SAP Community - Cloud

SAC Report Broadcasting - Blog 2 - Live Data

2024-08-28T10:00:00.027000+02:00

Introduction

Hello and welcome to part 2 of this blog series. In this blog I will be discussing the functionality of report broadcasting in SAC when the data is live from a data source. I will address the following points:

Supported Live Connections
Setting up
How to create publications
View and Modify your Scheduled Publications
Data Validation and Refresh

Supported Live Connections

You can schedule publications in SAC for the following live data sources:

SAP BW
SAP HANA
SAP S/4HANA
SAP HANA 2.0
SAP HANA Cloud (Must be a HANA Cloud connection type)
Stories based on live data tunnel connections

Unfortunately, data coming live from SAP Datasphere into SAC cannot be scheduled.

Setting up

The first step you need to take to set up SAC report broadcasting for live connections is allowing the tenant to schedule a publication. You can set up the tenant so that SAC can publish to either SAP users or non-SAP users or both. This is the same step for scheduling import data for publication however there are some additional steps that need to be taken.

Login to your SAC tenant
Go to System >> Administration. Click on the System Configuration tab and toggle the two schedule publication options on.
Go to the Data Source Configuration tab and scroll down to the ‘Live Data Sources’ section. You need to toggle the ‘Allow live data to securely leave my network’ on.
Navigate to your Connections app and select and edit your live connection. Open the ‘Advanced Features’ header. Check the box beside ‘Let users set up a schedule for publishing stories’. This will use the credentials of the user who schedules the story publishing to be used to retrieve the data.
You will be asked to select a Location ID as well as a Virtual Host and Port.

6. Once these advanced settings are configured successfully, you can schedule a story created on a live connection.

How to create publications

Go to your files in SAC
Select the story or analytical application you want to schedule for publication. Choose the Share option and select Schedule Publication
The Schedule Publication window will open. Here you will add your publication information such as event name, start date etc.

Name	Give your Schedule a name
Start Date	Give your schedule a start date and time. You can add a recurrence so that the publication is scheduled to recur every day/ week/ month etc. You can also add details about ending the recurrence.
File Type	You can choose between either a PDF, PowerPoint or CSV
Email Subject	This is the subject for the email which would be delivered to the recipients
Email Message	This is the message body for the email which would be sent to the recipients over email
Email Delivery Options	You can choose which email delivery option you’d like: · Attachment · Attachment and Preview Inline · Preview Inline
Include link to story	If you select this checkbox, the story/ analytic application link would be sent along with the email.

4. Add details to the Distribution heading

SAP Analytics Cloud Recipients	Add SAP users or teams to this view
Non-SAP Analytics Cloud Recipients	Add non-SAP users to this view e.g. joe.bloggs@hotmail.com . You can input a maximum of 3 non-SAC users.
Story view	You can choose the story, global bookmarks or my bookmarks.
File Name	The name the file will appear under in your email as a attachment

5. Click on Create. This will set up a schedule a publication.

View and Modify your Scheduled Publications

Go to the Calendar app in SAC
You can see in Calendar, your scheduled publication events and its recurrence.
You can also edit you’re a recurrence event. Select the recurrence event from the calendar view and on your right side, a new panel opens where you can modify.

Data Validation and Refresh

Like our previous blog, it is important for the data in the scheduled publications are up to date an accurate especially if they are recurring. A user does not want to receive the wrong data or the same data that they received in last week’s report. Live data is live meaning it is always up to date and refreshed.

Conclusion

SAC Report Broadcasting with live data simplifies the work of delivering up-to-date reports to your audience. By supporting various live data connections and offering flexible scheduling options, it ensures that recipients always receive the most current information. This functionality enhances the accuracy and reliability of your reporting, making it an essential tool for real-time data distribution.

Streamline Your PPAP Journey with SAP PLM Collaboration

2024-08-29T10:54:16.076000+02:00

Introduction: In the intricate landscape of modern manufacturing, quality assurance stands as a cornerstone of success. Ensuring that every component meets stringent standards is not just a goal but a necessity. Enter the Production Part Approval Process (PPAP), a meticulous protocol designed to validate the quality and compliance of supplied production parts before they integrate into your manufacturing processes. In this blog, we delve into how harnessing SAP Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) collaboration can revolutionize your PPAP journey, elevating efficiency, precision, and reliability to unprecedented levels.

Problem Statement: If SAP PLM Collaboration were not in place, communication with suppliers would be disparate and asymmetric, with less authorization control. Teams would be repeatedly reinventing the process, lacking guardrails and visibility into ongoing, completed, and pending tasks. There would be no logging and tracing of document or information flow, and decisions and approvals would rely on emails or offline modes. The absence of process or project visibility and insights would result in inefficiencies. Document versioning and real-time notifications of changes would be non-existent.

“Customers have benefitted from SAP PLM Collaboration, enhancing their PPAP process efficiency and optimization across their enterprise. Have you faced similar quality assurance challenges in your PPAP process? Discover how SAP PLM Collaboration can transform your PPAP process and drive efficiency.”

SAP PLM collaboration provides a centralized platform that resolves these issues by offering streamlined communication, enhanced authorization control, structured workflows, comprehensive visibility into tasks and processes, robust document tracking, and real-time notifications, thereby optimizing the PPAP process and ensuring efficient quality assurance.

Some abbreviations that will be used in this blog:
PPAP: Production Part Approval Process
FFF: Fit, Form, and Function
PSW: Part Submission Warrant
QIR: Quality Info Record
OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer
APQP: Advanced Product Quality Planning
PLM: Product Lifecycle Management

Understanding Your PPAP Journey: A High-Level Process Map

At the heart of your quest for excellence lies a structured and meticulously orchestrated PPAP journey. Let's navigate through its key phases:

Phase 1: Triggering PPAP The journey commences with the generation of a PPAP request, emanating from your ERP systems. This triggers a cascade of actions, setting the stage for a seamless execution.

Phase 2: Evaluation Upon receipt of the PPAP request, your teams dive into meticulous evaluation, laying the groundwork for collaborative efforts that follow. This phase ensures alignment with project objectives and your business expectations.

Phase 3: PPAP Preparation Attention turns to meticulous preparation, from creating registrations to assessing item risk levels and establishing Quality Info Records (QIR). Every detail is scrutinized and curated to uphold the highest standards.

Phase 4: Automation Leveraging SAP PLM collaboration, workflows are automated based on predefined templates, streamlining processes, and enhancing efficiency. The collaboration workflow template encompasses critical stages such as planning, defining quality scopes, product and engineering design reviews, drawing and specification assessments, and supplier qualifications. Moreover, the collaboration document structure encompasses considerations, team details, benchmarks, goals, KPIs, and compliances, ensuring a holistic approach to quality assurance.

Phase 5: Making Parts/Docs Collaborative efforts come to fruition as PPAP documents are added by suppliers using your integrated SAP PLM Collaboration platform. Suppliers and OEMs exchange product and other data via SAP PLM Collaboration, ensuring seamless communication and data exchange. Sample PPAP parts are produced, and documents are submitted for review, ensuring adherence to specifications.

Phase 6: Closure or Reinitiating PPAP With approvals in hand, suppliers ship goods, followed by final processes such as FFF and PSW. Quality Info Records are updated, marking the successful closure of the PPAP cycle.

Process Visibility and Continuous Improvement These processes are meticulously measured via the Process Visibility dashboard available in your SAP PLM Collaboration platform. This dashboard provides insights into the process, identifying impediments and areas for improvement. By leveraging these insights, you strive to deliver timely, quality products while continuously enhancing efficiency and effectiveness. your SAP PLM platform integrates custom PPAP dashboards, offering stakeholders dynamic visualization tools for real-time insights and actionable intelligence.

Transformative Outcomes: Complex Custom Workflows and Risk Templates The culmination of your efforts yields transformative outcomes, marked by the emergence of complex custom workflows and risk templates. These tailored solutions empower stakeholders to navigate the PPAP journey with confidence, driving efficiency and upholding stringent quality standards.

To Summarize: Elevating Quality Assurance with SAP PLM Collaboration In the intricate world of modern manufacturing, quality assurance is essential. Ensuring every component meets strict standards is not just a goal but a necessity. The Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) is a meticulous protocol that validates the quality and compliance of supplied parts before they enter your manufacturing process. This blog explores how SAP Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) collaboration can revolutionize your PPAP journey, boosting efficiency, precision, and reliability.

Sample Workflow for PPAP stage gates:

Reference: Modeling Workflows

Sample Process Visibility Dashboard for PPAP Process:

Sample Collaboration for PPAP process:

Reference: Collaboration

Further:
If you're interested in learning more about SAP PLM collaboration solutions, check out our website: https://www.sap.com/products/scm/product-lifecycle-management.html

If you're already a user of SAP PLM collaboration, join our community to stay up to date: https://pages.community.sap.com/topics/product-lifecycle-management

About the author:
Ayan Pandey (ayan.pandey@sap.com), Product Manager for SAP PLM Cloud, specializes in customer-centric innovations and process optimization.

Two-tier ERP and Group Reporting: Deployment Options with SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition

2024-09-12T08:18:10.169000+02:00

Potential Two-tier ERP Customers running their operational ERP systems on SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition or SAP S/4HANA on-premise can connect to SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition to perform group reporting in different ways subjected to business requirements. Below three are most used type of deployments

Connect SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition subsidiaries with Group Reporting Data Collection (GRDC)
Run Group Reporting in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition connecting to private cloud ERPs
Connect SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition subsidiaries with Central Finance

1.Connect SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition subsidiaries with GRDC - Leverage Group Reporting & integration with the set up at Headquarters running on SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition when subsidiaries are running on SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition

Key capabilities with this type of deployment includes

Subsidiaries can run on SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition
Financial statements & trail balances can be uploaded to GRDC at Headquarters.
Mostly Group Financial Consolidation is performed at Headquarters running on SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition.

Note :

* GRDC can be deployed both on S/4HANA Public Cloud or Private Cloud Edition

Data upload/replication can be manual or via SAP delivered Integration

2. Run Group Reporting in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition connecting to private cloud ERPs - Group Profitability can be measured in SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition which is typically performing Group Reporting on behalf of Headquarters when subsidiary is running on SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition

Key capabilities with this type of deployment includes

Running Group Reporting in the SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition that leverages latest Group Reporting innovations delivered through continuous upgrades
Financial statements & trail balances can be uploaded to GRDC
Any ERPs that cannot (yet) transition to the SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition can stay in private cloud

Note :

* GRDC can be deployed both on S/4HANA Public Cloud or Private Cloud Edition

Data upload/replication can be manual or via SAP delivered Integration

3.Connect SAP S/4HANA public cloud edition subsidiaries with Central Finance - Group Consolidation and profitability can be measured at Headquarters running on SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition with Central Finance

Key capabilities with this type of deployment includes

Real-time accounting document replication to central finance system running on SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition
Subsidiaries can run on SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition

Note: Customers can further evaluate each deployment option to select the one that best suits their business requirements and organizational needs.

SAP on a Mini PC - my experience with the ABAP Cloud Developer Trial

2024-09-30T09:20:22.128000+02:00

I have been using the free trial version of the SAP application on a mini PC for about a year now and am very happy with the product. It seems to me that the product is so fine that it is worth promoting and not everyone knows about it yet. I think I can share my insights and experiences with you.

Let's start with what system we are talking about, I need to say that I have a slight problem with this because over the years the product kept changing names. Of course, I must also admit that the software itself and the way it is distributed has also undergone an evolution.

The product in discussion is SAP Cloud Developer Trial 2022. But don't let the name fool you, because you don't need the cloud at all to run it. It is just one of the options. The current version of SAP's free trial is the direct successor to a distribution called SAP ABAP Platform Trial. This one, in turn, evolved from earlier versions - SAP NetWeaver AS ABAP Developer Edition.

ABAP Cloud Developer Trial 2022

ABAP Cloud Developer Trial is a free platform to try out the ABAP language and toolkit. In reality, we get much more - an SAP system without business logic, but with a whole bunch of extras. So we have the same engine that powers S/4HANA 2022, with working access via SAP-GUI, browser or even from Eclipse. We can use Fiori, at least at the technical layer, because of course the lack of business modules somewhat limits applications. We can also try abapGit, which is configured out of the box, without any problems. In the system image, we will also find SAP Cloud Connector, with which we can easily connect MiniSAP to the BTP platform. It's worth knowing that BTP also has free trial accounts - so we have a great duo.

The software is distributed by sap as a docker container available through DockerHub. This is a very convenient solution supporting ease of installation. So the system itself can be installed in a few minutes, at most half an hour if you have a fast enough connection.

I, referring to my system, often say S/4Hanna-like sandbox. However, I will emphasize once again that this system does not contain business modules. Therefore, it is certainly not for everyone. On the other hand, it has very many applications.

Who is the ABAP Cloud Developer Trial for?

One would like to say that it is for everyone, but in fact it is not for everyone. In my opinion, Developers and Basis Administrators can benefit most from it. And while the former are somewhat limited by the lack of business logic included in the system. While for Basis administrators it is basically an ideal system. And I don't mean at all the meme that without applications and users the system works better. I, as a Basis consultant, am able to test many things on this system: build prototypes of simple solutions, test planned changes, try out features that are not available on older customer systems.

Besides, while running an educational youtube channel about SAP Basis, security and AI, I was able to prepare a lot of material based on this system. If you don't believe, see at least my videos on the 100 most important Basis transactions, SSO configuration using certificates, work processes in SAP or even ICM. Most of them could not have been created if I did not have access to a clean system without client data.

Developers, on the other hand, will also find something for themselves. After all, building ABAP prototypes is not always related to Business Modules. The system provides an excellent opportunity to test new programming techniques, integrations or conduct experiments that would be impossible to do on a real system, even on a client sandbox.

Mini PC

I've been using trial systems from SAP for a year or so on Mini PCs. This is a great solution because the current Mini PCs are very energy efficient and cheap at the same time. You can buy a PC with 16GB RAM, a fast SSD and an Intel n100 processor for around $100. It doesn't offer top-notch performance, but it delivers a great power consumption-to-performance ratio. And even though the Cloud Developer Trial runs on HANA, the performance is perfectly sufficient for one person. If you have any doubts, watch the videos on my channel and see how the system works.

My previous sandbox based on ABAP Platform Trial, which I ran on a Firebat T8 pro PC, cost me $130 in 2023. I recently moved to the ABAP Cloud Developer Trial, switching the MiniPC to Firebat AK2 Plus at the same time. I chose this computer because it allows easy memory expansion, which I did.

If you are curious about what the migration process looked like I encourage you to watch the video. There it shows both securing the data on the previous sandbox, expanding the memory, and inastalling the new system.

Summary

I realize that an intuitive approach to the expensive world of SAP, and in particular to an in-memory database like HANA, evokes associations with very expensive hardware. At first almost everyone asked about SAP systems has connotations of large system requirements. On the other hand, contrary to appearances, current computers are really powerful and the system itself is quite well optimized. As you will see on your own, a cheap mini PC is quite sufficient for operation. I highly encourage you to install and experiment.

Two Tier ERP Transactional Data Replication options

2024-10-02T15:29:26.786000+02:00

Two Tier ERP Integration:

Integration is crucial for Two-Tier ERP scenarios, as understanding end-to-end business processes, including both master and transactional data flows, is vital for customer success. It’s important to identify integration requirements early in the process. SAP S/4HANA Cloud will also need to integrate with various other solutions within the customer’s system landscape. Two-Tier ERP offers multiple deployment options, For instance, let's look into one of the deployement option where companies running their main ERP systems (headquarters) on SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition or SAP S/4HANA on-premise can connect to subsidiaries using SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition.

Two Tier ERP Transactional Data Integration options

For easier understanding, we have separated integration into two categories: Master Data and Transactional Data. This blog focuses on the options for transactional data integration, while you can find the master data options in this linked blog https://community.sap.com/t5/enterprise-resource-planning-blogs-by-sap/two-tier-erp-master-data-replication-options/ba-p/13879970

Option 1: BTP Integration Suite - Cloud Integration

Top 5 reasons to choose SAP Integration Suite

Tackle ANY integration challenge with a holistic approach.
Accelerate business outcomes with out-of-the-box integration.
Innovate faster with an open API platform for the future.
Speed time to value.
Outperform with enterprise-grade integration.

The Integration Suite is applicable in the following Two-Tier use cases:

Headquarters is using S/4HANA on-premise, S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, or S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, while subsidiaries are on S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.
The customer has a mixed landscape, including non-SAP solutions that need to integrate with headquarters.
The customer is currently using SAP S/4HANA Cloud editions and plans to expand to additional applications in the future.
The customer already has a Business Technology Platform (BTP) account with the Integration Suite.

Key Aspects of SAP Integration Suite from a Two-Tier ERP Integration Perspective:

SAP Cloud Integration enables seamless connections between both cloud and on-premise systems, whether they are SAP or non-SAP.
It supports real-time scenarios and provides a wide range of pre-built integration content (Integration Packages), along with extensive capabilities and connectivity options.
Integration Flows (iFlows) allow you to design message processing logic and configure sender/receiver adapters within SAP Cloud Integration.

You can find details of one of the Two-Tier ERP Buyer and Supplier scenario integration flow here https://api.sap.com/package/IntegrationofSAPS4HANACloudProcurementwithOnPremiseSuppliersS4HANAorERP/integrationflow

Option 2: SAP Business Accelerator Hub

Don’t have an SAP BTP account with the Integration Suite service? No worries—you can still meet your integration needs through the API Hub.

Seamlessly discover content that addresses all your integration and extension requirements.
Explore integrations between SAP products as well as between SAP and third-party applications.
Browse various products, categories, business processes, partners, featured APIs, integrations, and more here https://api.sap.com/search?searchterm=Two%20Tier&tab=All&$refinedBy=true

The key takeaway of this blog is our recommendation to use the SAP Integration Suite service for transactional data replication wherever applicable, allowing you to leverage pre-built integration content for your scenarios.

Future Exploration
In upcoming blogs, we will explore Master Data and Transactional Data in greater detail, and discuss how they can benefit your business.

SIOS LifeKeeper for High Availability of SAP ASCS /ERS HA and HANA Database on Azure

2024-10-07T09:12:26.327000+02:00

Introduction

SAP HANA is a high-performance in-memory database that supports real-time analytics and transactions. It is widely used by enterprises to run their critical business applications and processes. However, SAP HANA systems also require high availability and disaster recovery solutions to ensure business continuity and data protection in case of failures or disasters.

Azure is a cloud platform that offers a range of services and features to host, manage, and scale SAP HANA systems. Azure provides high-performance virtual machines, storage, networking, and security options that can meet the requirements of SAP HANA workloads. However, Azure does not offer a native high availability solution for SAP HANA systems, which means that customers need to use third-party tools or custom scripts to achieve high availability for their SAP HANA databases on Azure.

SIOS LifeKeeper is a proven high availability and disaster recovery solution that can protect SAP HANA systems on Azure. SIOS LifeKeeper can monitor, detect, and recover from failures of SAP HANA instances, virtual machines, storage, network, or Azure services. SIOS LifeKeeper can also replicate data between primary and secondary SAP HANA systems, and perform automatic or manual failover and failback operations. SIOS LifeKeeper can integrate with Azure services such as Azure Load Balancer, Azure Traffic Manager, and Azure Site Recovery to provide a comprehensive and reliable high availability solution for SAP HANA systems on Azure.

Prerequisites

Before you can configure and deploy a highly available SAP HANA system on Azure using SIOS LifeKeeper, you need to have the following prerequisites:

An Azure subscription and an Azure account with sufficient permissions to create and manage resources.
A SAP HANA license and installation media.
A SIOS LifeKeeper license and installation media.
Two or more Azure virtual machines that meet the SAP HANA hardware and software requirements. You can use the Azure Marketplace to create SAP HANA certified virtual machines.
A shared storage solution that supports SAP HANA data and log volumes. You can use Azure NetApp Files, Azure Files, or Azure Shared Disks as shared storage options.
A network solution that allows communication between the SAP HANA systems and the SIOS LifeKeeper nodes. You can use Azure Virtual Network, Azure VPN Gateway, or Azure ExpressRoute as network options.
A load balancer solution that can distribute traffic to the SAP HANA systems and the SIOS LifeKeeper nodes. You can use Azure Load Balancer, Azure Application Gateway, or Azure Traffic Manager as load balancer options.

Configuration Steps

After you have prepared the prerequisites, you can follow these steps to configure and deploy a highly available SAP HANA system on Azure using SIOS LifeKeeper:

Install SAP HANA on the primary virtual machine and configure the SAP HANA data and log volumes on the shared storage.
Install SAP ASCS on the primary virtual machine and SAP ERS on Secondary Virtual Machine and /sapmnt on the shared storage.
Install SIOS LifeKeeper on the primary virtual machine and join it to a SIOS LifeKeeper cluster.
Create a SIOS LifeKeeper SAP HANA resource hierarchy on the primary virtual machine and configure the SAP HANA instance details and the shared storage paths.
Install SAP HANA on the secondary virtual machine and configure the SAP HANA data and log volumes on the shared storage.
Install SIOS LifeKeeper on the secondary virtual machine and join it to the same SIOS LifeKeeper cluster as the primary virtual machine.
Extend the SIOS LifeKeeper SAP HANA resource hierarchy from the primary virtual machine to the secondary virtual machine and configure the replication mode and the failover policies.
Configure the load balancer to direct traffic to the SAP HANA systems and the SIOS LifeKeeper nodes.
Test the high availability and disaster recovery scenarios by simulating failures and verifying the failover and failback operations.

Architecture Design

SIOSLV-RG

IP address Assignmnet

Component	West US 2	IP-ADDRESS
VNET	vnet-sioslv-westus2	10.3.0.0/16
Snet-app-sioswestus2	snet-app-siosz1-westus2	10.3.0.0/24
Snet-hdb-sios-westus2	snet-app-siosz2-westus2	10.3.1.0/24
s4hdiagsios
Azure File share (NFS 4.1)	s4hsiosnfstest
AzureFirewallSubnet	AzureFirewallSubnet
AzureBastionSubnet	AzureBastionSubnet	10.3.2.0/26
Azure File share nfs4.1	s4hsiosfsdiag
ASCS Cluster Node1	vmslvascs1	10.3.0.4
ASCS Cluster Node2	vmslvascs2	10.3.0.5
Witnesss server for SAP in Zone3	vmslvwit1	10.3.0.6
SAP PAS	vmslvpas	10.3.0.7
VIP-SAP DB	S4sascs s4sers	10.3.0.20 10.3.0.21
VIP-HANA DB	sioshdb-lb	10.3.1.10
HANA DB Cluster Node 1	vmslvhdb1	10.3.1.4
HANA DB Cluster Node 2	vmslvhdb2	10.3.1.5

Created sioslv-rg

Created VNET/SN

SUSE SLES for SAP Applications 15 SP5 with 24x7

Installation of HANA DB on node1 and node2

Please perform the same for Node2

Download the software

Download lkwmc

./setup

Install licenskey

We don’t need to select Likekeeper startup

Setup failed due to

Mistped the location of licensekey

Now perform the same step on VM2

vmslvhdb2:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1/siossoft981 # mount /misc/SIOS-9.8.1/sps.img /misc/SIOS-9.8.1/siossoft981 -t iso9660 -o loop

vmslvhdb2:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1/siossoft981 # suseconnect -p sle-module-legacy/15.5/x86_64

Registering system to registration proxy https://smt-azure.susecloud.net

Updating system details on https://smt-azure.susecloud.net ...

Activating sle-module-legacy 15.5 x86_64 ...

-> Adding service to system ...

-> Installing release package ...

Successfully registered system

Install LKWMC

WITNESS SERVER

Pre-requisite :

vi /etc/default/LifeKeeper

NOBCASTPING=1

Now browse the LKWMC via link below for

vmslvhdb1:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1/lkwmc/sios-lkwmc-1.1.0 # /opt/LifeKeeper/bin/lcdstatus -q

LifeKeeper does not appear to be running.

vmslvhdb1:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1/lkwmc/sios-lkwmc-1.1.0 # ./lkstart

-bash: ./lkstart: No such file or directory

vmslvhdb1:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1/lkwmc/sios-lkwmc-1.1.0 # /opt/LifeKeeper/bin/lkstart

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/lifekeeper-graphical.target.requires/lifekeeper.service → /usr/lib/systemd/system/lifekeeper.service.

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/lifekeeper-multi-user.target.requires/lifekeeper.service → /usr/lib/systemd/system/lifekeeper.service.

vmslvhdb1:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1/lkwmc/sios-lkwmc-1.1.0 #

Broadcast message from systemd-journald@vmslvhdb1 (Thu 2024-04-11 19:00:22 UTC):

lcdinit[5788]: EMERG:lcd.lcdchkseml:::011138:The LifeKeeper product on this system is using an evaluation license key which will expire at midnight on 05/11/24. To continue functioning beyond that time, a permanent license key must be obtained.

vmslvhdb1:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1/lkwmc/sios-lkwmc-1.1.0 # /opt/LifeKeeper/bin/lcdstatus -q

LOCAL TAG ID STATE PRIO PRIMARY

vmslvhdb1:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1/lkwmc/sios-lkwmc-1.1.0 #

Now lauch the LKWCM again

To connect to the LifeKeeper Web Management Console from a web browser:

https://vmslvhdb1:5110

Create communication between all systems

Click add new server to add vmslvhdb2

Click create another communication path to Witness server

Create communication between vmslvhdb2 to vmslvwit1

Click on Resource tree for creating the resource IP

Click extend

Click to create the resource for – LB health checkup

click Extend

Before creating the below resource enable HSR

Take Backup of SYSTEMDB and TENANT DB on both nodes

Copy the below ssfs files to secondary HDB

s4sadm@vmslvhdb1:/usr/sap/S4S/SYS/global/security/rsecssfs> ls

data key

s4sadm@vmslvhdb1:/usr/sap/S4S/SYS/global/security/rsecssfs> scp -rp /usr/sap/S4S/SYS/global/security/rsecssfs/* s4sadm@vmslvhdb2:/usr/sap/S4S/SYS/global/security/rsecssfs/

s4sadm@vmslvhdb2's password:

SSFS_S4S.DAT 100% 2960 855.0KB/s 00:00

SSFS_S4S.KEY 100% 187 127.9KB/s 00:00

Now lets create the HANA resource – lets start the HANA system on both system

Now enable the replication between them

s4sadm@vmslvhdb1:/usr/sap/S4S/home> hdbnsutil -sr_enable --name=s4sz1

nameserver is active, proceeding ...

successfully enabled system as system replication source site

done.

s4sadm@vmslvhdb1:/usr/sap/S4S/home>

hdbnsutil -sr_register --remoteHost=vmslvhdb1 --remoteInstance=00 --replicationMode=syncmem --operationMode=logreplay --name=s4sz2 –online

Creating SAP HANA resource

Click Close

Failover test on HANA DB.

Trying the takeover by rightclick on standby – in sync resource

Current status

SIOS cluster will detect and start it and reregister it as secondary

Failback

Now lets work on SAP ASCS / ERS

NFS shares

/sapmnt

/ASCS00

/ERS01

/SYS

Local

/usr/sap

Goto SAP system and mount them

sudo mkdir -p /usr/sap/S4S/ascs00

sudo mount -t nfs siossapnfs.file.core.windows.net:/siossapnfs/ascs00 /usr/sap/S4S/ascs00 -o vers=4,minorversion=1,sec=sys,nconnect=4

sudo mkdir -p /usr/sap/S4S/ers01

sudo mount -t nfs siossapnfs.file.core.windows.net:/siossapnfs/ers01 /usr/sap/S4S/ers01 -o vers=4,minorversion=1,sec=sys,nconnect=4

sudo mkdir -p /sapmnt/S4S

sudo mount -t nfs siossapnfs.file.core.windows.net:/siossapnfs/sapmnt /sapmnt -o vers=4,minorversion=1,sec=sys,nconnect=4

sudo mkdir -p /usr/sap/S4S/sys

sudo mount -t nfs siossapnfs.file.core.windows.net:/siossapnfs/sys / -o vers=4,minorversion=1,sec=sys,nconnect=4

Lets mount and install SIOS

Pre-requisite

vmslvascs1:~ # suseconnect -p sle-module-legacy/15.5/x86_64

Registering system to registration proxy https://smt-azure.susecloud.net

Updating system details on https://smt-azure.susecloud.net ...

Activating sle-module-legacy 15.5 x86_64 ...

-> Adding service to system ...

-> Installing release package ...

Successfully registered system

vmslvascs1:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1 # ls

lkwmc siossoft981 sps.img

vmslvascs1:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1/siossoft981 # mount /misc/SIOS-9.8.1/sps.img /misc/SIOS-9.8.1/siossoft981 -t iso9660 -o loop

mount: /misc/SIOS-9.8.1/siossoft981: WARNING: source write-protected, mounted read-only.

vmslvascs1:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1/siossoft981 # ./setup

Lets install LKGUI

To connect to the LifeKeeper Web Management Console from a web browser:

https://vmslvascs1:5110

vmslvascs1:/misc/SIOS-9.8.1/lkwmc/sios-lkwmc-1.1.0 # /opt/LifeKeeper/bin/lcdstatus -q

LOCAL TAG ID STATE PRIO PRIMARY

Now perform the same vmslvascs2

Lets perform LKGUI

To connect to the LifeKeeper Web Management Console from a web browser:

https://vmslvascs2:5110

Now lets launch the LK wmc and setup communication between resources and create LB

Click communication path and under operations – create communication path

Click ADD A NEW SERVER

It will ask for login info of vmslvascs2

Now create another communication between

Vmslvascs1àvmslvascs2 -- Done

Vmslvascs1àvmslvwit1

Vmslvascs2 à vmslvwit1

Now lest create the resources

LB Health Checkup

SAP

10.3.0.20

Click Extend

Click Close

Lets add ERS IP

Click Close

Now lets add LB Health Check for SAPASCS / SAPERS

Now perform for vmslvascs2 from vmslvascs1

Now install SAP ASCS

Ping virtual ips

10.3.0.20 s4sascs

10.3.0.21 s4sers

vmslvascs1:/misc/s4hana2023-includesall/SWPM # ping -a 10.3.0.20

PING 10.3.0.20 (10.3.0.20) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from 10.3.0.20: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.034 ms

64 bytes from 10.3.0.20: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.033 ms

./sapinst SAPINST_USE_HOSTNAME=s4sascs

ERS on node2

vmslvascs2:/misc/s4hana2023-includesall/SWPM # ./sapinst SAPINST_USE_HOSTNAME=s4sers

[==============================] | extracting... done!

INFO: Native locale set to C.UTF-8

INFO 2024-04-22 21:44:45.283 (mainThread) [sixxcreate.cpp:349]

********************************************************************************

Initial log directory: /root/.sapinst/vmslvascs2/13944

********************************************************************************

WARNING 2024-04-22 21:44:45.284 (root/root) (startInstallation) [syxxcnwmgt.cpp:61] id=syslib.network.overriddenHostName void CSyNetworkMgtImpl::overrideHostName(const iastring & "

https://vmslvascs2:4237/sapinst/docs/index.html

/usr/sap/S4S/SYS

Installing PAS

vmslvpas:/usr/sap/s4hana2023-includesall/SWPM # ./sapinst

Now install PAS on same server

Creating a HA cluster for your SAP ASCS/ERS servers in AWS - Google Docs

Copy the sapservices file between node1 and node2

vmslvascs2:/opt/LifeKeeper/bin # more /usr/sap/sapservices

systemctl --no-ask-password start SAPS4S_01 # sapstartsrv pf=/usr/sap/S4S/SYS/profile/S4S_ERS01_s4sers

systemctl --no-ask-password start SAPS4S_00 # sapstartsrv pf=/usr/sap/S4S/SYS/profile/S4S_ASCS00_s4sascs

Also perform below - Verify that the rules for both your ASCS and ERS instances are in the /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/ directory. If not copy the ERS file to the ASCS server and vice versa:

Make sure you copy the files between system

/etc/systemd/system/

SAPS4S_00.service

SAPS4S_00.service.d

SAPS4S_01.service

SAPS4S_01.service.d

Lets create the SAP resource for ASCS/ERS on SIOS

Now create ERS resource

Create dependency

SAP as parent resource

Child as VIP

Child as LBHC

Confirm

===Now for SAP ERS resource

Lets delete the old license

vmslvascs2:/opt/LifeKeeper/bin # cd /var/LifeKeeper/license/

vmslvascs2:/var/LifeKeeper/license # ls

20240422.lic 20240429.lic

vmslvascs2:/var/LifeKeeper/license # ls -ltr

total 16

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6121 Apr 22 15:19 20240422.lic

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6121 Apr 29 14:02 20240429.lic

vmslvascs2:/var/LifeKeeper/license # rm 20240422.lic

Lest crash the node1

vmslvascs1:/etc/systemd/system # echo c > /proc/sysrq-trigger

Node1 is hanging

ASCS moved to Node2 and the locks are still there and SAP is able to connect with out any issue.

After few seconds the VM1 did not come up and we see the ERS is failing over to Node1

Restarted the VM manually –once the VM is up and running

SIOS will automatically move the ERS to another node , I see the status as below

Manually switchover the ASCS to Node1

Rightclick and make it as in service

Done Tests are successful.

A new approach to SAP authorization roles – explained using LEGO® as an example

2024-10-11T16:08:46.155000+02:00

Creating and managing authorization roles in SAP S/4HANA is a complex and time-consuming process. Month-long projects that require a great deal of resource commitment are the norm. However, there is another way that significantly simplifies and accelerates this process.

A scientifically based approach to role creation

Our method for creating SAP authorization roles is based on a scientifically sound modularity that allows role building blocks to be put together flexibly and precisely. Just as LEGO® building blocks can be sorted and grouped, our approach allows authorizations to be built so that they can be aligned with the needs of the company in a consistently compliant manner, independently of the organization and company. At the same time, they must be scalable quickly and easily in order to map rollouts and changes without incurring high costs.

The technical background

The approach we developed over 15 years ago is based on the principles of system theory and modular software architecture. We chose a mathematical approach and described it in the form of an equivalence relation. We applied these findings to the SAP authorization logic from R/3 to today's S/4HANA Public Cloud, creating a way to segregate and provide roles in a highly efficient and resource-saving manner.

What makes this method special?

Modularity: Roles are broken down into building blocks (5-tuples) based on characteristics relevant to segregation, such as access mode, line of business, price category, business process area, and criticality, while taking into account the constraints that the number of roles must be minimal and element pairs that are on the prohibition list (SoD) must not occur in the same group. These subsets can be combined and adapted as desired, as long as they do not violate compliance, which MUST be defined.
Efficiency: Modularity not only reduces implementation effort by more than 80%, but also future maintenance.
Uniqueness: This approach is globally unique and does not use any additional tools, but simply a method based on the SAP standard in each system.

The formula as a narrative explained using LEGO® as an example

We have a huge pile of Lego bricks. They represent the functions in SAP S/4HANA ERP

We have the task of sorting all these bricks into groups according to the following rules:

In each group, all bricks with the same number of stud rows (access type), the same colors (LoB), shapes (square, rectangular and round (license), sizes (business process area - SW components/package affiliation)
Stones with a structured surface correspond to our criticality C5 “very critical” in separate groups
Stone pairs must not be in the same group according to the definition of set V of forbidden pairs

Form as few groups as possible to save space and keep an overview (condition |R| is minimal)
Groups must be split if we find stone pairs that must not be together according to the list of prohibitions
Make sure that the stones with a structured surface remain separate (very high criticality)
Try to keep as many similar stones together as possible, as long as they are not on the forbidden list.

Result 🎯

A series of boxes (subsets) only with stones with identical properties, except for the surface finish, where the very rough or structured surface stones are separated.

Each stone is in exactly one box, and you have used as few boxes as possible.

Advantages for SAP CoE

For SAP managers, this approach means a significant reduction in project effort and thus significant cost reduction. Authorization roles are clearly structured and can be quickly adapted to changing requirements, which simplifies long-term maintenance. And they are compliant!

Discussion and exchange

Perhaps there are other approaches that redefine the limits of what is possible and make the seemingly impossible possible. I would be interested to hear about them. I welcome any exchange of ideas. I learn by listening and sharing knowledge.

If you like, you can watch the video, which explains the method on a slightly less technical level: Is LEGO® revolutionizing the SAP S/4HANA authorization chaos?

Note: translated with DeepL

Basic Overview on SAP S/4 Hana Cloud Private Edition on Azure

2024-12-06T15:11:15.240000+01:00

Nowadays SAP S/4 Hana Cloud Private Edition is one the deployment option. It is being most demanding. Here I am going to share an Overview on SAP S/4 Hana Cloud Private Edition on Azure. It will be help to keep conceptual knowledge for SAP S/4 Hana Cloud Private Edition on Azure.

Introduction to SAP on Azure

SAP applications form the basis of many enterprise operations, including those of multinational companies. The enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications that SAP provides are highly complex and capable of providing the scalability and analytics that are necessary for many organizations. As organizations move to the cloud it is key that they can take these applications with them which is why Microsoft has partnered with SAP on Azure.

Usage of SAP on Azure

Combining your SAP and Azure operations can provide several benefits that are difficult to obtain with SAP or Azure alone. These include greater flexibility of operations, scalability, and integration of solutions.

Azure Is Hybrid- Azure offers support for hybrid operations beyond connectivity and infrastructure. It enables you to consistently perform operations regardless of platform, including identity management, application development, and security. Native and third-party integrations support these capabilities.

Azure Can Use Bare Metal for HANA-You can deploy HANA to VMs or bare metal servers in Azure. This enables you to ensure that resources are maintained in isolation with dedicated hardware. These servers come built-in with infrastructure for storage, compute, and networking. Additionally, bare metal servers are certified for HANA Tailored Data Center Integration.

Easy Integration of SAP and Microsoft Products-A long term partnership between Microsoft and SAP provides significant support for integrated solutions. For example, both Power BI and Office 365 support the use of SAP HANA. Additionally, both vendors use open standards and interfaces for data exchange, including OData. This enables you to integrate products smoothly with no need for data transformation.

Almost 100% Availability-Azure enables you to spread operations and data redundancies across AZs. Data is automatically replicated for durability and availability. You can also create additional backups or select geo-redundant storage for disaster recovery and failover protection.

Introduction to SAP S/4 Han a Cloud Private Edition and its features

SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Private Edition is a tailored-to-fit cloud ERP that adapts to your organization's unique transformation. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition safeguards your existing investment in SAP ERP while benefiting from the latest capabilities and greater flexibility.

Running on your standard

Maximize your differentiation by tailoring business processes to your unique requirements
Protect your investment and move to the cloud at your pace

Modernizing your business

Achieve bottom-line growth with proven business processes for your industry
Deliver green-line growth by building sustainability directly into your business

Keeping control

Manage the speed of change by rolling out innovations on your timeline
Choose the cloud infrastructure based on your landscape and preferences

SAP S/4 Hana Cloud Private Edition on Azure

The Microsoft Cloud helps you unleash the power of your SAP applications and data. Whether you migrate to SAP S/4HANA on Azure, leverage RISE with SAP for a fully managed service, or add intelligence with Azure data and AI services, Microsoft provides a reliable, secure and comprehensive cloud platform to transform your SAP estate.

SAP solutions on Azure

Run SAP solutions across development, testing, and production scenarios in Azure. SAP on Azure solutions help you optimize your enterprise resource planning (ERP) in the cloud using the security features, reliability, and scalable SAP-certified infrastructure of Azure. This intelligent ERP suite is designed specifically for in-memory computing. Whether you want to run SAP S/4HANA in a new implementation or migrate from SAP Business Suite to SAP S/4HANA, Azure has you covered.

SAP S/4HANA on Azure benefits:

Seamless connectivity for end users who need to access SAP Fiori-based applications when using Azure ExpressRoute.
A 99.99 percent SLA for your critical ERP instances by running all product instances of SAP S/4HANA in a high-availability pair by running in two Azure Availability Zones.
Backup for SAP S/4HANA and SAP BW/4 HANA in seconds, with a low recovery-time objective—even for multi-terabyte databases.

Certification that SAP S/4HANA runs on SUSE Linux Enterprise and Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. Plus, SAP HANA on Azure Virtual Machines and SAP HANA on Azure large-instance machines are certified to run SAP S/4HANA. Microsoft Azure is one of the cloud infrastructure options for the RISE with SAP offering. On Azure, RISE with SAP leverages Microsoft’s global network infrastructure to provide connectivity to SAP applications in a secure and reliable way.

SAP S/4HANA on Azure offers:

• SAP on Azure VM workloads
• Azure Center for SAP solutions
• SAP on Azure deployment automation framework
• Azure Monitor for SAP solutions

There are multiple Microsoft Azure offerings for running and managing your SAP systems. These offerings range from traditional Azure virtual machine (VM) offerings to top-level Azure services, to tools that integrate with other Azure services or external products.

SAP on Azure VM workloads

You can run SAP workloads on the Azure platform using different Azure Virtual Machines (Azure VMs) offerings. Azure is certified for multiple SAP products, including SAP HANA and SAP NetWeaver products.

SAP Integration with Microsoft Services-In addition to the capabilities to run SAP IaaS and SaaS workloads on Azure, Microsoft offers various capabilities, scenarios, best-practice guides, and tutorials to integrate SAP workloads running anywhere with other Microsoft products and services. Among them are popular services such as Microsoft Entra ID, Exchange Online, Power Platform and Power BI, Azure Integration Services, Excel, SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, and SAP Success Factors to name a few.

SAP HANA on Azure (Large Instances)-SAP HANA on Azure (Large Instances) is a solution that provides VMs for deploying and running SAP HANA.

Azure Center for SAP solutions

Azure Center for SAP solutions is a service that makes SAP a top-level workload in Azure. This end-to-end solution allows you to create and run SAP systems as a unified workload on Azure. You can use this service through the Azure portal, a REST API, and the Azure CLI.

SAP on Azure deployment automation framework

The SAP on Azure deployment automation framework is an open-source orchestration tool for deploying, installing, and maintaining SAP environments.

Azure Monitor for SAP solutions

Azure Monitor for SAP solutions is an Azure-native monitoring product for SAP landscapes that run on Azure, which uses specific parts of the Azure Monitor infrastructure.

Conclusion - It is secured and SAP Private Link serves as a great 'Private' connectivity option for certain use-cases enabling access to private service endpoints and avoids public endpoints, thereby resulting in transfer of data over private networks.

Reference- www.SAP.com,

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-in/azure/sap/workloads/hana-vm-operations

https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-blogs-by-sap/quot-sap-private-link-and-azure-private-link-quot-in-the-context-of-sap/ba-p/13719685

https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-blogs-by-sap/rise-with-sap-s-4hana-cloud-private-edition-secure-cloud-connectivity/ba-p/13558064

Streamlining SAP Operations and Monitoring with SSM-SAP and Streamlit

2024-12-30T14:00:12.809000+01:00

Gartner predicts Cloud Will Become a Business Necessity by 2028. Migrating SAP to cloud is a strategic decision for many organizations.

AWS, a pioneer in cloud solutions, has consistently innovated new services and tools, such as the prescriptive Cloud Migration Framework, Migration Hub, and Launch Wizard. Most recently, AWS introduced a new tool: AWS Systems Manager for SAP (ssm-sap). This tool offers many features that organizations have been anticipating, including:

Registering and discovering SAP applications
Listing discovered SAP applications
Listing configurations of discovered SAP applications
Integration with AWS Backup

In this article, we will introduce the basics of ssm-sap and explore how to use it to:

Discover SAP systems
Monitor SAP systems
Perform basic operations such as starting and stopping SAP systems

Natively, ssm-sap is CLI-based. To visualize the operations in real time, we will use powerful web based visualization tool: Streamlit. In a sequel to this blog, we plan to provide all the codes used, and discuss more advanced topics such as performing system refreshes and auto-scaling.

Here we will explore the integration of AWS Systems Manager for SAP (SSM-SAP) with Streamlit to create a robust and user-friendly solution for managing SAP systems. By leveraging SSM-SAP's capabilities for discovery, automation, and monitoring, combined with Streamlit's interactive web application framework, we propose a solution that automates key tasks such as system discovery, visualization of system health, and execution of essential operations like starting and stopping SAP instances.

The proposed solution offers significant benefits, including:

* Simplified System Management: Streamlined processes for discovering and managing SAP systems.

* Enhanced Visibility: Real-time monitoring of system health.

* Automated Operations: Automated execution of common tasks, reducing manual effort and potential errors.

* User-Friendly Interface: An intuitive web interface for easy interaction and control.

By combining the power of SSM-SAP and Streamlit, we aim to empower SAP administrators to efficiently manage their SAP environments and improve overall system reliability.

I. Introduction to ssm-sap

AWS Systems Manager for SAP (ssm-sap) is a welcome addition to SAP management after Launch Wizard for SAP and AWS backup for HANA. It also integrates well with the other SAP facilities. If we provision SAP systems via Launch Wizard, ssm-sap registration and AWS backup are automatically configured during the process, as seen here from Launch Wizard screen.

In case that SAP servers are provisioned elsewhere, it is possible to register manually. Please refer to

We can use ssm-sap to discover all the SAP applications, databases and their components, e.g.,

aws ssm-sap list-applications
{
"Applications": [
{
"Id": "LaunchWizardnewhana2_HANA",
"DiscoveryStatus": "SUCCESS",
"Type": "HANA",
"Arn": "arn:aws:ssm-sap:us-east-1:123456789012:HANA/LaunchWizardnewhana2_HANA",
"Tags": {}
},
{
"Id": "LaunchWizardnewnw1_ABAP",
"DiscoveryStatus": "SUCCESS",
"Type": "SAP_ABAP",
"Arn": "arn:aws:ssm-sap:us-east-1:123456789012:SAP_ABAP/LaunchWizardnewnw1_ABAP",
"Tags": {}
},
{
"Id": "LaunchWizardnewnw1_HANA",
"DiscoveryStatus": "SUCCESS",
"Type": "HANA",
"Arn": "arn:aws:ssm-sap:us-east-1:123456789012:HANA/LaunchWizardnewnw1_HANA",
"Tags": {}
}
]
}

aws ssm-sap list-components --application-id LaunchWizardnewnw1_ABAP
{
"Components": [
{
"ApplicationId": "LaunchWizardnewnw1_ABAP",
"ComponentId": "ECD-D12-newnw2",
"ComponentType": "DIALOG",
"Tags": {},
"Arn": "arn:aws:ssm-sap:us-east-1:123456789012:SAP_ABAP/LaunchWizardnewnw1_ABAP/COMPONENT/ECD-D12-newnw2"
},
{
"ApplicationId": "LaunchWizardnewnw1_ABAP",
"ComponentId": "ECD-ASCS10-newnw2",
"ComponentType": "ASCS",
"Tags": {},
"Arn": "arn:aws:ssm-sap:us-east-1:123456789012:SAP_ABAP/LaunchWizardnewnw1_ABAP/COMPONENT/ECD-ASCS10-newnw2"
},
{
"ApplicationId": "LaunchWizardnewnw1_ABAP",
"ComponentId": "ECD-ABAP",
"ComponentType": "ABAP",
"Tags": {},
"Arn": "arn:aws:ssm-sap:us-east-1:123456789012:SAP_ABAP/LaunchWizardnewnw1_ABAP/COMPONENT/ECD-ABAP"
}
]
}

aws ssm-sap list-databases
{
"Databases": [
{
"ApplicationId": "LaunchWizardnewhana2_HANA",
"ComponentId": "HDB-HDB00",
"DatabaseId": "HDB",
"DatabaseType": "TENANT",
"Arn": "arn:aws:ssm-sap:us-east-1:123456789012:HANA/LaunchWizardnewhana2_HANA/DB/HDB",
"Tags": {}
},
{
"ApplicationId": "LaunchWizardnewhana2_HANA",
"ComponentId": "HDB-HDB00",
"DatabaseId": "SYSTEMDB",
"DatabaseType": "SYSTEM",
"Arn": "arn:aws:ssm-sap:us-east-1:123456789012:HANA/LaunchWizardnewhana2_HANA/DB/SYSTEMDB",
"Tags": {}
},
{
"ApplicationId": "LaunchWizardnewnw1_HANA",
"ComponentId": "HDV-HDB00",
"DatabaseId": "HDV",
"DatabaseType": "TENANT",
"Arn": "arn:aws:ssm-sap:us-east-1:123456789012:HANA/LaunchWizardnewnw1_HANA/DB/HDV",
"Tags": {}
},
{
"ApplicationId": "LaunchWizardnewnw1_HANA",
"ComponentId": "HDV-HDB00",
"DatabaseId": "SYSTEMDB",
"DatabaseType": "SYSTEM",
"Arn": "arn:aws:ssm-sap:us-east-1:123456789012:HANA/LaunchWizardnewnw1_HANA/DB/SYSTEMDB",
"Tags": {}
}
]
}

For each component of applications and each database, we may find their running status by get-component or get-database.

Hint: attach help at end of command to get a guide online in awscli.

aws ssm-sap get-component help

aws ssm-sap get-database help

Here is a list of all possible statuses:

The status of the component.

ACTIVATED - this status has been deprecated.
STARTING - the component is in the process of being started.
STOPPED - the component is not running.
STOPPING - the component is in the process of being stopped.
RUNNING - the component is running.
RUNNING_WITH_ERROR - one or more child component(s) of the parent component is not running.
UNDEFINED - AWS Systems Manager for SAP cannot provide the component status based on the discovered information. Verify your SAP application.

Through ssm-sap, starting and stopping SAP become as easy as:

aws ssm-sap start-application ...

aws ssm-sap stop-application ...

As seen, ssm-sap does provide comprehensive tools to discover, monitor and operate SAP systems. Nevertheless, when there are tens or hundreds of systems, it could become a daunting task to manage and monitor all by command lines. That is where visualization tool streamlit comes to the rescue.

II. Introduction to streamlit

Streamlit is an open-source Python library that makes it easy to create and share amazing custom web apps for machine learning and data science. In just a few minutes, you can build and deploy powerful data-driven applications. Streamlit is designed to be simple and intuitive, allowing users to transform data scripts into interactive web applications without requiring extensive web development knowledge.

Key Features,

Ease of Use: Streamlit allows you to create web apps with pure Python. No need for HTML, CSS, or JavaScript.
Interactive Widgets: Add interactive widgets like sliders, buttons, and text inputs with minimal code.
Real-Time Updates: Streamlit apps update in real-time as users interact with widgets, providing immediate feedback.
Data Visualization: Integrate with popular data visualization libraries like Matplotlib, Plotly, and Altair.
Deployment: Easily deploy your Streamlit apps to the web using Streamlit Sharing, Docker, or cloud services like AWS.

Please check https://docs.streamlit.io/get-started to start with streamlit.

Here is a simple example with intro.py,

import streamlit as st

import numpy as np

import pandas as pd

chart_data = pd.DataFrame(

np.random.randn(20, 3),

columns=['a', 'b', 'c'])

st.line_chart(chart_data)

Once kicking off "streamlit run intro.py", we have this chart,

There is a whole gallery of streamlit applications in : https://streamlit.io/gallery

III. Use streamlit to monitor and perform operations

By utilizing Streamlit, you can build an intuitive and interactive dashboard to monitor and operate SAP systems. This dashboard can call ssm-sap to perform various management tasks, providing a seamless and user-friendly interface for SAP administrators.

Initially all applications are in stopped states:

We click button Start All

In a few minutes, we will see HANA starts first.

Finally, all starts.

Summary:

By combining AWS Systems Manager (SSM) with Streamlit, one can create a powerful, cost-effective solution for monitoring and managing SAP environments. This setup leverages AWS’s robust management capabilities and Streamlit’s flexible visualization tools to provide a comprehensive solution that can save time and reduce costs associated with SAP system maintenance (patching and upgrade etc) and operations.

Infrastructure as Code for SAP BTP. Environment management by leveraging Terraform.

2025-01-08T10:08:45.223000+01:00

Introduction

Managing complex, modern infrastructure can be challenging for today’s organizations.

Managing multiple platforms such as SAP BTP, AWS, GCP, and Azure becomes significant, especially for companies that follow strategies “Cloud first”, expectations to evolve infrastructure to Cloud and grow with the level of usage of cloud platforms.

The need to streamline the process has led to the development of infrastructure as code (IaC) tools. Now many solutions are available on the market, one of which is Terraform.

In this end subsequent blogs we will move from basics to more advance techniques and scenarios. But before we jump into details, let's highlight use cases and terminology.

Use cases

First of all, a couple of use cases.

Provisioning of multiple subaccounts in track with similar configuration like set of entitlements, quotas, instances with correct naming convention, users, assign role collections.
Mass deployment of subaccounts in case of active usage of SAP BTP.
Automated provisioning/management of SAP BTP resources after approval in integrated ITSM system.

What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?

Infrastructure as code (IaC) is an approach to managing and provisioning infrastructure/services using code (configuration files) rather than a graphical user interface or manual actions, steps, and processes performed by the operations team.
Such approach provides capabilities to build, change, and manage infrastructure in a safe, consistent, trackable, and repeatable way by defining resource configurations that you can version (in a version control system like GitHub), reuse, and share.
IaC is a key DevOps practice that allows teams to automate and scale the management of IT resources and we will talk about it in the next blog.

What is Terraform?

Terraform open-source IaC software tool is created by HashiCorp and is used for creating, managing, and updating infrastructure resources. Terraform’s increasing popularity among developers can be attributed to its versatility. It is platform-agnostic, enabling you to manage a diverse range of services through providers, including the likes of SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).
In a few words, Terraform is a solution that allows you to automate and manage your infrastructure, platform, and services that run on that platform.
We will not deep dive to functionality of Terraform, you can find details in official documentation, however, let’s highlight a few aspects:

Terraform is open-source solution.
Terraform is declarative – we define what end result we want.
Сapability to extend functionality by leveraging many libraries (providers in terms of Terraform).
Stateful, Terraform stores information about the resources in a state file.
Create/update/delete infrastructure in the correct order. It's critical for SAP BTP to manage resources in right sequence.
Can deploy applications

Now, what is the motivation for using Terraform for SAP BTP?

The motivation behind using Terraform for SAP BTP arises from the need to automate and streamline infrastructure provisioning, manage configurations efficiently, and reduce the overall cost of operations.

Below are few benefits of using Terraform for SAP BTP, of course not limited with this list.

Streamlined Infrastructure Management: One key benefit of Terraform is its infrastructure management capabilities. By utilizing a declarative programming language (HashiCorp Configuration Language, HCL), you only need to define the end state of your infrastructure. Terraform takes care of nuances involved in reaching that state.
Strong Community and Extensive Ecosystem: HashiCorp maintains an extensive ecosystem of Terraform providers, including one for SAP BTP. Additionally, a huge open-source community contributes to continuously improving Terraform and adding support for new services and platforms.
Immutable Infrastructure: With Terraform, you can apply the principle of immutability to your infrastructure, resulting in environments that are predictable, stable, and easier to manage. If the running state of a controlled infrastructure diverges from its Terraform configuration, you can correct it with a command.
Scalability and Reusability: Terraform allows you to write infrastructure as code and use it multiple times, scaling as needed. This process repeatability is incredibly advantageous when creating uniform development, staging, and production environments.

Terraform can be instrumental in various use cases for SAP BTP:

Automated Infrastructure Provisioning: One of the most common use-cases for Terraform in SAP BTP is automated provisioning/management of infrastructure in SAP BTP. Terraform allows for defining and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently, thereby enabling companies to automate the creation and modification of their cloud environment based on their requirements. This reduces manual errors and accelerates the deployment process.
Rapid Prototyping: Terraform enables rapid prototyping by allowing the creation of duplicate environments quickly and reliably. This is especially useful during the testing phase of project development where engineers need to create and destroy environments rapidly.
Managing Application Lifecycle: Terraform can be effectively used to manage different stages of an SAP application lifecycle - right from development, testing, and staging to production. With the repeatability that Terraform provides, developers can create identical environments at each stage, thus ensuring consistency and reducing chances of unexpected deployment issues.
Self-service Infrastructure: For large organizations having numerous teams working on varied projects, Terraform can be really useful in providing a self-service infrastructure. Instead of having a centralized IT team for managing resources, teams can independently create, modify, and destroy their resources as needed.

Terraform for DevOps for SAP BTP

One of the most renowned use cases of Terraform is its integration within DevOps practices. For SAP particularly it's relevant also for SAP BTP-driven developments. With Terraform, DevOps teams can use its declarative language to write simple code for complex infrastructure setups. This not only ensures version control but also allows for collaborative efforts in constructing and managing a unified and automated infrastructure pipeline.

Let’s move to more practical part.

In this and subsequent blogs I’ll show how we can create an environment in SAP BTP, manage various resources, entitlements, destinations, Cloud Foundry environment and instances.

In this blog we will cover scenario to create and delete subaccount.

Terraform basically can be installed in a few ways e.g.:

Installed as an application on a system or
Deployed as a container from an image with installed Terraform inside.

Since we are looking from DevOps angle, we will consider the usage of the containerized Terraform and Docker as a containerization platform. Certainly, we are not limited to use this platform, and you can also build your own Terraform image.

Downloading of Terraform image is pretty straightforward:

docker pull hashicorp/terraform

Now we can run our Terraform container:

docker run --rm -i -t -v $PWD:/$PWD -w $PWD hashicorp/terraform:latest

and execute Terraform commands from container:

docker run --rm -i -t -v $PWD:/$PWD -w $PWD hashicorp/terraform:latest init

As next step, we need to create files with the definition of our Infrastructure as Code.

We can create one configuration file with a description of all providers, resources, and variables in one place.

Certainly, it’s a bad approach and the general recommendation is to follow best practices on how to organize workspace and modules.

The advantages of modules are obvious: Reusability, Simplified Management, Scalability and so on.

Let’s introduce root module with the following structure:

Place the main configuration files (main.tf, variables.tf, outputs.tf, providers.tf, etc.) at the root of our project.

First, we need to introduce providers in providers.tf file. In our case, we will utilize a combination of two Terraform providers:

SAP/btp
cloudfoundry/cloudfoundry

Note: SAP/cloudfoundry provider is deprecated and no longer maintained.

The first provider is responsible for managing SAP BTP subaccounts and resources, second – for managing Cloud Foundry resources.

Next, let’s define terraform.tfvars file to externalize values of our parameters and defile our variables in variables.tf file.

Next, variables definition in file variables.tf .

Next, let’s define main.tf file. In this file, we will write the definition of our infrastructure.

In this example, as starting point we will implement minimal configuration:

Create subaccount with specific name in US10 region in exact global account
Add role collection to user, defined in variables file(for example we can specify technical users)
Assign and configure Cloud Foundry entitlement
Create Cloud Foundry environment

Alright. As a next step, we need to initialize our module before applying configuration.

We need to execute following command to download providers and generate mandatory Terraform lock file:

docker run --rm -i -t -v $PWD:/$PWD -w $PWD hashicorp/terraform:latest init

Next step, we need to generate deployment plan, what will be done and order, for our infrastructure:

docker run --rm -i -t -v $PWD:/$PWD -w $PWD hashicorp/terraform:latest plan

And we can find what will be done and order of operations:

Finally, we good to apply generated deployment to our infrastructure:

docker run --rm -i -t -v $PWD:/$PWD -w $PWD hashicorp/terraform:latest apply --auto-approve

And result of successful execution:

And we can find our subaccount in SAP BTP:

Since Terrafrom generated state file, we have current configuration of our deployments.

Now, we would like to remove our subaccount and all resources in correct order.

To do it, we need to execute following command:

docker run --rm -i -t -v $PWD:/$PWD -w $PWD hashicorp/terraform:latest destroy --auto-approve

Terraform will read current state, refresh it and plan execution:

And result of execution:

Conclusion

In conclusion, Terraform simplifies managing SAP BTP infrastructure by automating and streamlining provisioning processes. Its declarative approach, strong community support, and modular structure make it a powerful tool for ensuring consistency and reducing operational complexity.

In the next blog, I will demonstrate how to manage various resources in SAP BTP with Terraform, further showcasing Terraform's capabilities in practical scenarios.

LET´S TALK Transformation: Interactive sessions, small groups of customers to share and learn

2025-01-15T20:30:41.376000+01:00

Trying to succeed on a cloud journey?

You're in for an exciting ride! But let's face it, aligning strategies, teams, and investments can be a real challenge. Collaboration is key to nailing your project and driving business value. Migrating to the cloud isn't just about software; it's about evolving processes to stay competitive and meet customer demands. Tech is a powerful enabler, but it's not the transformation itself. That's where you come in.

In the past year, we've chatted with over 300 customers about their transformation strategies. We've found that while many organizations have a vision, they struggle to align internally and make it a reality. Sounds familiar? Guess what? We've taken insights from those conversations with more mature customers, the ones that have managed to achieve results from the cloud (and some great research from SAP) to build a transformation framework to guide our customers.

The Business Transformation Framework is made up of 11 elements across three key areas:

1)Business Area Strategy

2)Transformation Tactical Components

3)Technology Enablement.

Want to dive deeper? Join our 1:Few Sessions! Our Solution Value Advisory experts will lead interactive discussions on the most relevant topics within our Business Transformation Framework. Sessions repeat monthly, so pick the topics and dates that work best for you. Ready to transform your transformation? We can't wait to see you there! Link to review available sessions. Click to review global calendar for H1_2025 Click here for LAC sessions calendar (in spanish)

SAP BW/4HANA: The Grey Panther of Data Warehousing

2025-01-27T09:42:37.658000+01:00

SAP BW/4HANA: The Grey Panther of Data Warehousing

“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for twenty years, the BW passed out of all knowledge.”
(Adapted from Galadriel’s famous words)

Cloud-native data management solutions dominate the presence in many discussions and strategies about data management.

Despite its evolution from BW to BW/4HANA and the significant functional improvements it brought, the solution’s 25-year history— evident in many of its functional corners—makes it difficult for BW/4HANA to be perceived as a modern data warehousing solution.

But there are many concepts in BW that are functionally strong and beneficial, and on which in the last decades many foundations of large and very large BW platforms for many customers of SAP were built.

SAP BW/4HANA addresses challenges that, in the past, may not have been fully recognized as strengths by those who used it, but which are now worth remembering in the discussion about the “modern data stack”.

This article revisits some of these strengths in metadata management, governance, orchestration, and automation—highlighting its utility for (classical) well-structured, large-scale EDWs with a focus on SAP systems as the source of data. This short article concludes by exploring how SAP Datasphere inherits and modernizes some of BW’s proven concepts.

Deep Integration of Metadata Management and Business Semantics

SAP BW/4HANA (within its own functionality) offers unparalleled rich metadata, its management and semantic integration. Its Info Objects always provided rich semantics, time-dependencies, hierarchies, multilingual support, and reusability, hiding a table-oriented view in favor of a more object-oriented perspective. Info Objects embed business semantics directly into data models, eliminating the need for external interventions for that purpose. Features like well-defined amount-to-currency relationships and unit conversions are natively extracted from the source in an automated way, ensuring semantic precision throughout the data chain without having to create additional bespoke logic or external tools to enforce system-wide consistency.

In contrast, many modern cloud platforms often depend on third-party tools for advanced metadata management and lineage, particularly in heterogeneous environments with multiple data warehouse solutions. While these tools can offer benefits in multi-platform setups, they also introduce additional licensing costs and integration complexity. By comparison, BW/4HANA’s integrated approach streamlines unified yet complex data landscapes (of structured data).

Master Data Management

BW/4HANA Info objects of type characteristic have always been an excellent support for master data design and management. Info Objects ensure system-wide uniqueness and consistency, managing time-dependent attributes and hierarchies with minimal developer intervention.

Multilingual support for master data and standard hierarchy containers and operations for even complex, time-dependent hierarchical structures further enhance the utility of Info Objects.

Handling slow-changing dimensions and other master data management tasks are homogeneous across all master data in their application and treatment, reflecting one of BW’s long-standing strengths.

Orchestration and Automation with Process Chains

Process Chains in BW/4HANA automate ETL workflows, ensuring tasks are executed in sequence with built-in error handling, scheduling, and logging. In contrast, cloud platforms often rely on external orchestration tools like Apache Airflow or AWS Step Functions, adding tool complexity to data pipeline design and orchestration. BW/4HANA’s native orchestration has proven to simplify large workflows and to reduce maintenance and monitoring overhead. It also has its effects in the application lifecycle management which is deeply integrated in BW.

Logical Scalability and Dependency Management

BW/4HANA’s previously discussed object-oriented approach enables logical scalability and robust dependency management for complex data landscapes. While cloud platforms like Snowflake focus on elastic scalability, managing interrelated data tables often requires additional tools for cataloguing dependencies. BW/4HANA’s integrated design handles these challenges natively.

While this list highlights key features, it is by no means exhaustive. BW/4HANA offers additional strengths that have made it a robust solution, though they are omitted here for brevity. The point here is that plenty of currently discussed topics and challenges in the use of the “modern data stack”[1] have been resolved many years ago in BW and that for SAP data a solid BW infrastructure still is an asset not to be underestimated in its value when it comes to thoughts about substituting it just for doing something “new”.

SAP Datasphere: Modernizing BW’s Strengths

SAP Datasphere is now showing clear signs of including some of the above-mentioned conceptual strengths of BW/4HANA features. We can find the following concepts in the more recent SAP Datasphere releases:

Multilingual Support: Adapts datasets and reports to user preferences, ensuring global consistency.
Currency Conversion: Replicates BW’s standardized functionality for seamless ERP-DW integration.
Time-Dependent Attributes: Maintains historical master data changes with business semantics like “Valid from” and “Valid to”.
Hierarchies: Incorporates parent-child hierarchies with expanded functionality for modern cloud environments.
Navigation Attributes: Enables logically easy to understand aggregations of fact data by natural “business objects” without duplicating data, ensuring model flexibility and expressiveness.
Non-Cumulative Measures: Supports scenarios like stock levels and balances, leveraging delta records for precision.
BW-Style Measure Types: Includes calculated, restricted, and currency conversion measures, maintaining analytic rigor.
Variables: Enhances interactivity and flexibility through dynamic parameter settings with a standardized behavior.

Conclusion

SAP BW/4HANA’s integrated approach included solutions for many challenges in metadata management, governance, and scalability, reducing complexity and homogeneous solution patterns in large-scale deployments. While cloud platforms necessitate often third-party tools for similar capabilities, BW/4HANA offers a cohesive solution which his not easily found anywhere else. Despite being labelled as a ‘legacy’ system, BW/4HANA remains and will remain relevant for many organizations for years. Transitioning its proven solutions to a “modern data stack” would require significant effort, discipline, re-skilling and governance, making BW/4HANA a practical choice for the foreseeable future.

SAP Datasphere represents a powerful evolution, blending modern cloud-native architecture with some of the proven concepts of BW/4HANA. It not only supports seamless SAP data integration but also accommodates diverse data sources, offering enterprises a balance of innovation and reliability.

[1] A name which implicitly includes the multi-tool nature of it

Comparing UiPath Impact Analysis and Tricentis LiveCompare: Key Differences

2025-01-30T09:33:45.112000+01:00

Overview of UiPath Impact Analysis

UiPath Heatmap for SAP is a feature of the UiPath Test Suite designed to optimize test prioritization based on real-time SAP system usage. It leverages data-driven insights to identify automation opportunities and align test efforts with critical business processes.

Key Features:

Real-Time Process Insights: Visualizes SAP transactions and their usage frequency to prioritize testing.
Test Coverage Visualization: Displays test coverage through color-coded indicators:
- Gray: No test case exists or has been executed.
- Red: Test case exists but has failed.
- Green: Test case exists and has passed.
Immediate Results: Requires minimal setup, offering instant insights to identify gaps in test coverage and critical risks.
Integration: Compatible with SAP ECC, S/4HANA, and SAP EWM.

Strengths:

Prioritizes test cases based on real system usage.
Simple and intuitive visualization for test management.
Seamless integration with UiPath’s low-code automation platform.
Focus on test optimization and automation scalability.

2. Overview of Tricentis LiveCompare

Tricentis LiveCompare is a comprehensive impact analysis and testing tool designed specifically for SAP environments. It provides AI-driven insights into system changes, helping organizations minimize risks and optimize testing efforts.

Key Features:

Change Impact Analysis: Uses AI-powered analytics to identify SAP objects at risk from transports, support packs, or change requests.
Continuous Configuration Analysis: Automatically identifies configuration-related changes affecting master data and functional testing.
Code Quality Monitoring: Monitors and analyzes custom ABAP code for quality and dependency issues.
Smart Project Guides: Guides SAP teams through quality activities at each stage of a project, aligned with SAP Activate.
Role-Based UI: Provides tailored analytics and reports based on user roles.

Strengths:

Comprehensive impact analysis for SAP system updates.
Focus on risk minimization and testing efficiency.
Advanced AI and analytics for deep insights into changes.
Detailed reports for test prioritization and audit readiness.

3. UiPath Platform vs. Tricentis Tosca

Feature Comparison:

FeatureUiPath PlatformTricentis Tosca

Process Library	Strong capabilities (9.6), offering efficient test management.	Equally rated at 9.6, focusing on managing test cases effectively.
Execution Management	Superior (9.5), excelling in automated workflow management.	Slightly behind, with less emphasis on execution management.
Test Feedback	Delivers actionable insights (9.2) for automation testing.	Provides valuable insights (8.3), though less detailed.
Customization	Highly flexible (9.3) for tailored solutions.	Limited flexibility (8.0) for customization.
Ease of Use	Streamlined bot creation process (9.3).	User-friendly visual editor (9.1).
Quality of Support	Strong support (8.8), offering responsive assistance.	Decent support (8.3), less robust.
Integration Capabilities	Extensive pre-built connectors (9.2) for seamless app integration.	API Designer rated lower (8.0) and seen as somewhat limited.

4. Key Differences Between UiPath Heatmap and Tricentis LiveCompare

Feature	UiPath Heatmap for SAP	Tricentis LiveCompare
Primary Focus	Real-time test prioritization and coverage visualization.	Change impact analysis and risk identification for SAP systems.
Visualization	Heatmap with color-coded indicators for test coverage and transaction usage.	Detailed impact analysis dashboards and reports.
Technology Approach	Data-driven insights from system usage.	AI and dependency-based analysis of system changes.
Setup and Usability	Minimal setup with immediate results.	Requires configuration for change analysis.
Integration	Part of the UiPath ecosystem for automation.	Standalone tool integrated with Tricentis Tosca.
Target Audience	Test teams looking to optimize automation coverage.	Organizations focused on minimizing risk and managing change impacts.
Test Prioritization	Based on real-time system usage and transaction relevance.	Based on changes in code, configuration, and dependencies.
Scope	Optimizes ongoing testing efforts with actionable insights.	Focuses on preparing for SAP upgrades and major changes.

5. Which Tool Should You Choose?

Choose UiPath Heatmap for SAP if:

You prioritize visual, data-driven test optimization.
You already use UiPath’s automation tools and want seamless integration.
Your focus is on enhancing automation efficiency and real-time prioritization.
You need a tool that delivers immediate insights without complex setup.

Choose Tricentis LiveCompare if:

You require a robust solution for managing SAP system changes.
Your organization prioritizes risk mitigation during SAP upgrades and migrations.
You need detailed impact analysis to identify high-risk areas.
You are looking for advanced AI-driven insights and reporting capabilities.

6. Conclusion

Both UiPath Heatmap for SAP and Tricentis LiveCompare provide valuable functionalities to support SAP testing and change management. The UiPath Platform shines in its execution management and actionable feedback, while Tricentis Tosca excels in visual editing and ease of use. Meanwhile, UiPath Heatmap excels in real-time test prioritization, and Tricentis LiveCompare offers advanced change impact analysis and risk-based recommendations. Organizations should assess their specific testing needs, existing tools, and long-term goals to select the most suitable solution for their SAP landscape.

Beyond the Data Silo: The Convergence of SAP Systems and Modern Data Lake Technologies

2025-02-10T04:53:39.311000+01:00

In today's enterprise landscape, a fascinating transformation is underway. While SAP systems continue to serve as the backbone of business operations, organizations are discovering that traditional approaches to data management no longer meet the demands of our rapidly evolving digital economy. The challenge isn't just about managing data – it's about turning it into actionable intelligence at the speed of business.

The Evolution of SAP Data Architecture

The SAP ecosystem has long been the backbone of enterprise operations, housing critical business data across its various modules. However, today's digital economy demands more than just robust transaction processing – it requires seamless integration of internal and external data sources, real-time analytics, and AI-driven insights.

The current state of enterprise data presents an intriguing paradox. Consider a typical global manufacturing Company X: Multiple SAP instances span continents, each running critical modules like FI/CO, MM, SD, and PP. In Europe, teams work with one set of customizations and configurations, while their Americas counterparts operate with different chart of accounts and business rules. What seems like a simple question about global inventory levels can spiral into a days-long exercise involving multiple teams, countless Excel sheets, and lengthy email threads.

Traditional-architecture

These challenges extend beyond just SAP systems. The integration of external data sources – IoT sensors, market data feeds, social media analytics – adds layers of complexity to an already intricate landscape. The time lag between data creation and insight generation has become a critical bottleneck for business agility.

The Promise of Modern Data Lakes

Modern data lake technologies represent a paradigm shift in how enterprises can manage and utilize their data. These platforms bring transformative capabilities through their support for industry-standard formats, enabling seamless data exchange across the enterprise. Their flexible schema management adapts to changing business needs, while enterprise-grade reliability is ensured through ACID transactions. The ability to access and restore historical data states, combined with unified processing for both batch and streaming workloads, creates a robust foundation for next-generation enterprise data management.

The Convergence: A New Enterprise Data Architecture

The future lies in architectures that bring together the best of both worlds – SAP's robust business processes and the flexibility of modern data lakes. This next-generation architecture reimagines how enterprise data flows and interacts:

Future-architecture

This convergence enables a new approach to data governance, where metadata management, data quality rules, and lineage tracking are centralized across both SAP and non-SAP data. Organizations can achieve zero-latency access to operational data with instant synchronization across systems, while performing real-time analytics without impacting transaction systems.

Perhaps most importantly, this convergence creates an AI-ready data foundation. By standardizing data formats for AI/ML workloads and enabling the integration of structured and unstructured data, organizations can fully leverage the power of large language models and generative AI across their enterprise data landscape.

Practical Implementation Strategies

Organizations looking to modernize their SAP data architecture should begin with a focus on high-value scenarios that require integrated data, particularly in areas where real-time insights drive business value. Projects that combine SAP and external data often yield the most significant returns and provide valuable learning experiences for teams. The foundation of this modernization requires implementing modern data lake capabilities alongside existing systems, while establishing unified governance frameworks. Creating semantic layers that abstract technical complexity enables broader adoption across the organization. Organizations must also prepare their data structures for AI workloads, implementing robust data quality measures and building pipelines for continuous data refreshes.

Conclusion: Preparing for Tomorrow

The convergence of SAP systems with modern data lake technologies isn't just a technical evolution – it's a business imperative. Organizations that successfully navigate this transformation will find themselves better positioned to accelerate innovation through integrated data access, improve decision-making with real-time insights, enable AI-driven business processes, and maintain competitive advantage in the digital economy.

The question isn't whether to embrace this transformation, but how to implement it in a way that maximizes business value while minimizing disruption. As technology leaders, our role is to guide our organizations through this evolution, ensuring we build data architectures that are not just modern, but future-ready.

What steps is your organization taking to modernize its enterprise data architecture? The journey toward unified, AI-ready data platforms is just beginning, and the decisions we make today will shape our ability to compete tomorrow.

The Metadata behind SAP Data Products in SAP Business Data Cloud

2025-02-17T16:44:25.629000+01:00

On February 13th, 2025, we introduced SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) to help enterprises unlock value from their data, using it to power analytics, AI, and automation. Fundamental to BDC are Data Products: curated datasets that are accessible, self-describing, discoverable, and understandable. The value and usability of any data partly depends on the availability and quality of metadata, which is also true for the Data Products of BDC. This blog post provides a deep dive into the metadata for SAP Data Products.

In summary, SAP uses open metadata standards to describe Data Products. The API / data model of Data Products is described in Core Schema Notation Interoperability Specification (CSN Interop). The high-level information about Data Products, their taxonomy and relationships are described in Open Resource Discovery with a focus on taxonomy and connecting Data Products with development, integration, and business-oriented concepts.

High-Level Metadata

SAP developed a metadata discovery standard for describing and publishing various types of APIs and events: Open Resource Discovery (ORD). ORD is part of the Apeiro Reference Architecture and is contributed as open source to the European IPCEI-CIS initiative as a standard for interoperability. It was a natural step to leverage this existing standard rather than to create another isolated metadata standard that only covers the Data Product and platform aspects. So, we extended ORD to include the Data Product concept and connected it with other existing developer-focused concepts.

This also helps with avoiding the typical problem of siloed and fragmented metadata graphs. We believe there is huge value in connecting the various metadata concepts that are relevant to developers, architects, data scientists, and business persona. Our strategy is to bring all these aspects together and aggregate the metadata into central repositories.

In our model, the Data Product is a grouping concept that carries the relevant metadata to describe the dataset and its data qualities. A Data Product itself is not directly consumable, but it exposes data through output ports, which can be implemented as APIs or events. In the first iteration of BDC, the primary Data Products expose a single output port as delta-sharing API. In principle, there can be multiple output ports of various API and/or event types. To understand data ingestion, lineage, and dependencies, Data Products can also have input ports which are the equivalent of an ORD Integration Dependency that lists the APIs and events that are used to ingest or process the data. Most of the concepts have relations to Entity Type, which represents business objects / domain objects / ODM entities as semantic taxonomy terms business experts would understand.

Right now, SAP uses the ORD protocol to streamline our own discovery and publishing processes, most notably to the SAP Business Accelerator Hub, the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) System Landscape, SAP Build and to the BDC Cockpit. This all happens behind the scenes, so customers are not exposed to it and can benefit from a better integrated experience. However, in our partnership with Databricks, we also use the ORD protocol to connect the Databricks Unity Catalog with the Data Products provided by BDC as well as the other way around, retrieving Data Products created in Databricks into BDC. Leveraging ORD as an open metadata standard is a very important part of our partnership. We are looking forward to growing the ecosystem around ORD in our partnerships.

For more information about Data Products in ORD, have a look at the ORD Data Product page.

Data Product API / Data Model

Data Products exposed by SAP applications will use the industry-standard Delta Sharing protocol, but customers will also be able to expose Data Products via other types of APIs. In Delta Sharing, the Delta Table metadata format provides the basics for wider ecosystem interoperability. For many of our use cases, we need even richer metadata – more semantics and a model that is closer to our existing metadata models.

Many SAP products already support the SAP-specific Core Data Services (CDS) metamodel, which may also be known to our customers as the metadata format for ABAP (RAP) and SAP Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP). Since we invested in rich metadata in CDS models for many years (sometimes decades), it made sense to leverage it also for Data Products, preserving and transferring the rich metadata and semantics we often already have.

As CDS models can be exported in the CSN format in many variants and flavors, we created a public specification that focuses on an interoperable, machine-consumption-optimized format: Core Schema Notation Interoperability Specification (CSN Interop).

With CSN Interop, we describe the API / data model of the Data Products output port. The most relevant aspects are that we describe entities (tables / objects) and elements (fields, properties). By assigning entities to a service, we define (or imply) the protocol and mapping how they are exposed as an API with a concrete data serialization format.

Since the CSN format is not well known outside of the SAP ecosystem, here are some interesting aspects:

CSN is well suited to describe “conceptual” models, which are more abstract than, e.g., JSON Schema. The same CSN model can be exposed through different API protocols and data serialization formats (via assignment to a Service). It can also be used as a persistency model for the database. The core entity model in CSN is therefore agnostic of protocol and serialization format. The final API / data interface is then decided by the chosen mapping. In the case of the Delta Sharing APIs, we defined a mapping to the Apache Spark type system.

Also, CSN already has extensive annotation vocabularies, which can carry a lot of additional information like business semantics (@Semantics, @ODM), relationships, and metadata that improve the semantic onboarding experience. This means that there is no need to rebuild a rich, semantic metamodel from scratch, because we can carry over the information.

For more information, have a look at the CSN Interop page and its Primer.

Future Direction

We plan to extend the current scope of the metadata standards and further improve the data product metadata with more annotations and better coverage. We want to establish ORD as a de facto industry standard, being an intrinsic piece of our open ecosystem approach similar as we use ORD as the solid foundation of our partnership with Databricks.

If you have questions, feedback or just want to get in touch with us, feel free to reach out!

Creating and Managing DatabaseHits at your project level for Audit Logs in Cloud HANA

2025-02-18T13:28:50.095000+01:00

In SAP HANA CockPit

Search for the Auditing Service

Creating the new "DatabaseHits" Audit Policy

1. Navigate to Audit Policies: Within the "Auditing" section, select "Audit Policies."
2. Create New Policy:

Click "Create" to start defining a new audit policy.

Policy Name: Enter DatabaseHits.
Description: Provide a meaningful description, such as "Audit policy to track database hits and accesses for my project."

Define Audit Conditions:

Actions: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE.
Object Type: TABLE.
Object Name: Specify specific tables/objects.

Configure Audit Trails:

Define the retention period for audit logs.

Select the relevant schema after checking in DB explorer

Activate Policy:

Save the new audit policy.
Ensure the policy status is "Active.

When you execute a query in DB explorer you can view the logs:

To integrate this logs in your Project - Create User and Role:

CREATE USER ISUSUSER PASSWORD "Welcome1234" SET USERGROUP DEFAULT;

ALTER USER ISUSUSER DISABLE PASSWORD LIFETIME;

CREATE ROLE DBROLE;

GRANT SELECT, EXECUTE, SELECT METADATA ON SCHEMA "DBADMIN" TO DBROLE WITH GRANT OPTION;

GRANT DBROLE TO ISUSUSER WITH ADMIN OPTION;

Bind the Service: Use the Cloud Foundry CLI to create a user-provided service:

cf cups DBCS_ACCESS -p "{\"user\":\"ISUSUSER\",\"password\":\"Welcome1234\",\"tags\":[\"hana\"],\"schema\":\"DBADMIN\"}"

Addition of grants file in project db/cfg path

{

    "DBCS_ACCESS": {

      "object_owner" : {

        "roles" : ["DBROLE" ]

      },

      "application_user" : {

        "roles" : ["DBROLE" ]

      }

    }

  }

Addition of hdbsynonym file(audit_log.hdbsynonym) at db/src to expose the audit log table held in the Admin schema

{

  "APP_INTERACTIONS_AUDIT_LOG": {

    "target": {

      "object": "AUDIT_LOG",

      "schema": "SYS"

    }

  }

}

Addition of the Audit_Log entity in .cds file with the annotation persistence.exists. Please refer to the screenshot below :

Finally exposing the entity as an ODATA service in the service catalog file interactions-srv.cds

Now this entity can be used in your UI application to view specific logs about your particular project.

For e.g we created a Auditlog tile and used the oData :

CAPM Basics - Part 1

2025-02-23T13:09:40.402000+01:00

Hello Colleagues,

Below blog will guide you on how to create a basic CAP application and deploy the application to a persistent SQLite DB.

Create a new Dev Space and select a "Full Stack Cloud Application". This will pre-install the necessary extensions/libraries.

Your new Dev Space is now created. Launch it.

Browse to the "projects" directory of your Dev Space and open the same.

In the Projects directory, create a new CAP project as shown below. Open terminal and use the command "cds init <project_name>". A sample CAP application with the pre-defined folder structure is created.

In the "db" folder, create a file named "data-model.cds" and paste the contents as below. This creates the entity "trainer" in the namespace "training".

namespace training;

using {cuid} from '@sap/cds/common';

define entity trainer : cuid {
    name        : String;
    location    : String;
    designation : String

}

In the "srv" folder, create a file named "services.cds". This creates a OData V4 service exposes the entity as a view/projection.

using training as db from '../db/data-model';

@path: 'MyService'
service CatalogService {
    entity trainers  as projection on db.trainer;
}

Use "cds add data" to add data feature to your project. This will be the sample mock data for testing our application in development.

Add some sample data to the csv file.

From the terminal, run "cds watch" and observe the logs. Our mock data is loaded from the csv file and deployed to in-memory database. This is the default configuration in CAP. Run the application by clicking on the highlighted URL.

The default HTML page of your CAP application loads up. Click on the entity "trainers". A "GET" request is fired to fetch the data for the same entity.

Now return to your CAP application, and create a "test.http" file in the root of your project as shown below.

Write a GET request as shown below and execute the same.

Now write a POST request and execute the same. Hit the "GET all records" request again. Observe a new record is created with a guid assigned by CAP. This is because we used a cuid aspect for our entity which assigns a unique primary key to our entity.

Now stop your CAP application (hit CTRL+C in your terminal), start it again (execute cds watch in your terminal) and execute the above "GET all records" once more. What happens? We only get the records from our csv file. The record that we posted in the previous step is lost. This is because we are using a default in-memory database (ephemeral database) as observed from our logs previously.

To "fix" this, we will now shift to a persistent SQLite DB. To make CAP understand that we want to use a persistent DB instead of a in-memory DB, add the following lines in your package.json file.

{ "cds": { "requires": {
   "db": {
      "kind": "sqlite",
      "credentials": { "url": "db.sqlite" } 
   }
}}}

Now execute the command "cds deploy --to sqlite" as shown below. A new file db.sqlite is created which is now our local persistent DB.

Execute "cds watch" to start the application again. Observe the logs. The application is now connected to our persistent SQLite DB instead of in-memory database.

Now POST a new record, stop the application, start the application again and execute the "GET all records" request. What do you observe? The record that was posted is persisted even after restarting the application.

So now you have a fully capable CRUD application service with very minimum development. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below.

SAP BTP: Cloud Application Programming Model

2025-03-04T07:09:41.141000+01:00

SAP Cloud Application Programming (CAP) Model exposes the ability to extend standard Cloud, on-premises and hybrid application functionality with flexible custom business logic scripted using the developer’s choice of programing language (SQL, SQL Script, Python, Node.js and JavaScript) and exposing the functionality to various user interfaces (UIs) e.g. Microsoft Power Bi, SAP Fiori, Dataiku and Google Big Query using various integration frameworks e.g. OData v4,JDBC/ODBC depending on the case study.

The developer takes pride in delivering a scalable extended functionality, embedding robust real-time monitoring capabilities to ensure a health life cycle and protecting the functionality with secure authentication protocols e.g. OAuth 2.0, JWT Bearer, SAML version 2.0 and RFC Specification.

Furthermore, the developer ensures a reliable and robust solutions by implementing continuous integration and continuous delivery CI/CD pipelines that automates testing, building and deployment of code changes this strategy ensures a speedy development and delivery cycle.

Traditionally developers extended business logic directly on-premises on the ABAP application server. With the ever-changing world of technology, digital transformation has become essential for organization to say afloat of competitors and therefore the programming model paradigms and capabilities of extending SAP solutions have evolved drastically and provides a seamless experience into the cloud.

Figure 1:

Architectural Paradigm Shift from Classic ABAP App server to CAP App server

Source: Thomas Jung, SAP HANA Extended Application Services blog, URL: https://community.sap.com/t5/technology-blogs-by-sap/sap-hana-extended-application-services/ba-p/12963426/page/4

The SAP Cloud Application model comes with a rich set of languages, libraries, and tools for building enterprise-grade services and applications. It guides developers along a 'golden path' of proven best practices and a great wealth of out-of-the-box solutions to recurring tasks:

Figure 2:

SAP Cloud Application Model Architecture

Source HTTPS://Cap.cloud.sap , URL: https://cap.cloud.sap/docs/about/

The below diagram categories the skill set of SAP Cloud Developer based on the scope of the development either being ABAP or Non-ABAP. Each with its unique set of tools and methodologies:

Figure 3:

SAP Cloud Developer skill set

Source: Building side-by-side extensions on SAP BTP, URL: https://learning.sap.com/learning-journeys/build-side-by-side-extensions-on-sap-btp/identifying-the-need-for-side-by-side-extensibility_f1e838f0-f02a-43b4-8896-cedc25a7d5d0

The Cloud Application Programming model enables a collaboration of agile cross functional teams inclusive of but not limited, depending on the scope of the development: citizen developers (low-code/no-code), Professional developers (Scripting, OOP), business analysts, data engineers and application specialists to model robust data models:

Figure 4:

Agile cross functional team

Source: Investigating the Impact of Cross-Functional Teams on Business Success

URL: https://www.iienstitu.com/en/blog/cross-functional-teams

SAP Cloud Application Programming (CAP) Model enables a culture where people regardless of their title or background, work together to imagine, develop, deploy, and operate a solution. This strengthens the trust between employees and authentic healthy work relationships.

Thank you all for taking a glimpse into the above Content. Please don’t for get to like, comment and share.

Abbreviations:

APP: Application

CAP: Cloud Application Programing

CDS: Core Data Services

CI/CD: Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery

JWT: JSON Web token

OData: Open Data Protocol

RFC: Remote Function Call

SAML: Security Assertion Markup Language

SQL: Structured Query Language

UIs: User Interfaces

New customer story from Westwood

2025-04-23T13:51:46.432000+02:00

It's always great to hear how customers are using the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition with the integrated product compliance solution to enable them to automate product safety workflows and help support international business growth.

See the full Westwood story here.

See Westwood's story!

Grow with SAP for Retail: SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition retail, fashion, and vertical business

2025-05-05T09:29:33.331000+02:00

The evolution of SAP's retail systems

Having dedicated 30 years to SAP and the retail industry, I have had the privilege of witnessing the remarkable evolution of SAP's retail systems. From the first version specifically designed for retail in a ECC system to the continuous improvements over the years, culminating in the sophisticated cloud private edition for retailers, the journey has been extraordinary. And with this cloud private edition, we are still not at the end of this evolution!

Begin of 2025, SAP proudly introduced the Retail Industry version of our multi-tenant SaaS ERP solution (general availability). This advanced system goes beyond the fundamentals of finance, procurement, and warehouse management to include specialized features such as store management, pricing, promotions, replenishment, allocations, and more. These processes are tailored to the retail sector, drawing on SAP's 50 years of experience collaborating with the world's leading retailers.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business empowers small and medium-sized enterprises to drive business growth and foster innovation. By standardizing retail-specific processes, this modern, agile, and scalable cloud ERP solution ensures the fastest time to value and the lowest total cost of ownership.

In simple terms, it’s a platform that allows retailers to focus on what they do best: delighting their customers. In an age where customer experience defines success, maintaining this focus is essential.

Are you ready to transform your retail business across the value chain?

Retailers are confronted with three significant challenges: consumers seeking personalized and instant experiences, competitors utilizing technology to drive innovation, and supply chains strained by global uncertainties. Within this crucible of challenges, I believe that Grow with SAP for Retail emerges as an essential lifeline for the contemporary retailer.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business is, at its heart, a holistic cloud ERP solution tailored to the demands of retail businesses. Its goal is to empower retailers to thrive in times of disruption. This solution facilitates the streamlining of business processes, effective data utilization, and flexible scaling.

How could it look like in practice? Let's explore some key aspects of this solution together

To provide a clearer picture, we will step into the shoes of different employees in a retail company and explore their unique challenges, needs, and how they gain advantages from SAP's Public Cloud. Moreover, I will share some example screenshots as a teaser to further illustrate this (the content was built by SAP and demonstrated on NRF 2025).

Melanie, the Procurement Specialist

Melanie, a Procurement Specialist, plays a key role in ensuring the profitability and customer satisfaction of her store by selecting the right products, negotiating prices, and keeping purchases within budget. She relies on sales data to identify products that are in demand.

However, her role comes with several challenges such as errors from manual data entry which lead to inaccuracies, disorganized vendor information increasing costs, limited visibility affecting inventory management, and difficulty in monitoring in-store customer demand for more accurate and timely decisions on stock replenishment and procurement.

To effectively manage these challenges, Melanie needs tools and strategies that allow her to monitor stock levels, assess product performance, handle delivery performance, manage supplier contracts, and analyze sales data for forecasting demand. Implementing solutions like setting automatic reorder points, optimizing purchase orders, and strategies to prevent stock-outs can maximize sales and enhance customer satisfaction.

Utilizing SAP Cloud Public Edition tailored for retail can significantly support Melanie in her role. SAP can help optimize inventory levels, reduce carrying costs through accurate sales forecasting, streamline invoice processing for better supplier compliance, and provide built-in tools for communication and approvals. This streamlines the entire purchasing process, making it more efficient and effective in meeting both the store's and customers' needs.

(The procurement overview dashboard of Procurement Specialist Melanie provides pre-built reports, easy access to precise data)

(The machine learning model for predicting delivery dates utilizes the company's data, incorporating factors such as transportation method, lead time, vendor history, and weather conditions)Phil, the Store Manager

Phil, as the Store Manager, holds the responsibility for the store's smooth operation. He is dedicated to achieving sales targets, maintaining customer satisfaction, and effectively managing his team. His role encompasses strategic planning, team leadership, and operational know-how to propel the store towards success.

However, Phil faces a set of challenges that include balancing inventory to align with customer demands while also minimizing carrying costs, contending with slow restocking processes which can result in empty shelves and lost sales, and dealing with operational inefficiencies that create bottlenecks, impair productivity, and cause delays.

To address these challenges, Phil's strategy requires developing and implementing methods to meet sales goals and enhance profitability, managing inventory levels to prevent stock-outs and ensure product availability, getting a clear perspective on short-term and long-term promotional activities, and using customer data to personalize recommendations and promotions.

Utilizing the SAP Cloud Public Edition tailored for retail, Phil can gain a suite of benefits to streamline operations and boost efficiency. This includes integrated data facilitating quicker decision-making processes across sales, inventory, and customer operations; enhanced real-time collaboration with local suppliers, which helps in improving lead times and reducing restocking delays; and omnichannel integration that guarantees a consistent customer experience and synchronized inventory management across all platforms. This comprehensive approach not only aids in tackling existing challenges but also positions the store for lasting success.

(Phil opens his store overview page which gives him a snapshot of his daily store operations briefly)

(Demand Forecast Run shows the expected demand for the coming weeks including seasonality)Sarah, the Store Associate

Sarah is a dedicated Store Associate with a flair for customer service and teamwork. She helps customers find the right products and ensures smooth transactions through the point-of-sale system. Her duties extend beyond the counter, as she restocks shelves, crafts appealing displays, and double-checks that price tags reflect current offers. The harmony and satisfaction in her workplace motivate her to contribute actively to the store's success, aiming to provide every customer with a pleasant shopping journey.

Despite her enthusiasm, Sarah faces several hurdles in her day-to-day operations. Inventory management can be sluggish and imprecise, leading to situations where products are either unavailable or unnecessarily abundant. This misalignment can make product location cumbersome and detract from customer satisfaction. Additionally, inefficient checkout processes can cause delays, leaving customers feeling frustrated. Her current tools also limit her ability to access insightful data, making it harder to make informed decisions.

With SAP Cloud Public Edition tailored for retail, Sarah's workflow can be optimized, leading to greater productivity. Improved in-store pickup processes minimize revenue loss, ensuring customers receive their orders promptly. Real-time visibility into stock levels empowers her to update customers accurately, fostering trust and satisfaction. Optimized inventory management reduces unnecessary carrying costs, while smart restocking based on actual sales keeps shelves perfectly stocked.

By integrating smart technology, Sarah can overcome her hurdles and elevate both her efficiency and customer satisfaction. Better inventory tracking, streamlined transactions, and comprehensive reporting provide Sarah with the tools she needs to thrive in her role. With SAP, she gains more control over her processes, fulfilling her responsibilities with newfound ease and confidence.

(BOPIS enables store associates like Sarah to prepare online orders for fast, convenient in-store pickup)

Natalie, the Chief Financial Officer

CFO Natalie is responsible for monitoring the financial health of the company. Her primary role includes developing strategies to enhance profitability and sustain long-term growth while managing potential risks. She is also tasked with leading the financial reporting to provide precise insights into the company's performance.

To effectively fulfill her duties, Natalie requires tools that offer real-time financial insights for accurate reporting and decision-making. She also needs integrated financial and operational data to gain a holistic view of business performance, scalable financial management to support operations across multiple locations seamlessly, and automated tools for compliance and tax reporting to minimize manual labor.

However, she faces challenges such as delayed strategic decisions caused by inadequate financial visibility, limited scalability which results in bottlenecks, time-consuming and error-prone consolidation processes, and a lack of real-time performance insights.

By utilizing SAP Cloud Public Edition tailored for retail, Natalie can benefit significantly. SAP provides agile, real-time management with personalized dashboards, reports, and key performance indicators, enabling faster financial closings and smoother group reporting. Moreover, predictive analytics in SAP help with better cash flow management, budgeting, and profitability forecasting. Additionally, SAP's flexible, cloud-based financial management solutions scale with business growth and support omnichannel operations, overcoming previous limitations and driving efficiency in financial operations.

(Example of a unified view of financial performance by product and merchandise category)

Takeaways

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business offers significant benefits for retailers of small and medium sizes. This user-friendly software delivers a clear return on investment by providing ready-to-use industry best practices. It enables cost-effective implementations and minimal capital investments, supporting retailers' growth objectives. The state-of-the-art Software-as-a-Service model ensures a seamless cloud experience with the convenience of a fully managed solution and easy onboarding, allowing retailers to focus on their core business activities and customer satisfaction.

Further Reading

A great solution experience is SAP's innovative S.Mart Store in Walldorf! This cutting-edge shopping destination is redefining retail with the powerful combination of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business solutions, along with additional SAP and partner technologies. Check out this blog to learn more about it: S.Mart Store in Walldorf, it delivers an innovating shopping experience

You are SAP Partner and interested in more information?

‼️SAP partners can discover valuable information on this dedicated SAP Partner Page: Explore SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion, and vertical business.
‼️The four personas I presented to you are integral to this Interactive Value Journey. Please enter to view the complete E2E offline demo.