Archives August 2020

Quite apart from the wider world itself going continuously 24×7 in the face of globalisation and ubiquitous interconnectivity, the software world has adopted more defined approaches to continuous methodologies over the last decade.

Key among the continuous continuum is Continuous Deployment (CD), Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Testing (CT). 

Continuous Testing (CT) aka ‘shift-left testing’ is the practice of post-production testing carried out by developers and operations teams in order to uncover performance issues associated with applications (and data systems) that may arise due to a) unplanned user behaviours b) unplanned data-flows and system demands c) other unplanned (unforeseen would be a better term) elements of software performance.

With its fairly meaty total software stack, SAP has of course been using various continuous approaches for some years.

This year sees the German softwarehaus up its continuous play by forming a stronger integration with Tricentis, a Continuous Testing (and, crucially, an Automated Testing) specialist.

SAP will re-sell Tricentis testing solutions as SAP Solution Extensions. 

The partnership also includes an OEM agreement in which Tricentis’ core model-based test automation capability will be embedded in SAP Enterprise Support  to offer automated testing in SAP Solution Manager and SAP Cloud ALM.

As the volume and velocity of SAP updates have increased in recent years, customers are finding their traditional testing methods require significant manual effort and can be a challenge to deploy in a timely manner. 

With a next-generation continuous testing platform, businesses using SAP solutions can unleash the full power of the intelligent enterprise,” said Sandeep Johri, Tricentis CEO. “Tricentis is partnering with SAP to help customers keep up with the rapidly increasing pace of SAP releases. With this partnership, customers can turbocharge their SAP releases with a modern, continuous testing platform that helps to eliminate testing approaches that are not only slow and costly, but ultimately ineffective.

SAP plans to introduce the following new software elements:

• SAP Change Impact Analysis by Tricentis – For AI-powered impact analysis that identifies potential risk to business processes after an SAP software update. 
• SAP Enterprise Continuous Testing by Tricentis – Automates around 90% of a customer’s end-to-end business process tests – spanning SAP and third party tests.
• SAP Load Testing by Tricentis – To optimise the SAP user experience with scalable, on-demand performance testing for SAP Fiori® and modern cloud applications.

SAP’s next generation Service Parts Management

SAP has a long and strong journey into the automotive aftermarket industry showing that it is an important market segment. Innovation within the SAP service parts planning (SPP) solution has been ongoing for decades and product development was tightly done in cooperation and collaboratively with several of the larger automotive OEMs companies in the Automotive Aftermarket.  In 2018 it was decided to bring  Service Parts Planning Solution into S/4HANA as part of the core Digital Supply Chain solutions to enable the Intelligent Enterprise Suite based on S/4HANA

Now, we are happy to announce that SAP S/4HANA Supply Chain for extended Service Parts Planning – one major pillar for service parts management solutions – will be launched as part of SAP S/4HANA 2020. The availability of the Service Parts Planning in S/4HANA means a supply chain planning offer for companies that distribute large volumes of aftermarket service parts to numerous stocking locations, and, at the same time, it natively integrates with demand captured, order management and execution processes making Service Parts Management an end to end solution.

The core areas of Service Parts Management sit on the intelligent suite, interoperating with SAP’s Industry Cloud access to vertical solutions that leverage SAP Cloud Platform supporting customers to accelerate business operations while balancing cost efficiencies with advanced technologies. Additionally SAP Service Parts Management has the possibility to leverage access to the Unified Business Network extending business processes beyond the core business, facilitating the seamless exchange of data and insights across businesses and geographies to drive greater levels of collaboration and agility with suppliers.

Finally, being in SAP S4/HANA allows Service Parts Management to benefit from SAP S/4HANA business technology platform main path of innovation with a simpler architecture and eliminating master data redundancy.

Therefore, SAP’s next generation Service Parts Management leverages business processes applications and technology making available to the aftermarket players an enterprise-wide functionality covering end to end processes in an innovative platform.

The SAP solution portfolio evolved immensely from the introduction of financial accounting (RF) and inventory verification and management (RM) in 1975. From R/2 evolving into R/4, Business Suite and now SAP S/4HANA, the software evolved to fit different business models supported by end-to-end processes and best practices.

Specific Portfolios are offered already to different industries – see the automotive example – covering end-to-end processes with cross-digital integrated capabilities.  SAP announced one more step supporting industries by announcing the Industry Cloud. This is an innovation space for SAP, partners and customers to provide both industry cloud solutions and applications that complement the intelligent suite using the Business Technology Platform.

SAP Hana XSA enables different deployments in one single Hana database. However, companies have to consider various security guidelines to ensure diligent access management.

With Hana 1.0 SPS11, SAP Hana Extended Application Services, Advanced Model (SAP Hana XSA) was introduced. This model is based on a microservices approach and enables the modulization of software development.

Hana XSA makes different deployments (separated development environments) in one single Hana database possible. Every application operates in a separate container and in its own environment, meaning that problems in one application do not affect the others.

Companies have to consider various security guidelines to ensure diligent access management. SAP Hana XSA Cockpit orchestrates the solution, managing users, access and security configurations (e.g. tenants or SAML identity providers).

How SAP Hana XSA works

The basic structure of SAP Hana XSA consists of organizations and spaces. In spaces, users can develop applications. Organizations are containers meant to structure the spaces. Developers operate in spaces. After the user master data have been created, developers are assigned spaces and access rights. There are three types of roles: Space Manager (space management as wells as evaluating applications); Space Developer (implementing, activating and deactivating of applications, matching applications to services); and Space Auditor (evaluation of applications and role management).

Regarding organizations, the role Organization Manager enables user management and maintaining the spaces in an organization.

Any changes of organizations or spaces are recorded in trace files on the operating system that can be analyzed with e.g. Hana Database Explorer.

The central development platform for SAPUI5 applications is SAP WebIDE (integrated development environment). It supports various programming languages like Java, Java Script, SAPUI5 HTML5, Node.js and more. WebIDE can be used for on-prem applications (Hana XSA) and as central development application for SAP Cloud Platform (Cloud Foundry).

To leverage WebIDE, developers have to be assigned corresponding access rights in SAP Hana XSA. Two standard templates already exist for this purpose: WebIDE Developer and WebIDE Administrator. To authorize users for application development, a role has to be created from the template WebIDE Developer.

The US government is urging SAP customers to patch a critical vulnerability published earlier this week, which could affect as many as 40,000 customers. 

Released as part of the software giant’s July patch update round,it affects the SAP NetWeaver Application Server (AS) Java component LM Configuration Wizard.

According to an alert from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the bug is introduced thanks to a lack of authentication in the component.

“If successfully exploited, a remote, unauthenticated attacker can obtain unrestricted access to SAP systems through the creation of high-privileged users and the execution of arbitrary operating system commands with the privileges of the SAP service user account (adm), which has unrestricted access to the SAP database and is able to perform application maintenance activities, such as shutting down federated SAP applications,” it explained.

“The confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data and processes hosted by the SAP application are at risk by this vulnerability.”

As SAP NetWeaver AS Java supports a large range of SAP applications, the potential impact is severe. These include: SAP Enterprise Resource Planning, Product Lifecycle Management, Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, Supplier Relationship Management, NetWeaver Business Warehouse, Business Intelligence, NetWeaver Mobile Infrastructure, Enterprise Portal, Process Orchestration/Process Integration, Solution Manager, NetWeaver Development Infrastructure, Central Process Scheduling, NetWeaver Composition Environment, and Landscape Manager.

Onapsis Research Labs, which discovered the vulnerability, named it RECON and warned that the CVSS 10.0 bug could affect more than 40,000 global SAP customers. It could allow remote attackers to steal PII from employees, customers and suppliers, delete or modify financial records, change banking details, disrupt operations and much more, the vendor claimed. “The business impact of a potential exploit targeting RECON could be financial loss, compliance violations and reputation damage for the organization experiencing a cyber-attack,” it added.

The buzz around SAP Data Hub has quieted down significantly since it was first announced. Why is that?

Some time ago, someone advised me to stop focusing so much on SAP Data Hub. When former SAP executive Franz Faerber first presented the idea during a Sapphire Now Conference in Orlando,  for the possibilities that Data Hub promised. The core idea: Customers wouldn’t have to move their data anymore, ever. The data itself is not moved but stays in silos. If an app needs to access the data stored in a different app, there’s no copy and paste, but a reference to the other app instead. Meanwhile, the app requesting the data ‘feels’ like it has stored it itself.

For this system to work, the app storing the data has to take care of data processing and structuring for the app requesting the data, since the information itself cannot be moved. The requesting app will suffer no consequences, but the storing app could. If users request too much data, workload increases drastically, and the app’s server uses its resources solely on requests.

No luck with SAP Data Hub

SAP Data Hub has a great underlying concept, but SAP missed by a mile on its execution. A server that does nothing all day but fielding and complying with data access requests from apps and systems soon becomes worthless. Nobody knows how many resources the core concept of SAP Data Hub would require in practice. On paper, the concept is brilliant, but in reality, it becomes unmanageable.

SAP therefore still has a lot of work to do before it will have completely harmonized and consolidated the data complexity in ERP systems, in the cloud and on prem.

SAP Data Hub is a data sharing, pipelining, and orchestration solution that helps companies accelerate and expand the flow of data across their modern, diverse data landscapes.

SAP Data Hub provides visibility and access to a broad range of data systems and assets; allows the easy and fast creation of powerful, organization-spanning data pipelines; and optimizes data pipeline execution speed with a “push-down” distributed processing approach at each step.

SAP Data Hub meets the governance and security needs of the enterprise, ensuring that appropriate policy measures are in place to meet regulatory and corporate requirements.

SAP Data Hub accelerates and expands your data projects by easily and quickly creating powerful data pipelines in a single, visual design environment

In a single design environment, data stewards can easily and quickly create powerful data pipelines that access, harmonize, transform, process, and move information from a variety of sources across the organization. Pipeline creators can easily activate powerful libraries for computation or machine learning, for example; rapidly connect data of a wide variety of types, such as social media, customer, and product information; and leverage existing processing investments, such as capabilities in SAP HANA, Apache Hadoop, SAP Vora, or Apache Spark. Pipeline models can be easily copied, modified, and re-used to accelerate pipeline deployment and leverage best practices.

The Harvard Business Review ran an article in 1990 by management consultant and former Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer science professor Michael Hammer titled “Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate.” Hammer, recognized as the seminal theorist of reengineering, the consultant-driven discipline of streamlining work processes, encouraged businesses to radically restructure rather than rely on information technology to automate work.

This proved impossible. While the 1990s is now viewed as an epoch of business reengineering, the revamp of work processes advanced hand in hand with the rise of centralized corporate IT, enabled by enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

The 2020s, on the other hand, appear poised for the final takedown of monolithic business IT in response to a new revolution in work processes spurred and enabled by digitization. IT managers in the chemical industry, among the first industries to opt for ERP systems, are preparing for a new wave of change in business management software.

To understand the likely changes ahead, it helps to look back at the provenance and evolution of IT systems currently in operation at most chemical companies.

The computing infrastructures that emerged some 30 years ago supported efficiency gains, the kind also targeted by business reengineering. But ERP software installations also caused years-long headaches for many companies as they converted from hodgepodge mixes of software to monolithic IT systems covering most financial aspects of business and plant operations.

During this period, SAP, a German software firm started by former IBM engineers, rose to prominence in ERP. Starting with its first customer, the UK’s Imperial Chemical Industries, SAP swept the chemical sector. By the early 2000s, many major companies had lashed their operations to the firm’s R/3 software.

By today’s standards, the IT platforms of the early 21st century are museum pieces. Cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data have fundamentally changed IT and the workplace.

SAP and other major vendors of ERP software, including Oracle and JD Edwards, have introduced successive generations of their products over the years that chip away at the monolithic, comparatively lethargic control of early IT architectures. In the process, a modular approach to IT has emerged in which specialized software for specific work functions can be added to a centralized, often multivendor network of business management software with an ERP system at the core.

“Enterprise resource planning has evolved far beyond its original purpose and scope,” the consulting firm Gartner writes in a report issued last year. “It now represents different things to different organizations, but in all cases is no longer focused on ‘resources’ or ‘planning.’ ” The view is echoed by Forrester, another consulting firm, in a recent report: “Today, we see the beginning of a new era of operational systems that are so different that calling them ERP no longer makes sense.”

Guay notes that ERP vendors have partnered with and acquired specialized software providers to offer hybrid networks. SAP, for example, acquired SuccessFactors, a cloud-based human resources management services provider, and now offers the service as an adjunct to its core software.

What does a move to SAP HANA mean for your infrastructure?

SAP’s HANA database and business applications offer a powerful path to increased efficiency and better business intelligence, but SAP’s software products are only part of the solution. Your SAP environment is built on top of a ‘core set’. Or another way of saying it, your SAP environment is your ‘new home build’, and the core set is “the foundations for the new home”. Consequently, to get the best out of your transition to SAP HANA, you must prepare a versatile, well-integrated infrastructure that includes operating systems, virtualisation, orchestration, and management components.

The starting point for your SAP core infrastructure is Linux because SAP HANA only runs on Linux. Choose an open-source vendor with a proven track record for great SAP support and take a close look at the surrounding landscape. You need an infrastructure that supports the full range of SAP applications and SAP HANA features and leaves room for future expansion and evolution.

When you build out your core infrastructure, particularly for SAP HANA, look for a solution that addresses these critical needs:

• Software-defined Infrastructure
• Lifecycle Management
• High Availability
• Advanced Data Tools
• Automation
• Strong Affinity with SAP

Software-Defined Infrastructure

The SAP business suite is designed to adapt to changes within your organisation. SAP applications work best in a self-managing, self-healing environment that minimises manual intervention.

Software-defined infrastructure (SDI) is a collection of technologies emphasising the fluidity of the software environment. The goal is a system where the software operates independently of the hardware, adapting to changing conditions with the minimal human touch.

Another goal of SDI is to reduce system downtime; service interruptions can cause missed opportunities and data loss issues. SAP designs many of their tools for continuous operation. You should design your core infrastructure for the fluidity and uptime emphasis embodied in SDI.

Lifecycle Management

Using a single, integrated tool can simplify managing the full lifecycle of applications, from testing, deployment, configuration, and upgrade. SAP provides the product lifecycle management (PLM) tool for managing the lifecycle of SAP applications and components. Select a solution that applies the same lifecycle philosophy to your core infrastructure. Automating infrastructure management minimises overhead, maximises control, and can help ensure audit-ready compliance for SAP systems. Look for lifecycle management tools that can embrace your entire enterprise Linux fleet.

High Availability

Downtime can mean lost revenue and productivity. SAP applications are designed for continuous operation, but built-in high availability features won’t help if the infrastructure doesn’t offer similar protection. A well-designed core infrastructure integrates SAP HANA failover and recovery capabilities with co-designed OS-level high availability tools.

This support should include early recognition for primary system failures, automated switching from primary to secondary systems, and features that support upgrades – even for complex clusters.

Advanced Data Tools

The primary purpose of the SAP business application suite is to collect, manage and analyse data to generate insights. The operating system at the foundation of your core infrastructure must be purpose-designed to support the large-memory operations of SAP HANA and to protect, secure and manage your data as it resides on various tiers of storage.

Many SAP HANA environments can benefit from persistent memory solutions. Standard RAM is volatile – data and can be lost on power outage or system reboot. When SAP HANA starts, it copies database contents from persistent storage, which can take hours for large databases. Persistent memory can massively speed the time for SAP HANA to return to full service. Be sure your core infrastructure supports non-volatile memory solutions validated by SAP.

Automation

The complexity of modern systems, the drive to optimise IT budgets and the desire for systematic security demands the automation of routine tasks so that systems administrators can focus on exceptions and on new service delivery.  SAP designs its business applications to promote continuous operation and reduce administration time. Organisations can realise the administration savings associated with this automation emphasis if the underlying system also reflects this self-management paradigm. Look for a solution with advanced automation capabilities. This has the added benefit of enabling you to redirect your highly skilled IT staff to focus on new service delivery rather than routine maintenance.

SAP Affinity

As you consider a solution for your SAP core infrastructure, be aware of the difference between:

• Passive support: a general state of compatibility.
• Active support: an ongoing state of preparation and readiness

Is the system optimised for SAP workloads, quickly reconfigurable for different roles, with best practices applied automatically? Are tools available to reduce deployment expense? Does the vendor provide SAP specific packages and cloud images for easier migration and upgrades? Does the vendor offer transition support and extended-time support services? Do they have a proven history of success supporting SAP customers – and co-designing for the future with SAP?

Enterprise software major SAP has launched a new programme called “Global Bharat” to enable Indian micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) become globally competitive by equipping them with digital technologies.

The programme is aimed at driving greater efficiencies of MSMEs by adopting three initiatives — gaining access to global marketplace, digitally skilling workforce and digitally transforming businesses.

The impact of pandemic on the economy and businesses has been felt majorly by MSMEs across the country. Being a potential contributor to India’s GDP (29 per cent) and providing employment to over 111 million people, it is imperative to strengthen the sector for the revival of the country’s economy,” Deb Deep Sengupta, President and Managing Director, SAP Indian Subcontinent, said in a statement.

First, as a result of the programme, MSMEs will have open access to SAP Ariba Discovery where any buyer can post sourcing needs and any of the four million suppliers on Ariba Network can respond with their ability to deliver the goods and services required with no fees through December 31, 2020.

Ariba Network is a digital business-to-business marketplace where more than $3.3 trillion in global commerce flows annually. By accessing the SAP Ariba Discovery offer, Indian MSMEs can enroll themselves as suppliers and access a global customer market.

Secondly, business owners will have access to SAP India’s Code Unnati, a coveted “Golden Peacock Award” winning digital skilling initiative.

MSMEs will be provided accessibility to 240 courses, with more getting added in a few months, on digital financial, soft skills, productivity technologies that will digitally skill the workforce and adapt to the new working environments.

The curated courses will be made available through a mobile application for people to access via their android smartphone devices, SAP India said.

Thirdly, the Global Bharat initiative also brings affordable and accessible enterprise technology for MSMEs.

The programme was launched in association with Nasscom Foundation, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Pratham InfoTech Foundation.

New SAP solutions are mostly built on containers. Does this make sense, and what are some common use cases associated with container technology?

Adopting new technologies follows the same pattern in all companies. A group of evangelists see the new technology as the ultimate answer to every problem, conservatives see some potential with many downsides. The developers have to live with the unintended consequences.

For a few years now, new SAP solutions have mostly been built on container technology. The goal of this article is to look at use cases and what could go wrong.

Containers

A container feels like a small-scale Linux operating system with an application installed. Such a container is delivered as a file image and runs on a host computer as a virtual server. In contrast to VMware-like virtual machines – where even the operating system itself is part of the image – the container’s operating system is just redirecting the system calls to the host computer.

As a result, the application performance inside a container is identical compared to installing the application directly on the host computer, which is not true for virtual machines.

Rule #1: Do not install software, deploy containers

One view of containers could be that it is a very convenient way of installing software. It is a matter of seconds. The command “docker pull imagename:latest” installs the software, the command “docker run imagename” starts it. Way simpler than running a custom installer, where you have to wait half an hour for it to complete the task, and then wonder why the installation worked on one server but not the other. Everybody who installed a larger software package can relate, I assume.

Example: To install Hana, a command line tool exists, but also a docker image. With the command line tool, the prerequisites of the server need to be met, the installation allows for many different options and takes 30 minutes. In contrast, the docker image just works.

Rule #2: No configuration information in the container

One consequence of the aforementioned instances is that all configurations need to be done at container start. The container image itself is user and customer agnostic. The concept of containers goes even further than that: it always starts with the same image files. In other words, all changes made within the running image are lost as soon as the image is shut down.

Example: The container image is a webserver, the webserver writes logs and when the image is shut down, all created log files cease to exist. That is the reason why a Hana image asks to create a directory on the host server and mounts the directory into the image at the start. When Hana creates the database and the tables, it writes into the same directory within the image as before, but because it is mounted, the changes are actually made in the host file system.

Rule #3: Isolation

An important aspect of containers is the intrinsic security this model provides. Everything a container should do is either inside the container itself or done by calling other network services.

All containers work 100 percent independently from each other; they do not even know of each other. An SQL application container can execute a select statement against a Hana database and this database might be another container. It should never use low-level calls to bypass the container isolation.

Rule #4: Container size

One important break point to watch out for is the container size. An increasing size of a container has multiple negative side effects.

There is security: The more services a single container exposes, the larger its attack surface becomes. A container should expose a single service only, if possible.

Examples: A webserver container exposes one network port. The Hana container should only expose the SQL port.

Summary

Concerning containers, I seem to be more on the evangelist side. Yes, containers should be used for every service because at least the installation is much easier – if nothing else. They have no performance downside, are easier to manage and upgrade. However, as shown, there are some things that can go wrong during the implementation.

Digitalization poses new challenges. To avoid pitfalls, companies need a structured approach. This is also true for S/4 Hana implementations as digital core, and a business transformation roadmap is indispensable for any migration.

Companies are currently dealing with one of the biggest challenges of the digital age: digitalizing all their business processes. Furthermore, they have to start leveraging new technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics or robotic process automation. Without them, the implementation of new, digital business models becomes impossible.

With S/4 Hana, SAP offers customers a stable core which, combined with SAP Cloud Platform, improves agility as well. This guarantees seamless integration and the possibility to leverage new technologies, resulting in a number of benefits, e.g. reduced maintenance or upgrade efforts.

Consequently, many companies are currently looking into the implementation of S/4 Hana, according to a study by Arvato Systems and Pierre Audoin Consultants. 9 percent of respondents are currently implementing S/4, 18 percent are planning the switch and 54 percent are at least thinking about it.

Transformation roadmap indispensable

After these evaluations, an SAP business transformation roadmap becomes indispensable. It serves as a guide on how to best align business requirements with technological possibilities.

Competent and knowledgeable consultants or partners are able to assist in this process. They can make estimates about the costs of S/4 transformations, which is a problem that 46 percent of respondents weren’t able to tackle on their own. Additionally, partners offer know-how and experience that 32 of respondents were lacking.

Working closely with companies, consultants and partners create the necessary roadmap. Process optimization is one key focus area where partners can draw upon their experiences with best practice solutions in the industry. Moreover, they ensure focus on new technologies and innovation. The transformation roadmap consists of different clearly defined stages, making it easier for companies to complete them.

Companies can start with assessing end-to-end processes in single departments, be it finance, marketing, sales or purchasing, and work their way up to vertical processes connecting different departments and focus areas. They then know which backend processes can be optimized for more agility and scalability.

Digital innovation at the forefront

Future-proofing processes means to evaluate how new technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, the Internet of Things, predictive analytics or robotic process automation can benefit companies. During these evaluations, it’ll quickly become clear that all of these innovations only really make a difference when companies combine them in a way that aligns with business strategy and long-term goals.

With SAP Cloud Platform, SAP offers a solution that combines these intelligent technologies and offers necessary integration services. SCP’s Accelerator packages are specifically designed for different industries and core functionalities and accelerate the implementation of digital innovations.

Roadmaps have to be accompanied by creating, testing and eventually implementing prototypes. By implementing prototypes, digital transformation becomes visible, which makes it easier to convince even the most hardcore sceptics of the importance of digitalization.

Prototypes also help assess the digital maturity of processes, the user friendliness of the system interface, and the feasibility of interfaces. The results and experiences gained in tests make it easier to identify existing challenges. Prototyping is proof of how the integration of new processes is likely to go and consequently minimizes the risks associated with the actual implementation later on.

With a comprehensive business transformation roadmap, companies can close the gap between what their SAP environment is and what they would like it to be. Technology acts as an enabler to effectively and efficiently realize digital business models.