintenance has been increased from five to seven years giving customers more value against their investment and stability

Important links:

Thanks for reading and do like and leave a comment if this information helped you one way or the other.

Dark Clouds Over Old Europe: Impressions from SAPinsider EMEA 2023

2023-11-22T02:10:09+01:00

Christiansborg Slotsplads in a cold and wet Copenhagen

One of the best parts of this year has been the return of customer-facing events. How much I appreciate the opportunity to speak at conferences and share our experience, I like even more to hear from peers and customers. What they are doing, what they are working through, and where they are in their digital and cloud transformation.

I was at AWS Summit Berlin in early May, which predictably was a very cloudy affair but not exactly in the SAP ecosystem. MasteringSAP in Melbourne, Australia in June gave a good impression of the customer base in Australia and New Zealand. Being an equivalent event, SAPinsider EMEA 2023 in Copenhagen last week offered a fascinating chance to compare regional differences, moods and trends.

Security and Compliance Are Key Concerns

Both MasteringSAP and SAPinsider EMEA had a special Cybersecurity track of sessions on the schedule. At both events, the show floor had many exhibitors offering security and compliance solutions relevant to SAP customers. That already visibly gave an indication of the importance of the topic.

The tightening regulatory climate was a key topic of conversation in both regions. In Melbourne, each customer touched on the SOCI Act and the Essential Eight. In Copenhagen, it was EU regulation such as NIS2. Both regions have a large public sector and many regulated industries. Both have data residency and privacy concerns.

The challenges in keeping core SAP systems up-to-date are well known in the ecosystem and not unique to a particular region. Facing increasing cyber threats and stricter compliance regimes, security teams are understaffed and overworked. Many still struggle to be heard by their business leaders. We are all in an uncertain business climate, and organizations are all somewhere along a digital transformation journey, including migrations to S/4 HANA. Much effort is spent on organizational change and buy-in to do what is necessary, while trying to keep up with the need of the business to move faster.

Old World and New World Contrasts

There were significant differences, though, in how these common security and compliance concerns were discussed and how they impacted their digital transformation. At the chance of sounding obvious, I found real Old World and New World contrasts.

Digital Vs Cyber Physical

Growing up in Europe and crossing borders was easy. During the 20+ years I've lived in California that has only become easier, and most attendees despite a very international crowd were only a few hours travel from home. In Australia, cyber physical aspects brought on by geographical constraints played a large factor. In Europe that was almost entirely absent. The focus in Copenhagen was on systems and data, roles and authorizations, patching and custom code.

But it also reflected the different stages in cloud transformation. My surprise in Melbourne was how enthusiastically the region was embracing cloud. Customers thus naturally were more concerned about the cyber resilience of SAP's cloud services. In Europe, attendees were far more likely to run on-premise, with a large part of the landscape still on SAP ECC 6. The customer focus was instead on how to run their SAP systems more secure and compliant themselves - with or without a third party service provider.

Building the New Within the Old Vs Raze and Replace

Growing up close to Amsterdam, I am familiar with how Europe builds the new within the shell of the old. Copenhagen's city scape is an example of this. From the restoration and repurposing of old buildings into museums, stores or office buildings, to the integration of modern infrastructure into old squares, roads and cobble stone canal streets. New designs are intermixed with old houses, palaces, and places of worship from different eras.

The United States - and especially the West - isn't like that. Australia isn't either. There is far more of a tendency to knock the old to the ground and build something new.

How enthusiastically Australia embraced the cloud, how ever reluctant Europe appeared to be. I don't mean this as a criticism. The European approach makes its cities often more attractive and livable, and more easily manageable on foot. That aside, it takes its own skill and ingenuity to build the new within the old. We all have to deal with legacy systems and ensure that business operations are not impacted. SAP systems are integrated with other critical systems, and changes have cascading downstream effects that we all understand.

Teams showed off innovative approaches in managing their challenges, the needs of the business, and business continuity. Some of my favorite sessions in the conference were from customers describing their DevOps approach to manage Enterprise Threat Detection findings, Security Notes, upgrades or custom code scanning, across large numbers of SAP systems across different business units and functions in their organizations. Their use of automation was no less sophisticated and mature than many cloud-native pipelines.

But they were optimizing for systems with an end of life that is coming up soon.

Dark Clouds

Many customers were already on S/4 HANA with at least some systems. Some were on RISE, and others were in the cloud with other third party providers. But the default was on-premise with an estate of various ECC 6 systems in the landscape, and often still contemplating their path forward. Regardless of migration journey, there was a reluctance to cloud that was remarkable. Especially, since many of the reasons given against the cloud were the same arguments Australian and American customers I talk to say they are moving to the cloud for. The most extreme expression of cloud reluctance came from one attendee during a RISE with SAP interactive Café Session: "We can't go cloud, because of security and compliance reasons".

I won't dispute the self-assessment of this particular customer. Perhaps we won't be able to fully accommodate their particular needs through existing options or SAP's Sovereign Cloud offering, yet. But organizations in Australia in the public or private sector come to different conclusions than their European peers. Customers moving to RISE or adopting other SAP cloud solutions mention security and compliance as key reasons for doing so.

(More*) up-to-date systems with the latest Security Notes applied (* depending on cloud service and deployment option; for instance, RISE Private Cloud Edition)

Operating System and infrastructure updates

Network configuration, infrastructure management

Vulnerability scanning

Security event detection and incident response management

Recovery and cyber resilience

They can outsource that while focusing on where they can add more value in serving the business. Aside from these, there are often broader, more strategic reasons.

Reducing data residency complexity through consolidation of systems by jurisdiction (EU, U.S., Australia Japan)

Keys, secrets and encryption management

Keeping up with worldwide cybersecurity related legal requirements

When security resources are tight, Euros need to go far, and the pace of the business increases, a re-assessment of the security risks and merits involved in moving to the cloud compared to staying on-premise can be justified. With the 2027 date looming, this may be the best time to do so. Not all cloud security fears are justified. There is investment required to keep up with increasing security threats and upcoming legal requirements. You may not be able to tackle all.

Meanwhile I recognize SAP must do better to explain the security and compliance benefits a move to the cloud brings. I hope I made a contribution to that for those at the conference.

Create a Table with foreign key relationship in Eclipse.

2023-11-27T11:25:00+01:00

Motivation:-

In this blog you will learn how to create foreign key relationship between two table's.

Overview:- Many of time we need to create Header and Item table with foreign key relationship on ABAP Could so might be this scenario will help to create relationship.

Business Scenario:- Creating two table first as Header and second as Item table in Eclipse.

Step:1-

Create a Header Table in Eclipse

Step:2-

Select Database Table

Step:3-

Give Database Table Name

Step:-4

Object assign into your Transport request and click on Finish.

Header Table

Repeat step from 1 to 4 to create Item Table

Item Table

Note:-

with foreign key [1..*,1] zheader_vbak

here [1..*,1] - Presenting 1 Sales Order will have one or more than one items for one sales order.

Now its time to see check table option in Table browser.

Header Table

Item table with Check Table option

Here Item has check table option which is presenting the foreign key relationship with Header ZHEADER_VBAK table.

Header Table Code 

@EndUserText.label : 'Sales Order Header'

@AbapCatalog.enhancementCategory : #NOT_EXTENSIBLE

@AbapCatalog.tableCategory : #TRANSPARENT

@AbapCatalog.deliveryClass : #A

@AbapCatalog.dataMaintenance : #ALLOWED

define table zheader_vbak {

  key mandt              : abap.clnt not null;

  key vbeln              : vbeln not null;

  erdat                  : abap.dats;

  ernam                  : abap.char(12);

  vkorg                  : abap.char(4);

  vtweg                  : abap.char(2);

  spart                  : abap.char(2);

  @Semantics.amount.currencyCode : 'zheader_vbak.waerk'

  netwr                  : abap.curr(13,2);

  waerk                  : abap.cuky;

  faksk                  : abap.char(2);

  last_changed_timestamp : timestampl;



}



Item Table Code

@EndUserText.label : 'Item Table'

@AbapCatalog.enhancementCategory : #NOT_EXTENSIBLE

@AbapCatalog.tableCategory : #TRANSPARENT

@AbapCatalog.deliveryClass : #A

@AbapCatalog.dataMaintenance : #ALLOWED

define table zitem_vbap {

  key mandt              : abap.clnt not null;

  @AbapCatalog.foreignKey.screenCheck : false

  key vbeln              : vbeln not null

    with foreign key [1..*,1] zheader_vbak

      where mandt = zitem_vbap.mandt

        and vbeln = zitem_vbap.vbeln;

  key posnr              : abap.numc(6) not null;

  matnr                  : abap.char(18);

  arktx                  : abap.char(40);

  @Semantics.amount.currencyCode : 'zitem_vbap.waerk'

  netpr                  : abap.curr(13,2);

  @Semantics.amount.currencyCode : 'zitem_vbap.waerk'

  netwr                  : abap.curr(13,2);

  waerk                  : abap.cuky;

  @Semantics.quantity.unitOfMeasure : 'zitem_vbap.kmein'

  kpein                  : abap.quan(13,2);

  kmein                  : abap.unit(3);

  last_changed_timestamp : timestampl;



}

Summary:

This blog can help you to understand how to create foreign key relationship between two table using ADT tool.

Hope this blog may help you in your use cases. Please do like follow and comment if you have an any query on this topic.

Thanks

Dinesh Kumar

Cloud Guardrails: Effectively Making Your Cloud Accounts Secure-by-Default

2023-11-28T00:02:15+01:00

AI-generated image of a highway with guardrails running through the clouds

Our Most Effective Security Controls

One of the most powerful security controls we have in place at SAP are our cloud guardrails, or preventive controls applied to our public cloud landscape (see this blog, April 2021). These are controls such as AWS's service control policies and their equivalents that apply to all cloud accounts, subscriptions and projects collected in an organization in each public cloud provider. Implementing such guardrails is a powerful approach that makes your cloud accounts more secure-by-default and prevents common misconfigurations that regularly prove to be the source of security breaches and data leaks. This is especially important because in the cloud developer teams, the actual users of cloud accounts, have much more autonomy than more traditional data centers with its variety of gatekeepers such as Change Control Boards or network security teams.

SAP structured its cloud accounts into cloud provider organizations in 2018-2019. That was the precondition for our preventive controls to be feasible and practical. Speaking to peers and customers, we know that for many, such consolidation is not necessarily the case. Cloud guardrails can be implemented in multiple organizations, but the more organizations you have, the harder it becomes to manage these policies across all of them and leave gaps.

SAP's first cloud guardrails went into effect in 2020 before most of the current landscape even existed. We have expanded on them ever since while the landscape continued to grow from ~4,000 cloud accounts to over four times that today. These guardrails are baseline security controls that prevent or auto-remediate common security misconfigurations that can occur in our cloud infrastructure. The automatic enforcement of these baseline security controls allows teams in the organization to focus on more complex and ambiguous security challenges higher up the stack, such as VMs, containers, IAM and application logic.

Our guardrails have formed the core of our cloud security compliance success. Moreover, by taking care of "the basics" they have cascading effects elsewhere. When we deployed a Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) in July 2022, we could see the effect on our vulnerability management program as well. 99.6% of our open vulnerabilities were classified as "Informational" (instead of High, Medium or Low), indicating that they didn't pose an immediate risk to be addressed. This percentage lined up directly with the compliance rates of our cloud network security controls enforced by these guardrails, ensuring that these vulnerabilities were not exposed to the internet.

Endless "state of cloud security" reports from any of the vendors in the market say the same thing: that organizations struggle to keep cloud misconfigurations under control. Cloud guardrails such as these are among the most effective measures to improve your cloud security and compliance posture.

Scope of the Cloud Guardrails

The cloud guardrails are part of a larger SAP security policy framework for public cloud. The vast majority of these policies break down in high and medium severity which we scan for using a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solution to verify compliance with these policies. A subset of the high severity policies are implemented as organizational service control policies that apply as preventive controls to all cloud accounts in each cloud provider.

To prevent disruption, in some cases controls only apply to new or updated resource configurations, which can leave you a legacy problem to work through. To reduce the scale of that - to stop the bleeding, if you will - the sooner you can implement such guardrails in your landscape, the better. Other controls, such as enforced logging, are non-disruptive and can be safely rolled out across the landscape.

List of Guardrails in Place

Below is the list of cloud guardrails in place in SAP's global landscape (AWS, Azure and GCP). Due to the capabilities of cloud service providers there, the situation is more nuanced in China where a subset is implemented.

Enforce SAP password policy

Setup SAP AD integration for all accounts

Prevent the use of non-SAP domain users for all IAM admin users

Enforce MFA for all accounts

API logging cannot be deactivated

API logging centrally collected and stored

API logging must be stored for at least 6 months

API logging central storage location must not be publicly accessible

Storage access logging centrally collected and stored

Ensure logging on Kubernetes master node is activated

Ensure container registries are private

Ensure only the latest 3 major Kubernetes versions can be started/deployed

Security groups cannot have blocklisted ports (22, 23, 135, 111, 5500, 5900, 3389, 1433, 1434, 4333, 3306, 1521, 5432, 27017) exposed to the internet (0.0.0.0/0)

Enforce SSL policies of TLS1.2+ for storage

Enforce SSL policies of TLS1.2+ for load balancers

Enforce SSL policies of TLS1.2+ for CDN services

Enforce SSL policies of TLS1.2+ for fully managed database services

Enforce encryption on disk volumes for new volumes and ensure encryption cannot be removed

Enforce disk volumes and snapshots are not publicly accessible for everyone

Enforce encryption on storage buckets

Enforce storage buckets private by default

Enforce secure storage transfer is enabled

Enforce encryption of managed database services snapshots

Ensure secure KMS/Key Vault configuration (key rotation active, access control and key policies, strong keys)

All of these we can agree on are things you should be doing in cloud landscapes. All of these have associated NIST 800-53 controls or a Cloud Information Security (CIS) benchmark. These are not controversial. Unfortunately, these earlier mentioned vendor reports show that in many cases, cloud users struggle to meet these baseline controls.

By implementing such baseline controls as cloud guardrails, we prevent our teams from getting it wrong. At the same time, they prevent malicious users from accessing what they shouldn't, or turn off logs we rely on to detect them. Ask your cloud service provider how you can deploy such guardrails in your landscape, too, to improve your security and compliance posture.

How to test a BTP API using POSTMAN

2023-11-30T15:55:46+01:00

Hello There,

We already have many theoretical blogs about how XSUAA flow works for a business user in a BTP application. So, I'm assuming that the reader colleague is already aware of how exactly the BTP authentication and authorisation flow works combining SAML, SAP XSUAA, SAP ID service/SAP IAS, App router and SAP BTP applications. Being a tricky one, if you need one refresher, you may visit rajaprasad.gupta 's blogpost : Fundamentals of Security in SAP BTP | SAP Blogs

Here I'm going to showcase a simple mechanism i.e. how to test this auth flow through one client tool like POSTMAN.

How this auth flow works in a nutshell:

(Diagram courtesy - rajaprasad.gupta )

Sample BTP app used: SAP Master Data integration service

Sample business user used : bitan.chakraborty@sap.com (assuming all the BTP roles are already provided)

Collect XSUAA info :

You need to obtain client id and client secret for the targeted cloud foundry application service instance. Here's how you can have it handy :

In BTP Cockpit, go to the service instance -> service key

Click on View action of the service key

Copy the values of client id (A), client secret (B) & XSUAA URL (C) as shown in following snap

You may use "Copy JSON" option to copy all the pairs in a text pad to keep them handy

Collect bearer token using POSTMAN:

Open a new session in POSTMAN

Select POST as request type

In request URL bar, paste the XSUAA URL (C) along with /oauth/token in suffix

Go to the authorization tab and select "Type" as basic authentication

In username, paste the previously noted client id (A)

In password, paste the previously noted client secret (B)

Go to the Body tab of POSTMAN

Add three payload entities : username , password & grant type

Username would be the Business User username which is used to access the end user application. It would be the corporate IDP(which is trusted by the BTP subaccount : custom IDP/IAS/SAP ID service) username.

Similarly, password would be the end user's corporate password

Grant type should be hardcoded as "password"

Now POSTMAN is ready, hit send & in the response body, collect the bearer token from the value of the attribute "access_token"

Call the API with the bearer token using POSTMAN:

So, at this point, we have collected the JWT token for this request. Hence let's call the SAP Master Data integration service API with this bearer token using POSTMAN.

In POSTMAN, open a new session and put the API URL as a GET request.

Go to the authorization tab and select type as a Bearer Token and enter the collected JWT token

Now, click on Send to test the API connect and Bingo, we have the expected result output in the Body section.

So, this is how the XSUAA auth-flow works in BTP.

PS - I'd be glad if that helps someone in the fraternity (in a rusty day maybe? :-))

The Reasons to Move to Cloud or Stay On Premise Are the Same - That Makes No Sense To Me

2023-11-30T22:26:12+01:00

AI generated image of a frustrated man surrounded by clouds and on-premise servers

This week I saw an interesting data point in a ComputerWeekly article (CW) from the opening keynote at the start of the UK and Ireland SAP User Group’s Connect23 annual conference:

Our latest member survey shows 79% of those that have moved to S/4HANA have an on-premise or hosted deployment. Of those that are planning to move to S/4HANA, 70% plan to move to on premise or hosted versions.

This resonated with me after my experiences in Copenhagen at SAPinsider a few weeks ago, which I also debated internally.

Given my focus on cybersecurity and cloud compliance, my view is limited. Others are better qualified to discuss the relative functional and commercial merits of moving to RISE or stay on-premise and there can be a variety of factors at play I know nothing about. However, I try to understand from customers what their motivations are from a security perspective and what challenges they are working through. I also listen to customer-facing colleagues and our partners in the ecosystem.

What is remarkable is that the reasons given by customers to decide one way or the other are often the same.

Reasons To Move To Cloud or Stay On Premise

Both customers moving to RISE and those planning to stay on premise both tell me they do so for security and compliance reasons. That obviously leads to follow-up questions about how they came to their conclusions. Let's go over several common reasons I hear.

SAP Systems Are Critical to Business Operations

Common across all customers are calling their SAP systems critical to Business Operations. It is for this reason that I love to collect "failure mode" stories from our customers. That is, what would happen if the SAP systems didn't work. Severe outages or security incidents have dramatic cascading cyber-physical impact that can affect supply chains, logistics and distribution, manufacturing, retail businesses and government services we rely on.

Availability is critical. A marquee customer in the Aerospace & Defense industry early this year told us that they had a major outage last year that "made us realize we rely even more on SAP than we thought we did". It was one of the drivers for them to move to RISE.

Others maintain that they want to control the availability of their systems themselves, because of the criticality to their business.

We Are a Small Team That Can Only Do So Much

Security teams are rarely large enough for the risks that they need to manage. Customer security teams for SAP systems are even smaller, and many security and compliance tasks may be performed by SAP system administrators rather than security specialists. Teams must focus where they have the most impact and provide the biggest value to the business. Therefore, tasks like change management, SAP and operating system upgrades, secure configuration, IAM and role-based access control (RBAC), networking, custom code security, threat detection and incident response all need to be prioritized.

Availability is at the core of the reason why customers historically have struggled to keep systems up to date, especially for Security Notes or upgrades that require downtime. With often only few opportunities in a year for scheduled downtime, carefully negotiated with business owners, systems can fall years behind. We see this with RISE customers where we go through several cycles of upgrades and updates when we bring systems in.

Some customers choose RISE or GROW to have SAP manage updates and Security Notes for them, as well as the underlying infrastructure, network configuration, threat detection, incident response and recovery. Others choose to do that themselves or engage a third party service- or hosting provider.

We Have a Large Estate of ECC6 Systems, Still

Through natural growth and acquisitions, many customers ended up with dozens of SAP systems at a variety of versions and patch levels. A move to S/4HANA is often an opportunity for consolidation to bring the number of systems down and remove legacy and technical debt from the landscape. Some customers have already made the move but still run a number of legacy systems. Others are still in planning mode. We see that also reflected in the UKISUG survey in the CW article quoted above.

We have customers who do that consolidation through RISE with the direct help of the vendor. Others are doing it themselves or again with a third party. I have heard customers mention their existing ECC6 estate and the looming 2027 deadline as a reason to move to the cloud with RISE, to revitalize their systems, move faster and take advantage of innovation. Other customers have given it as a reason why they are not yet ready for cloud.

We Need Data Residency

Our cloud customers have told us for years that they need to ensure data remains within certain jurisdictions. The most common concern is around data transfers between the European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.), despite agreements such as Safe Harbor, Privacy Shield and Privacy Shield 2. SAP and many of our customers have long ago started to side-step the problem and consolidation of SAP systems on S/4HANA are typically done by data residency jurisdiction.

In supporting RISE sales deals with customers for whom security and compliance are of critical importance, data residency inevitably comes up. Figuring out the deployment strategy, including NS2, EU-only and Sovereign Cloud options, between the customer and the SAP team centers around juggling the various data residency and regulatory requirements. SAP's experience in navigating the laws and regulations in different jurisdictions for ourselves and with customers' industry peers is often appreciated in these discussions.

Other customers decide that the solution to data residency compliance is to run their systems in geographical locations of their choice and control the problem themselves.

We Must Meet Complex Regulatory Compliance Requirements

Virtually all customers I meet are in regulated industries, public sector, or considered critical infrastructure. They all need to meet complex regulatory compliance requirements. By extension, so does SAP. With the increasing rise in cybersecurity threats, governments around the world are sharpening requirements, adding to the challenge, especially for those with multinational business operations. We work with standard bodies, advisory boards and government institutions to provide input and feedback, and implement programs internally to support customers by the time new legislation goes into effect.

Our security policies are abstractions based on a multitude of ISO and NIST standards, regional requirements such as KRITIS or ISMAP, and recognized security best practices. That gives us one policy set that instructs the organization what we expect of them, while meeting all the various compliance requirements for different regions and industries. There are entire teams dedicated to make that work. Its importance is reflected in the new name for SAP's security organization: SAP Global Security & Cloud Compliance.

Not all customers can bring the same resources to bear as SAP can. Many customers, therefore, cite their need to meet various cybersecurity and compliance regulations as a reason for moving to RISE. This includes customers in Aerospace & Defense, Energy and Utilities, Manufacturing, Mining, Finance, Life Sciences, Food and Beverage, and Agribusiness.

Yet other customers in the same industries tell us that they cannot move to the cloud for security and compliance reasons.

How Do We Make Sense of This?

If those customers who chose RISE said one thing and committed on-premise customers said another, that would be easy to understand. I could imagine one set of customers stressing the need for agility in their business operations while expanding into new markets. Another set could mention a more conservative business culture or risk acceptance levels, or a need for greater control. But hearing the same arguments for a move to RISE used by other customers to stay on-premise is curious.

The CW article provides a possible, uncomfortable explanation. It is in regard to a different topic, but we have to take customer trust into account. When some customers prefer to engage with a third-party service- or hosting provider that suggests that there is a segment that trusts our software to run their core business operations but doesn't trust SAP to run it for them.

In lieu of a better explanation, we must assume that customer trust is a factor. That, then, is something we must work on. Increasing transparency about how SAP operates secure and compliant cloud services is a key pillar in SAP's security strategy. We have been working for several months now to help facilitate that and I am excited for what we planned for 2024.

Seamless Insights: Your SAP S/4HANA Cloud Weekly Analysis Companion

2023-12-01T12:22:39+01:00

Team discussing the service results

Looking to improve your SAP S/4HANA Cloud experience with best practice recommendations provided by SAP tailored to your system? We have a new companion for seamless insights and data exploration for you!

Welcome to the SAP EarlyWatch Alert(EWA) service which is now available for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition, through the SAP for Me portal. The service went live on November 20, 2023, and is available for all test and production tenants.

To access the service results, you will need an S-User with the authorisation Service Reports and Feedback. You can request the authorisation through the provided link to the authorization request app.

The service includes:

You will find a weekly report for each tenant in the Reports app.

All alerts and recommendations are summarised across your tenants in the Solution Finder

Usage and Performance KPIs are displayed in the EWA Dashboard

The Solution Finder is a task list of alerts which can be edited by you to provide feedback to SAP on their relevance. You may find this blog on the hide&snooze feature helpful, as it allows you to keep track on the recommendations you wish to implement.

The weekly analysis focuses on usage and performance, as well as improvement potential for applications. The report covers various topics, including:

Most used apps with number of users, response times and trends

Data footprint per business application

Critical findings from Extended Warehouse Management (inconsistencies and failed executions)

Performance of Fiori Launchpad

Performance issues in Custom Extensibility objects

Security Issues regarding Business Roles and Catalogs

Test Management

Potential for AI scenario usage

Maybe you wonder which AI scenarios delivered by SAP are available in your product, which can compliment your application usage? You will find a suggestion list in the chapter Potential AI Scenarios based on the application areas relevant for you including links to accelerators. The used application areas are auto-detected in your tenant.

Potential AI Scenarios

Furthermore, the EWA Dashboard provides time series charts on app usage, number of users, response times. You can drill-down by SAP modules and business roles for more detailed information. For additional details, please refer to this Blog on Fiori Statistics .

In case of a very critical finding, you have the option to receive email notifications. You can either use the One-Click-Subscription or find more information on notifications in this blog

I hope you find the SAP EarlyWatch Alert service valuable in improving your SAP S/4HANA Cloud experience. If you have any further questions or need assistance, feel free to add a comment or open a case on SV-SCS-EWA.

Cloud ERP Close-Up: Tooling for ERP as a Service Test Automation in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition

2023-12-04T15:16:38+01:00

Welcome to the last Cloud ERP Close-Up of the year!

SaaS is a vital catalyst for many companies to adopt trends and innovate technologies much faster for significantly improved business velocity and resilience. The definition of SaaS is rather technical: SaaS is a method of service delivery and licensing in which the service is accessed online via a subscription rather than bought and installed on individual computers.

But, when looking at SaaS ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning, nowadays often even coined as NRP, Networked Resource Planning (as the Supply Chains become more and more integrated into the overall demand-driven planning and fulfillment process), the business perspective of SaaS is much more interesting.

There are fundamental differences in expectation and delivery between Consumption as a Product and Consumption as a Service.

Characteristics of a Product	Characteristics of a Service
A thing	An activity
Products are used	Services are experienced
A product can be finalized and shipped	A service is constantly evolving

But to get there, you need to transform your organization from consuming an ERP as a Product to consuming an ERP as a Service.

In an "ERP as a Product" scenario, customers buy and own software to get it started, run, and upgrade it. Upgrades are planned at customer pace, with large IT teams responsible for preparing upgrades from both angles: technology and business. Extensive documentation is appreciated; the more, the better. It´s the project team's job to be prepared, and they do have the capacity to consume it. Customers used to practice a larger ERP upgrade every 1-4 years because the effort doesn't allow them to catch up faster.

In an "ERP as a Service" scenario, we talk about a business service activation. An upgrade becomes a significantly smaller event, almost towards a near-non-event. The solution provider takes care of nearly any aspect to keep it running. The provider does not only provide the infrastructure but also gradually steps into the task list of the customer's IT organization.

Figure 1: Stages of buying and running Software as a Product vs. a Service.

Now, we need to enable you to live up to the agile SaaS consumption models. Therefore, many things are fundamentally different if you run "ERP as a Service", here is a list of some tools reflecting the natural consequence:

Updates require running at high velocity and zero to very low risk

Tools support initial activation, availability, integrity, security, and upgradability. Upgrade knowledge, a key differentiator for a few highly specialized teams, must become ubiquitous as the specialized teams serve other purposes

- SAP Activate methodology gives guidance
- Solution scope (Process Navigator) fully transparent via SAP Signavio Process Navigator, latest delta scope per “What´s New”, individual customer delta scope via RASD (Release Assessment and Scope Dependency)
- The experience of your Partner of choice matters
- "Fit 2 Standard" vs "Fit 2 Gap" Workshops
- Different systems support lifecycle journey: TRIAL | Starter System | Test-System | DEV-System | P-System
- Supported Application Lifecycle Management with CALM
- ONE Configuration framework for everything CBC
- Extensibility in the cloud, recommended via PaaS (BTP) or on stack
- API Hub for Integration Transparency
- System Usage for customer

And there is one essential aspect that supports you after an upgrade that I want to shed light on in today's Close-Up cadence: the ability of the SaaS ERP to support an automated testing framework along with a robust testing strategy, enabling partners and customers to manage periodic upgrades with minimal effort and business disruption. It is designed to support customers in covering tests across their own data and scenarios between the "Q"-system and "P"-system upgrade period.

Test automation tool (TAT), natively available within the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition solution, provides the necessary feature set to create an automated regression suite for SaaS ERP testing needs. The tool comes as a no-code, no-installation, cloud-native solution. It has 300+ standard test automates across best practices (scope items) and continues to augment its repository with every release.

Check out the Automated Test Script Index to get to know the full scope items that have test automates available with their pre-requisites.

Salient features of TAT:

The execution engine (for automated tests) of the test automation tool is deployed on the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and is provisioned (multi-tenancy subscription for test tool service) for SAP S/4HANA Cloud usage

It is available for use only on the Q/T-system of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition solution for customers
1. Check out the Help document: Manage Your Test Process to get started with TAT

It is now also available and accessible in partner test demo and development (TDD) systems on the 3-system landscape. It is not available in the 2-system landscape for the following tenants:
1. Partner Demo Customizing
2. Trial Customizing / Development
3. Customer Sandbox Customizing / Development

It provides a mechanism for test data maintenance and re-useability in test automates using a framework called Test Data Container (TDC)
1. Check out the blog post Centralized Test Data Management with Test Data Container for a detailed understanding of TDC and how to leverage it

Supports both user interface (UI) & API test automation frameworks. Customers can create integrated test automates that contain UI process steps chained together with API automates for one seamless end-to-end process flow
1. Refer to the blog post: Creating API Automates Using the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Automation Tool for a detailed understanding on working with API automates

Adapting Test Scripts – How Customers Can Create Their Own Test Processes

While TAT provides standard test scripts for most scope items, there will always be a need for customers to either define their own scripts or to adapt the standard ones as per their business process. The TAT tool also provides recording capabilities to introduce new process steps to custom test processes and the ability to reuse existing process steps. Standard test processes are maintained by SAP and cannot be modified. Custom test process can either be created from scratch or based on a copy of a standard test process.

Get a more detailed understanding in this blog post: Adapt Test Process in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Automation Tool

UI Control Repository – A Framework to Propagate App Level UI Updates Across Test Processes

UI controls are interactive controls such as buttons, inputs, checkboxes, and more, which are present on SAP Fiori and SAP GUI apps. They are UI control objects that can be used across applications. These controls could be changed or updated as part of updates or upgrades.

The effectiveness of any test automation tool is gauged by its ability to manage application changes introduced by regular updates and upgrades. Test automates created earlier must incorporate these changes seamlessly with minimal manual intervention.

Example: A manual action step like the "OK" button control has changed to "Go" during an upgrade. All the apps referenced by test automates created before the upgrade should reflect this change.

The UI repository is a central collection of these controls, making them modular and reusable within the TAT framework. Changes made to the objects in the UI repository ensure changes are reflected across relevant apps that use this control as part of the test automates.

In this blog post, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Automation Tool – UI Control Repository, you can get a good understanding of how this framework can be leveraged

SAP Activate: Your Guide for Test Automation During Implementation and Upgrades

SAP's Activate methodology provides customers with a comprehensive testing strategy and approach to be followed during different project scenarios such as implementations and upgrades.

Implementation Projects: Check out SAP Activate for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition (3-system landscape) for a complete testing guidance across project phases.Figure 2: SAP Activate for implementation filtered by content testing.

Upgrade Projects: Check "SAP Activate for Upgrade of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, three-system landscape"Figure 3: SAP Activate for upgrades filtered by content testing.

Post-Upgrade Test (PUT): Safeguarding Customer Systems Through Upgrades and Updates

PUT is a quality verification service executed on customer systems post update/upgrade of their SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition T-system. This service, as a standard, runs SAP-delivered automates using customer-defined scope and data to regression check the impact (if any) on standard features post application update/upgrade. Customers can also run their custom automates as part of this process.

Figure 4: Post-Upgrade Test (PUT) – Process Flow

Cloud Application Lifecycle Management (CALM) integration with Test Automation Tool (TAT)

CALM is SAP's cloud-native tool available to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition customers by default, to centrally manage all tasks related to their solution implementation and post-implementation operations. In the context of testing, it enables central planning and orchestration of test plans and cases across manual and automated test cases. Test automates (standard and custom) defined in TAT can be integrated into CALM for central execution and monitoring of all testing activities.

Read this blog post for a real-world experience on running test automates from CALM: Step by Step Guide – Running Automation Script in SAP Cloud ALM

Watch this informative video on how to synchronize standard test automates from TAT into CALM: Integrate the Test Automation Tool for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Check out this help link on how to import custom test cases into CALM: https://help.sap.com/docs/cloud-alm/applicationhelp/importing-automated-test-cases

Using Third-Party Test Automation Tools via Cloud Application Lifecycle Management (CALM)

There can be scenarios in the customers' landscape where there is a need to manage test automates connected to other cloud products such as SAP SuccessFactors or third-party software. SAP CALM supports integration with "Tricentis Test Automation for SAP".

A prudent testing strategy for customers could be to adopt TAT for test processes primarily driven by SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition as it comes with pre-built standard automates for most processes and leverage Tricentis Test Automation to build the test scripts for processes driven primarily from other cloud systems – all this orchestrated and managed centrally within CALM.

Check out this community page to understand the Differences between SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test Automation Tool vs. Tricentis Test Automation

Check out the help document Setting Up Tricentis Test Automation for SAP Integrated with SAP Cloud ALM

Given the speed of innovation being delivered via our cloud solutions, leveraging test automation with CALM to do regression testing for public cloud solutions is a must-have strategy for any organization so that businesses can adopt new capabilities with minimum disruption and testing change management during upgrades.

Wrap Up

Testing is a vital catalyst for a smooth upgrade experience and improved business velocity and trust. I hope that with this blog post, I can give you some food for thought on how to make the best use of the tooling we have embedded in our solution. If you want to improve your system's resilience and increase your test coverage, I have good news for you: It is of the utmost importance to do so, too.

Engage with us to take the next steps and don’t miss the chance to visit this key page in our SAP Community Automated Testing in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition. Here, you will find the latest and greatest information about automated testing, enablement and activation information, tips and tricks, the most recent features added to the tool landscape, and an expert chat.

Another great source of information is the following SAP Note.

I am excited to learn how much you leverage test automation today. Feel free to drop a comment.

For further questions, I encourage you to leverage our SAP Community.

I hope to see you as a frequent follower of our Cloud ERP Close-Up – stay tuned and discover more product highlights in 2024.

All the best,

Bert

Follow us on @SAP and #S4HANA #Cloud, and myself on bert.schulze, LinkedIn or Twitter.

Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast

As always, I would like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast "Inside SAP S/4HANA". This podcast leverages the unique knowledge and expertise of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition product experts, partners and customers to address objects of interest by sharing product insights and project best practice. There is no customer success without product success and project success; we share all ingredients with you to get to the next level and make your SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition project a success. Subscribe now and benefit from the shared knowledge.

openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Our openSAP microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA Cloud offer an exciting new learning opportunity. What began with a small batch of 20 videos, has now become a channel with more than 50 microlearnings that have generated over 20,000 views. Today we cover multiple lines of business such as finance, manufacturing, and supply chain management, and key technology topics like Master Data Management, extensibility, SAP User Experience, and upgrade management. We are continuously adding new microlearnings to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud channel, so make sure you check them out.

Your Voice Matters!

If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition topic page on SAP Community. The community brings together customers, partners, and SAP experts and has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions. We invite you to explore our ‘one-stop shop’ as the central place for all resources, tools, content questions, answers and connect with experts to guide you through your journey to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.

More Information:

Highlights of the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2308 release

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2308 intelligent ERP update

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition release info

Release blog posts

YouTube playlist for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition

YouTube playlist for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition

SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel

Early Release Series

Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast

openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition

SAP Community

Feature Scope Description

What’s New

Help Portal Product Page

Event Recap – SAP MaxAttention Summit 2024

2023-12-04T15:43:03+01:00

We sincerely thank everyone who joined us for the SAP MaxAttention Summit 2024 at the brand-new Heidelberg Congress Center (HCC) in Heidelberg on April 23-25, 2024.

We’re delighted to share session recordings and presented slide decks inviting you to relive the event.

Please find the detailed recap event blog post in our SAP MaxAttention Community.

Over the course of two days, you had the chance to interact with members of the SAP Executive Board Thomas Saueressig and Muhammad Alam, attend keynotes and eXpert eXchange sessions on topics like Business AI, clean core with SAP Business Technology Platform, and enterprise architecture, and learn from your peers during networking breaks and customer experience sessions. We were also happy to see that you took advantage of the opportunity to attend our post-event workshops at the nearby SAP headquarters in Walldorf to meet with SAP MaxAttention and SAP solution experts.

We shared and discussed best practices for maximizing value from ERP-centric SAP landscapes and enabling transformation with the latest SAP features:

Increase agility and benefit from recent innovations and technical adoption by moving to SAP S/4HANA Cloud through RISE with SAP.
Achieve a clean core with SAP Business Technology Platform and AI-powered tools and services.
Explore further SAP capabilities included in mobile applications, SAP Datasphere, and SAP Analytics Cloud.
Improve operational efficiency with SAP cloud solutions for supply chain management and procurement, and drive business process automation with SAP Signavio and LeanIX.

The summit was a true testament to the power of our SAP MaxAttention community. It was very rewarding to see people networking, forging new relationships, and sharing experiences and best practices. We hope that your impressions will resonate with you long after the event, and we look forward to welcoming you at the next SAP MaxAttention Summit.

The Summit location - Heidelberg Congress Center (HCC)

The evening event was held at the Palazzo Mannheim on Wednesday, April 24, 2024. Known for its luxurious dining, superior cuisine, and exceptional service, this prestigious venue blended traditional and innovative cooking, which made it an outstanding destination.

In addition, there was the possibility to combine the summit participation with a visit to the nearby SAP headquarters for post-event sessions with SAP MaxAttention experts and SAP Product Engineering.

Therefore, we offered dedicated post-event sessions and an SAP Experience Center Tour:

How to Transition to SAP Cloud ALM and Unleash Its Full Power
Navigating the Cloud: An Interactive Workshop on Effective IT Governance Today and Tomorrow
SAP Experience Center Tour

Please find the agenda here. Visit the SAP MaxAttention Summit 2024 page for more information.

In case of any questions please feel free to contact us.

We look very much forward to the SAP MaxAttention Summit in Heidelberg!

Mastering "Tell Me About Yourself" Answer for Technical Interviews in 15 minutes

2023-12-13T17:27:08+01:00

I'm an IT professional with over two decades of experience in North America market.

As an ERP Solutions Architect, specializing in SAP technology, and a Microsoft Certified Trainer I have worked with major industry players , providing cloud solutions and trainings.

In my career, I did 100s interviews and as a someone who has sat on both sides of the interview table, I understand the challenges professionals still face in delivering a standout response.

A crucial aspect of interview preparation is mastering the 'Tell me about yourself' question or any variation of that in a TECHNICAL interview .

Instead of a generic answer,, I'll show you how to draft a concise, impactful response that truly showcases your suitability for the job you are applying for.

I've structured this video into three parts.

1.Key Aspects Breakdown: Learn the essential considerations when crafting your response.

2.Real Job Posting Walk through: We'll analyze an actual job posting together, providing a sample answer and in-depth analysis for inspiration.

3.Common Questions Addressed: I'll tackle those lingering questions you may have.

So, whether you're stepping into the IT realm or exploring other industries insights I provide are universally applicable.

let's embark on this journey to make your next interview a success!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qkJTg0e8VI

Share with others and Connect with us!

Please leave your comment if you have anything to add!

If you would like to ask questions, please use the community Q&A.

Give us a like and share on social media if you feel it was useful!

You can follow me in People SAP amin_omidy

Thanks!

S/4HANA Cloud 3SL onboarding and initial system set-up series

2023-12-17T14:37:27+01:00

Dear Reader,

Wish you have had a wonderful year with full of learning and excitements. As this year's (2023) clock is ticketing towards the end, thought of creating this blogpost series, which will take you through the simplified steps you need to perform while onboarding S/4HANA Cloud 3 System Landscape and initial system set-ups. Hope this series will help you in some extent while you are back from vacation in coming year.

Pre-requisites : Before starting, I'm assuming that you are already familiar with S/4HANA Cloud 3SL system landscape and components. There are multiple blogposts, learning materials are available one click away, my advice would be to go through them before reading the blogpost series. If you are looking for a bit elaborated synopsis, I highly recommend to go through this learning content : Onboarding with SAP Activate for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition | SAP Learning

Contents : Like other SAP implementations, SAP S/4HANA Cloud 3SL implementation also follows SAP Activate methodology. Hence, you will have specific project phases, where these onboarding and system set-ups should be done. I'll not focus more into the SAP Activate phases here, rather I'll delve deeper into the technical steps which is supposed to be followed. If you need to know about "when" then you may take a look into SAP Roadmap Viewer and liaise with your project phases Roadmap Viewer (ondemand.com).

SAP S/4HANA Cloud 3Sl primarily contains 9 different tenants/SAAS components to start with , i.e.:

SAP for Me : SAP for Me portal is SAP's one-stop shop for commercial, administrative, and technical information about SAP solutions. From provisioning the tenants to getting support, it's a customer & partner enabler.

SAP Central Business Configuration : SAP's one-stop central solution which enables you to scope, configure and implement end-to-end business processes for SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

SAP Cloud ALM (Optional) : It enables to test, validate and demonstrate the implementation and operation functionalities provided to support the application lifecycle management. However, it's optional for 3SL implementation and left to customers' choices.

SAP Cloud Identity Services (Non-Prod) : It is a productive instance of SAP CIS which creates and manages users to all these tenants. SAP CBC, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Starter, Dev & Test tenants will be tied up with this SAP CIS tenants, that's why we are now categorizing it as SAP CIS Non-Prod.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Starter System : The sandbox system with loaded master data and best practices, which will help your exploring capabilities for Fit-to-Standard workshop.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Development System : Your productive development system.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test System : Your productive test system.

SAP Cloud Identity Services (Prod) : SAP CIS, tied to S/4HANA Cloud Production system and the Cloud ALM.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Production System : Your production system.

The overall system landscape looks this this (image source : help-sap)

Now, we can categorize the onboarding and initial config steps into following sequence :

Receive order confirmation mail and set-up SAP for Me.

Provisioning SAP Cloud ALM and do the initial set-ups on user onboarding.

Provisioning SAP CBC and do the initial set-ups on user onboarding.

Provisioning SAP S/4HANA Cloud Starter System and complete the initial set-ups on user onboarding.

Provisioning SAP S/4HANA Cloud Development System and complete the initial set-ups on user onboarding.

Provisioning SAP S/4HANA Cloud Test System and complete the initial set-ups on user onboarding.

Provisioning SAP S/4HANA Cloud Production System and complete the initial set-ups on user onboarding.

For 1, 2 & 3 I will create separate blogposts very soon. For 4-7 , mostly it will have similar initial set-ups, hence for it I'll create a single blogpost mentioning the minute difference steps for all the systems if any.

(image source : help-sap)

I'll see you with the aforementioned blogposts one after another.

Wishing you a happy holiday season till then. Cheers. 🙂

Monitoring of sap systems through Azure_Part-3

2023-12-27T17:50:42+01:00

Continuation of https://blogs.sap.com/2023/08/14/monitoring-of-sap-systems-through-azure-2

1.WORKBOOKS

It provides a flexible canvas for analyzing data and creating advanced visual reports in the Azure portal. They enable you to leverage multiple data sources in Azure and combine them to create unified interactive experiences

Source:Microsoft.com

1.1 SAP HANA

To check the workbook on SAP HANA, we can select SAP HANA in the Monitoring tab and then select the monitored SAP HANA instances that we need to view.

Source:Microsoft.com

First we see an overview of the SAP HANA instance, where we can see an overview of the highest CPU and memory allocated so far.

Source:Microsoft.com

We can also see more details about CPU, memory, disk and network, as well as the services running on the HANA server.
In the Usage tab we can see a detailed CPU usage.

Source:Microsoft.com

1.2 Linux Operating System

To monitor the Linux operating system workbook, we can select the operating system (Linux) in the Monitoring tab

Source:Microsoft.com

If we continue on the same tab, we can also see an overview of the average memory consumption, the space used in the file system and the network in and out of the virtual machine.

1.3 SAP NetWeaver

To monitor SAP NetWeaver workbook, we need to go to SAP NetWeaver Blade in the Monitoring tab.
The Overview tab contains a chart of system availability. We can also group them by SID.

Source:Microsoft.com

We have option to group the availability by application server.

2.ALERTS

We can also set up alerts on the data stored in Log Analytics and design the alert according to our thresholds and requirements.

2.1 Create Action Group

To send a notification, we first need to create an action group in Azure Monitor. To do this, go to Monitor → Alerts → Manage Actions and then click New Action Group

Complete all the requested details and then tap on Next: Notifications

Complete all the requested details and then tap on Next: Action

Enter details about possible actions, then click Next: Tags
Specify tags if necessary, then click Next: Review + Create.
Review all action group settings and click Create.

Wait for the deployment.

2.2 Configure Notification

For settings up alert, we first go to Azure Monitor → Alert and tap New Alert Rule

Opt the Log Analytics workspace resource where the data is stored.
Need to define the condition by clicking “Add Condition” and then “Custom Log Search”.

Define the query that must be executed to trigger the alert. Here we only use the query to check whether the system is working properly.
Also, the condition upon which the email will be triggered and click Done. The condition is added to the alert.

Now,

Created Rules we can see in the Alert Rules.

Therefore, when Log Analytics receives a GRAY from an SAP control, Alert detects this anomaly and displays it in the alert dashboard.

One mail will be trigger to the registered mail id for the notification.

3. LOGS

3.1 Log Analytics Workspace

We may observe and review telemetry data collected by providers.

2.2 Azure Monitor Activity Log

We can also check the provider's deployment logs in the Azure Monitor activity log.

Here, the SAP system installed in Azure is monitored with Azure Monitor for SAP Solutions.

Conclusion-

We discussed how to deploy and set-up workbooks, alerts, notifications, and troubleshooting logs for Azure Monitor for SAP solutions.

Related blogs –

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sap/monitor/about-azure-monitor-sap-solutions

https://blogs.sap.com/tag/sap-on-azure/

Please share your feedback and your thoughts. Write back to me for questions and queries.

Thank you.

Empowering Businesses with New Insights: The Google Cloud and SAP Analytics Partnership

2023-12-28T12:35:19+01:00

A year ago, the tech giants Google Cloud and SAP embarked on a journey to revolutionize data analytics for businesses. Their goal: to bring together SAP systems and data with Google’s data cloud, offering customers better insights for decision making and innovation. The new SAP Datasphere Replication Flow connector for Google BigQuery is now available.

From the outset, customers have been excited about the potential of this partnership: integrating SAP's robust data models and real-time processes with Google BigQuery's comprehensive real-time data streams, including search engine data, weather data, marketing data, and customer event data, to inspire new and better ways to do business.

Prior to this collaboration, businesses found it challenging to merge data models from either side due to cost, effort, and time. This partnership aims to eliminate these hurdles, providing real-time data streams that adjust dynamically to changes from Google Cloud and SAP. Haridas Nair, the Head of Cross Product Management for Database and Analytics at SAP, stated, "Customers using SAP Business Technology Platform can now extend the reach of curated and modeled SAP business data for downstream consumption with SAP Datasphere Replication Flow. The integration with BigQuery now enables customers to combine SAP business data with Google BigQuery data. This enables new use cases that can unleash significant business value."

For example, while enterprises rely on SAP S/4HANA for their financial planning, reporting, and budgeting there are many that also have finance data coming in other systems. Join ventures, new acquisitions or decentralized business models are common cases where finance data will reside in non-SAP S/4HANA systems. Early adopters of such companies are leveraging the Google Cloud and the SAP Datasphere Replication Flow connector to unify accounting data insights into SAP Datasphere to get a single financial dashboard across all their financial sources and thereby enable secure, self-service access to reusable data models, and streamline financial reporting. The result is enhanced analytics that enable new market correlations to transpire, as well as reporting efficiency and reduced data management costs. As such finance and operations experts can receive new insights that improve their business planning.

The other common use case relates to Consumer Products and Retail companies. A prime example is a North American consumer products company selling through retailers as well as their online platform. As many other companies in this space, they're investing in brand loyalty and scaling their product portfolio to target different customer segments. The company strives to corelate online customer trends with their retail channel sales using demographics and other consumer data.

Their business goals involve improving channel inventory turns, trade promotion management, shelf-availability, SKU margins, and overall understanding of customer buying behavior. Simultaneously, they aim to reduce the cost, effort, and time for accessing SAP data and enable richer SAP ERP data in real-time.

To achieve these goals, they have connected Google Cloud and SAP data to gain better insight into their retail channels and to improve their demand forecasting and supply chain algorithms. The more real-time the connectivity between their SAP data and Google BigQuery data, the more confident they'll be in the predictive algorithms they adopt for their supply chain.

But this is just the beginning. The Google Cloud and SAP Analytics partnership opens the door to a wide range of strategic customer and supply chain programs that leverage data for advanced predictive demand models. Early examples of customer innovations include true customer 360 insight, improved sales performance, yield-driven pricing, new product introductions, unifying external accounting with SAP, manufacturing automation, and operationalizing sustainability.

Both of the Google Cloud and SAP development organizations are excited to see that their work is making a difference. Future releases plan to include more advanced features for managing enterprise scale federation, replication and data catalogs between their respective data platforms. Honza Fedak, Director of BigQuery Engineering at Google Cloud stated, "The combination of Google Cloud's data and AI expertise and SAP's deep understanding of business data is a powerful force that can help businesses unlock the full potential of their data."

As more enterprises utilize this partnership, we are confident that the Google Cloud and SAP analytics partnership can provide better insights, enable better decisions, and foster innovation. This partnership is a significant step towards creating more Intelligent Enterprises, and we hope your enterprise will be one of them.

How Generative AI is expediting cloud migration of ERP systems?

2024-01-09T02:57:01+01:00

Artificial intelligence, in particular Generative AI, is the buzzword these days. Every company is trying to harness the power of Generative AI to increase efficiency, productivity and improve user experience. How can ERP systems be left behind? Although public opinions may vary, ERP systems are generally considered mundane and boring. How cool it would be if the ERP system suddenly starts to engage with the user in a meaningful way to make work more productive. Ultimately, Generative AI is that branch of Artificial Intelligence that focuses on creating new content, designs or ideas through machine learning algorithms trained over a large set of data. The goal of an ERP system is not only to capture huge amounts of data but also to derive meaningful insight from it in such a way that it can voluntarily act or suggest the next course of action. Imagine if your ERP system gets infused with life and starts to interact with users so that work becomes more fun without the mundane repetition. Maybe a day is not too far when you do not have to remember a tile or a transaction code anymore.

The bigger question is how do we leverage the power of AI? From an enterprise resource planning perspective, to create the biggest value, AI must work within the context of the organization’s business processes and understand its data. Since AI is only in the cloud, it is not possible for on-premise ERP solutions. Hence to leverage the power of AI, organizations must push their ERP systems to the cloud. In recent years, we have seen a massive push towards cloud ERP. This is a very good move towards the right direction. Artificial Intelligence can optimize business processes using cloud ERP solutions. Organizations can run their most important processes in cloud ERP, while the AI can learn, adapt and adjust to uniquely optimize the organization’s business processes.

However, migrating to the cloud is not as easy as it seems. Organization’s mission critical processes and data reside within their ERP system. Organization’s also adapt to unique processes and data to maintain their competitive advantage. Every organization is unique and we have to be very thoughtful in any evolution in the ERP system especially if you want to combine the power of cloud and generative AI and their application to the unique business processes and data of the organization. Leading ERP companies such as SAP and Oracle have introduced cloud private edition, one such tool that allows you to combine cloud and Generative AI with unique business processes and data of an organization.

Use cases of Generative AI in ERP applications are still in their early stages. Email integration with ERP to classify and prioritize work items, expedite freight management by automating processing of large volumes of goods receipts and delivery notes, writing compelling job descriptions and generating interview questions are some of the examples of Generative AI in action within ERP systems. With time, the scope will multiply manifold.

According to Larry Ellison of Oracle, not many technologies get the constant attention of heads of government, business elites and ordinary people together. Generative AI is truly different. Whether it is the most important new technology ever? Only time will tell.

Getting Familiar with Spaces and Pages in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

2024-01-12T11:20:20+01:00

Happy New Year 2024! To start off the year right, I'd like to remind you to switch from groups to spaces and pages, our go-to approach for visualization and layout in the SAP Fiori launchpad.

Why switch to spaces and pages? The groups setup on the SAP Fiori launchpad is officially outdated with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2402 release. Get ready for the next release and switch to spaces and pages now! Please note that the switch is mandatory and has to be done manually.

In the meantime, watch the videos below to get familiar with spaces and pages and the new My Home in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition:

Switching from Groups to Spaces and Pages

SAP introduced spaces and pages in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition in Q2/2020 already, accompanied by the announcement to deprecate the group-based visualization.

Click on the image below to watch the video:

Read more on how to switch from groups to spaces and pages in my blog post.

Using Predefined Spaces Out-of-the-Box

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2302, SAP introduced the option to use predefined spaces and pages out-of-the-box. The benefits here are clear: Fast implementation without the need of investing time and resources in designing own spaces and pages. Direct consumption of SAP enhancements to predefined spaces and pages with an upgrade.

Click on the image below to watch the video:

Importing Personalized Groups

Learn how to work with the new My Home in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Import your personalized groups from the classic home page, customize your favorite apps, and stay organized with spaces and pages.

Click on the image below to watch the video:

Using the Navigation Bar

Learn how to easily arrange your spaces in the new My Home in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition according to your needs and preferences. Optimize your workflow by pinning and rearranging spaces.

Click on the image below to watch the video:

Personalizing the Page

Learn how to personalize your pages in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Easily customize your favorite pages and arrange them according to your preferences.

Click on the image below to watch the video:

Other SAP S/4HANA Cloud Enablement Assets

SAP S/4HANA Cloud is the foundation of the intelligent enterprise and is an innovative, robust, and scalable ERP. We at Cloud ERP Product Success and Cloud Co-Innovation offer a service as versatile as our product itself. Click on the image below to check out the numerous offerings our Enablement team has created for you:

Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast

Subscribe to our podcast “Inside SAP S/4HANA“! This podcast leverages the unique knowledge and expertise of SAP S/4HANA Cloud product experts, partners and customers to address objects of interest by sharing product insights and project best practice. There is no customer success without product success and project success; we share all ingredients with you to get to the next level and make your SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition project a success. Subscribe now and benefit from the shared knowledge.

openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Your Voice Matters!

If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition topic page on SAP Community. The community brings together customers, partners, and SAP experts and has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions. We invite you to explore our ‘one-stop shop’ as the central place for all resources, tools, content questions, answers and connect with experts to guide you through your journey to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

More Information:

SAP User Experience in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition 2308

Deactivation of Groups in the SAP Fiori Launchpad in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: Switching to Spaces and Pages Mandatory

Upcoming SAP User Experience Live Session

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Release Info

Release Blog Posts

YouTube Playlist for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel

Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast

openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition

SAP Community

Feature Scope Description

What’s New

Help Portal Product Page

Receive order confirmation mail and set-up SAP for Me

2024-01-14T19:01:31+01:00

Dear Reader,

Hope all are fine, and you had a great start into the new year.

Followed by the blogpost series on S/4HANA Cloud 3SL onboarding (which will take you through the simplified steps you need to perform while onboarding S/4HANA Cloud 3SL onboarding and initial system set-up), this is the second blogpost on the series. Hope this will help you in some extent while to catch up with the forthcoming S/4HANA 3Sl challenges this year.

Pre-requisites : Before starting, I'm assuming that you are already familiar with S/4HANA Cloud 3SL system landscape and components. There are multiple blogposts, learning materials are available one click away, my advice would be to go through them before reading the blogpost series. If you are looking for a bit elaborated synopsis, I highly recommend going through this learning content : Onboarding with SAP Activate for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition | SAP Learning. I also hope, since you are here, you have already hovered on

https://blogs.sap.com/2023/12/17/s4-hana-cloud-3sl-onboarding-and-initial-system-set-up-series/

Contents : Here, we'll discuss on once the contract agreement is done, how the order confirmation mail comes and what's next with all these resources.

In your contract, you are supposed to provide an email-id which will be the primary IT contact point for any sort of onboarding related communication. The email-id would receive all the mails. Here, in this blogpost, my id was the primary IT contact point in the contract, hence you'll find my mailbox as the recipient of all the communications.

First mail, you'll receive is the contract details mail. This notification email will contain with Customer Number ID and your Purchase Order Number on your recent purchase.

Next, you'll receive a notification email on you S-User ID. Within SAP fraternity I don't really explain what S-User ID stands for. This will be your personal key to the entire SAP Support ecosystem. The email will contain a PDF containing your S-User ID and the initial password. You need them to enter the SAP Support Portal : SAP for Me.

Now, go to SAP for Me portal : https://me.sap.com/ and access it with the received credentials. It will ask you to create an SAP Universal ID if you don't have it already. If you have it, then please link this S-User ID with the existing account.

Then you'll be asked to set-up your SAP for Me : accepting terms & conditions to use and utilize this portal. Please read them out , accept & proceed.

Now, set up your SAP for Me home screen. You can select your area of interests. Once selected, the SAP for Me home screen will be customized accordingly.

If you by chance leave the SAP for Me set up screen after activation of the S-User ID and don't follow the subsequent SAP for Me set up (like aforementioned), you may end up with errors. Try resetting the password after some time and follow the set up screens, if still it doesn't get resolved, raise it to CIC.

Now, you have logged into your SAP for Me portal. Explore all the tabs to get to know the offerings.

To see the contract-wise tenant availabilities , go to the System & Provisioning system and see the listings. You'll find only SAP Cloud ALM & SAP Central Business Configuration are enabled for provisioning; the SAP S/4HANA Cloud provisioning option will be enabled once the first two are deployed.

You may onboard other users in SAP for Me, specially the administrators. But before doing that, add your company email domain as a trusted domain as follows. If you have partners/C-users who will be using their own domains, you may whitelist their domains here as well.

Apart from these 2 emails (contract & S-User), you'll receive another email as a part of this onboarding bundle. This will be a notification email with information on System & Provisioning and instructions on the next steps required to request the initial Systems and Tenants.

This concludes this blogpost. Next, continue to see the subsequent blogpost of this series

Provisioning SAP CBC and perform the initial set-u... - SAP Community

See you there 🙂

sh: 1: fiori: not found-> The most popular error for Fiori Developers

2024-04-05T16:34:00.137000+02:00

Introduction:

In this technical blog, we will detail how to resolve one of the most common issues encountered by SAP UI5/Fiori developers during the deployment of their applications on the Cloud Foundry of SAP BTP.
For the case here, we have the "sh: 1: fiori: not found" error here.

Prerequisites:

SAP BTP Account- If you prefer to deploy on SAP BTP HANA Cloud.
SAP Business Application Studio (recommended) if deploying to SAP BTP HANA Cloud. Even, in this case, I recommend to use SAP BAS only for deployment .
Microsoft Visual Studio Code (optional) can be used for development but specific to this solution just use it as the Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Delving into the Error:

Single Targeted vs. Multi-Targeted Applications: There exists a distinction between single targeted and multi-targeted applications. The issue at hand typically arises with .MTAR applications, particularly SAP UI5 multi-target applications.

"sh:1: Fiori: Not Found" Error: Whenever "cf push" command is executed, developers often encounter the "sh: 1: Fiori: Not Found" error, particularly with MTAR applications. This error is not exclusive to SAP but is a common occurrence across various cloud-native applications.

Solutions and steps to be followed:

Utilize Microsoft Visual Studio Code or SAP Business Application Studio as the IDE: It's recommended to use either Vs Code or SAP Business Application Studio solely as the Integrated Development Environment (IDE). For deployment purposes, stick to SAP Business Application Studio.
Ensure Proper Configuration of Destination Services and HTML5 Services: Make sure to follow the steps for creating Destination Services and HTML5 services in your application as per the provided guidelines.
Perform .MTAR Build: Right-click on the mta.yaml file and execute a .MTAR build.
Discovering Generated .MTAR File: Following the .MTA.YAML build, the generated .mtar file may have a generic name such as abc_appname.mtar.
Deploy .MTAR File: Right-click on the generated .mtar file and select "Deploy MTAR."
Monitor Deployment Process: Once the deployment process concludes, log in to the SAP BTP Cloud Cockpit.
Accessing applications: In the left-hand menu bar, locate HTML5 applications.
Verify Deployed Applications: You should be able to find the deployed applications listed within the HTML5 applications section.

Reference Link for more steps on deployment of Multi Target Applications by SAP: Building and Deploying Multitarget Applications

By following these steps, you can effectively resolve the "sh: 1: fiori : Not Found" error encountered during the deployment of SAP UI5/Fiori applications on the Cloud Foundry of SAP BTP.

Welcome to the SAP MaxAttention Community Group!

2024-04-18T09:04:24.479000+02:00

We are pleased to welcome you to this new channel of communication on all things SAP MaxAttention.
Here you will find a variety of resources, including expert blog posts, announcements of upcoming events along with useful information about SAP MaxAttention. But there's more - this group also provides a platform for you to communicate with your SAP MaxAttention peers in our discussion forum.

You can interact with other members, contribute and be part of lively discussions. Please feel encouraged to be active and contribute to the growth of this group. You are welcome to start a thread, add a comment and give a "like" or "kudos".

To maximize the benefit of your participation, we kindly invite everyone to respect a few simple and self-explanatory rules:

Be polite, respectful and friendly: treat others with a sense of kindness and consideration.
Act professionally, ethically and with integrity: maintain a high standard of behavior in all interactions.
When posting, please use English as your main language: This will help ensure effective communication between all members.

By following these guidelines, we will be able to create a supportive and inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and heard.

We look forward to embarking on this journey with you!
Your SAP MaxAttention Team.