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SAP offers a variety of software packages for enterprise technologists, much of it in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) space. Many large companies demand that their developers have at least some familiarity with SAP’s software. That means SAP training is essential.

A quick breakdown via Burning Glass, which collects and analyzes millions of job postings from across the country, shows that a hefty percentage of technologist jobs, including software developer, database architect, and systems analyst, request some combination of SAP-related skills.

Fortunately, there’s a lot of documentation and training material out there, thanks to SAP’s 400,000 customers worldwide and the accompanying need for information. If you’re in the market for SAP training, you can pretty much find anything on the company’s analytics, warehouse management, Cloud, and HANA modules. 

For Tim Webb, managing director of enterprise technology services at Robert Half Technology, learning SAP is a way to enter into a long, diverse career with a technology deeply embedded in some of the world’s biggest companies. Here are some of his tips about SAP training. 

What companies use SAP? 

Because of the cost and complexity of SAP, it’s typically only used by larger corporations—those in the $1 billion (and over) revenue bracket. For people looking to develop a skillset within SAP, that means they’ll most likely end up utilizing those skills within a large, enterprise-style environment. While that’s great for some people who enjoy working within huge teams (which, hopefully, have large budgets to match), it’s not necessary for everyone, especially those used to fast-paced startups. 

It’s also important to recognize that, given how SAP software is usually embedded deeply within an enterprise, any technologist specializing in it will likely need good “soft skills” such as collaboration and communication. That’s because the outputs and inputs of SAP platforms are often shared among multiple teams, with lots of collaborating (and competing) stakeholders.

Why should someone learn SAP skills?

Overall, experience with SAP gives you an worthwhile and in-demand toolset that you can leverage to build your career. Webb noted that SAP careers can be great springboards to more general management roles such as functional data consolidation manager, director of material management or a functional/logistics manager. 

“There’s a lot of different ways and areas in which you can get into SAP, depending on where someone wants to be,” he said. “It’s such a wide array of roles and responsibilities that come out of SAP, there’s a position within that frameworks for almost any technology skill set.” 

What is SAP training used for?

“In the enterprise resources market, it’s a great technology, one that’s been around for years, and companies aren’t going to move away from it,” Webb said. “Businesses are looking to more cloud-based solutions, and knowing SAP offers individuals that next career opportunity within IT.”

That’s partly because knowing SAP is a cross-functional skill; its modules and packages touch on everything from data analytics to project management, including:

• ERP and Finance
• Digital Supply Chain
• CRM and Customer Experience
• HR and People Engagement
• Network and Spend Management
• Business Technology Platform (data and analytics)

SAP training will not only allow technologists to work on projects within organizations, but, if they have an eye on ascending into management, the technology itself will give them key insights into what’s driving a particular business. That will come in useful if you apply for an executive role and show that you have a holistic sense of what a company actually needs. 

Migrating your existing ERP system to S/4 Hana is not a trivial task. S/4 Hana requires significant technical redesign and complex conversion that can take a lot of your time, resources, and money.

S/4 Hana offers three deployment options: cloud, on-premises and hybrid. Whether you are migrating an existing ERP solution or creating a new one from scratch, you have to choose the deployment option based on your business needs, budget, and resources. This article compares two out of the three options: cloud and on premises.

What is SAP S/4 Hana?

SAP S/4 Hana is an (ERP) business suite based on the Hana database. SAP S/4 Hana Cloud enables companies to analyze business data in real-time and perform transactions.

S/4 Hana was released in February 2015 as a successor to Business Suite. S/4 is designed to simplify administration by processing large amounts of data. The ERP system is available in the cloud and on premises, including hybrid deployment models. If you want to run SAP on Azure, AWS, or GCP, managed services are available. There is also a managed service available directly from SAP.

S/4 Hana in the cloud

Cloud environments enable companies to use high-performance computing that covers their core business strategies, while providing flexibility, and fast upgrade cycles. The light and flexible database platform of S/4 Hana is suitable for middle size businesses interested in growing at scale. 

S/4 Hana on premises

On-premises S/4 is suitable for large enterprises with proven business processes. The system is located on a local server to enable more effective monitoring and configuration workflows than in the cloud. SAP 4 Hana technology in cloud.

S/4 Hana with a hybrid model

A hybrid model is suitable for companies interested in quickly transforming their business while avoiding setup costs. A hybrid model combines both cloud and on-premises versions. The on-prem version stores data and applications on the organization’s hardware. The cloud version enables you to make changes to the system and adopt new opportunities without additional advance charges.

Infrastructure and maintenance

On-premises S/4 Hana deployment requires companies to invest in their own database, hardware, and networks. Companies also need to have dedicated IT teams to maintain on-premises infrastructure. The initial deployment of on-premises S/4 may be expensive, but you will have more control over costs later. Furthermore, you do not need to immediately rebuild the entire system every time there is a new upgrade. You can upgrade at your own pace.

Cloud deployments of SAP are responsible for the entire infrastructure, including maintenance. You do not need to invest in your own databases or IT staff. Cloud SAP systems are upgraded automatically every quarter. You will always have the latest version of the software. However, you do not have control over the system since it is entirely managed by a third-party solution. Here is an example of SAP S/4 Hana Cloud Or On-Premises. Which one is right for us? SAP S/4 Hana Cloud Or On-Premises. This is an example of SAP HANA technology in Cloud.

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

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).

In user management, admins can create new accounts or convert existing Hana users to XSA users. Access is granted by so-called role collections. For example, for user management the role collection XS User Admin is necessary, and for role management users need the role collection XS Authorization Admin. For viewing only, standard role collections XS Authorization Display and XS User Display are available. Accountability is guaranteed by Hana’s auditing. It is a Total new thing in the SAP HANA method.

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. Protection Rule in SAP Education

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. Here is Protection Rule in SAP Education

To implement access rights in customized solutions, companies have to define their own rules. They can also integrate actions into customized solutions that can be recorded using Hana’s auditing (category application auditing).

Using the new SAP MaxAttention Analytics and Data Management portfolio, SAP Premium Engagement customers can now experience X+O Analytics Consulting services to further enhance their organisation’s business improvement process. The brand new offering aims to empower customers to drive innovation by providing authoritative guidance in leveraging the combined power of X-data (experience data) and O-data (operational data) with SAP analytics technology.

Ever since the acquisition of leading experience management company by SAP in 2018, the global solutions provider has been encouraging and educating customers and prospects all over the world on the importance of bringing O-data together with X-data in transforming customer engagement and driving business goals. Combining these two sets of data eliminates what Qualtrics calls an “experience gap”—the disconnect between how a company perceives its product and/or service performance and how customers actually feel about it.

X+O Analytics: An Integral Part of Business Improvement Process

SAP has been the leader in helping companies gather O-data from enterprise applications in managing their businesses. O-data is data a type of strategic data collected from day-to-day operations that include internal control and operational environment information such as:

• customer information (the number of new or lost customers, the number of website visitors)
• workforce information (employee attrition, employee promotion history, and employee performance rating)
• financial information (sales figures, profitability)
• inventory turnover
• information on direct competitors

Obtaining these data is the first step to understanding the experiences of customers. The second step is gathering X-data which is the customer’s “side” of the story. In a blog post, Karthik Thirumalai, Vice President of Analytics and Insight Services at SAP Customer Success, explains the importance of this next step in designing a company’s business improvement process.

With the latest X+O Analytics Consulting service from the SAP MaxAttention team, SAP Premium Engagement customers will be able to successfully develop an X+O Analytics capability that seamlessly integrates into their existing SAP analytics landscape. SAP MaxAttention experts will help in efficiently gathering O-data from SAP information systems to compare against and combine with the outcomes of X-data tracking. 

The standardised specialist service will be delivered in a phased manner across SAP MaxAttention’s Prepare, Discover, Design and Deliver phases, according to Thirumalai. Furthermore, the X+O Analytics service also has touchpoints with other SAP services like the Quick Start Service for Experience Management Solutions that help develop and validate an Experience Management (XM) program strategy.

In the UK, ISG’s research found that the majority of service providers have been able to support their clients during the coronavirus pandemic by enforcing business continuity plans and finding ways to deliver essential services. But ISG said there was minimal or negative growth in the UK for SAP S/4 Hana, specifically among large accounts. It predicted that more organisations will be looking to implement S/4 Hana Cloud.

Given that cost reduction will be a primary enterprise focus, ISG said it expected the service providers that offer competitive pricing (at less cost) or an innovative pricing model (such as consumption-based) will have an extra edge over their competitors. According to the ISG report, managed services will increase for SAP applications because the client enterprises will want to optimise their cost model and service delivery efficiency for managing their SAP architecture.

Negotiate outcome-based pricing

In the report, ISG predicted that as enterprises navigate through the uncertainty of the pandemic and brace for alignment across regulations defined for Brexit completion, they will demand different types of outcome-based pricing and services from their service providers. Some of the pricing models explored are consumption-based, gain-sharing, risk-sharing and shared fixed reward, where a fixed fee amount is decided by both the provider and the client. Any delay in execution results in a reduced fee, while any increase in execution cost will add to it.

According to ISG, service providers will continue to focus on meeting their employees’ remote working needs to ensure business continuity, which will mean the use of data analytics for faster and efficient decision-making.

Improve productivity with service provider AI

Assessing the SAP S/4 Hana service providers’ market, ISG found that service providers were relying on tools that use bots, automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to deliver application management services. These bots are generally used for managing repetitive tasks and repeatable business processes, as well as fixing the more straightforward user support queries.

ISG found that the AI and ML deployed by SAP service providers was being used to resolve tickets automatically, learn from tasks in the IT landscape, predict application failures and perform fixes as required. The report’s authors found that most providers have holistic application management frameworks that enable better productivity, throughput, quality and reliability. 

Wait for improved integration

SAP has recognised that customers will face challenges and costs when they upgrade to S/4 Hana. It has set out a roadmap to simplify integration, in a bid to lower the transition cost of moving from ECC to the S/4 platform.

Until 2025, SAP customers have to migrate to S/4 Hana. There’s an easy way to integrate customer and vendor master data, saving time and money.

S/4 Hana is SAP’s new business software suite with real-time ERP based on in-memory database Hana. The ‘S’ stands for simple; simple pertaining both to a simpler data model and better usability, but not pertaining to the implementation!

Simple or not, customers have to implement S/4 Hana sooner or later. SAP announced sunset support for ECC 6.0, and if customers want to stay competitive after 2025, they will have to migrate to the new software generation.

There are different answers to when and how, but everyone can agree on one thing: The implementation of S/4 Hana is not going to be simple. It will take a lot of time and effort to make it work. Switching to S/4 Hana is more than an upgrade or a database migration – it affects the entire corporate IT landscape.

How to get to S/4 Hana

It’s nothing new that two main roads lead to S/4 Hana, better known as greenfield and brownfield.

Greenfield means starting from scratch – planning entirely new business processes and only keeping the data. Brownfield means optimizing existing processes and data to retrofit them for S/4 Hana.

Whether companies decide on greenfield or brownfield, the quality of master data is important. Ideally, the standardization and harmonization of master data is part of the new process design.

Opting for a brownfield approach usually means arriving at S/4 Hana faster, since existing processes are transferred to the new system. However, brownfield migrations require high master data quality. There are also some typical pitfalls regarding customer-vendor integration or customized analysis.

Master data management in S/4 Hana

For example, Company Y is both customer and vendor to Company X. Up until now, Company X had to create two different data sets for Company Y. In S/4 Hana, however, Company Y is simply a business partner but with two roles: customer and vendor. While assigning different roles, companies only have to manage one set of master data.

Consequently, the two different data sets in the legacy SAP systems have to become one in S/4 Hana. Technologically speaking, this is an effort not to be underestimated. However, there are already solutions on the market (like ZetVisions SPoT) that can reduce that effort significantly.

These solutions have one major benefit: customers can enjoy the best of both worlds. Customers can create one master data set for their business partner with the solution while still being able to work with the traditional classifications of the ERP system. Companies therefore optimize their master data before migrating to S/4 Hana, saving time and money in the process.

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.