Agile SAP seemingly offers opportunities for further improving quality, reducing costs, and speeding up the delivery of SAP – be it new stuff, changes or fixes. Agile SAP however still often is regarded a contradiction in terms. That in a nutshell summarizes the outcome of the first Dutch Round Table on Agile SAP, Utrecht (NL).
Answers to the13 most pressing questions about S/4HANA
SAP S/4HANA is architected solely for the Hana in-memory platform, which will impact investment plans, strategy, and road maps for all existing SAP Business Suite users. What is S/4HANA anyway? Here’s answers to the13 most pressing questions.
Agile SAP introduction
The successful Round Table on Agile SAP on March 4, 2015, kicked off with this quick introduction of the concept. The discussion centered around transitioning to Agile, which was perceived as complicated by most participants. Agile Transition therefore will be on the agenda of the next (Dutch) Round Table in September 2015
The SAP CCoE turned 18 – has it come of age?
The SAP Customer Centre of Expertise (CCoE) as an integral equation. The key note presentation must have brought back quite some high-school memories for many of the SAP CCoE Info Forum participants gathered in Frankfurt, Germany, from November 19th until 21st, 2014. This event was organized for the 18th time and the question that pops up is: has the SAP CCoE concept come of age? Continue reading “The SAP CCoE turned 18 – has it come of age?”
What do you get if you mix SAP with Agile and Lean IT…?
How to organize IT beyond 2014?
SAP Release Strategy 2014+
The new online version of the SAP Release Strategy is now available in SAP Support Portal and is of particular relevance if you are faced with one of the following questions:
• How can I plan SAP implementation and upgrade projects?
• How does SAP’s Product Portfolio and Strategy support my business needs?
• How is SAP standard software made available to me?
• Which maintenance strategy rules apply to SAP software products?
• How is integration assured between different software product versions?
• How does SAP’s Product Portfolio and Strategy support my business needs?
• How is SAP standard software made available to me?
• Which maintenance strategy rules apply to SAP software products?
• How is integration assured between different software product versions?
The online SAP Release Strategy provides SAP customers and partners a comprehensive view of the SAP portfolio, product strategy, release and maintenance strategy, availability dates of software product versions, as well as support and maintenance schedules.You will also find relevant information on SAP’s latest innovations, such as SAP Fiori, SAP Smart Business, the financials add-on for SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, hybris Commerce Suite, SAP HANA Live, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, SAP HANA Cloud Platform, and the SAP HANA platform and other innovations. To access the SAP release strategy, go to http://support.sap.com/release-strategy.
SAP strategy beyond 2014
SAP reinforced the two key elements of their overall strategy at SAPPHIRE NOW 2014:
1. SAP’s product strategy will be HANA centric
2. The move/push to Cloud
SAP’s mantra for customers is changing from “run better” to “run simpler” under the slogan “Simplify everything, so you can do anything”. Their formula for simplified technology is cloud + SAP HANA aided by simplifying the user experience and pricing model. Everything revolves around simplicity.
How to start the implementation of an Advanced CCoE?
Wondering what the most efficient approach is to start the implementation of an Advanced SAP Customer Center of Expertise (CCoE)?
Continue reading “How to start the implementation of an Advanced CCoE?”
Run the Business Suite on HANA, in the cloud: SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud
SAP today unveiled SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, a new deployment option for SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA. The new offering enables companies to run mission-critical SAP ERP, SAP CRM and SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse applications as a managed cloud-service on an petabyte-scale platform.
2-hours HANA Essentials training very well received!
The in-house version of ENSEAD’s 2-hours SAP HANA Essentials training has been received very well. Average score 4 out of 5 and here’s what Nick van Rossum, Managing Director of iQibt, has to say: “We asked Mendel Koerts to set up an information course for one evening around HANA for all our professionals. The information course was just the way we wanted it. Very good background information around in-memory-computing, the pro’s and cons of HANA and a preview towards the future. The course was suitable for people all kind of professionals (managerial, functional and technical) with a lot of examples. We enjoyed the training very well and recommend this to other companies who like to know more about HANA”
– Mendel
Unilever’s HANA adoption
Unilever has chosen for ‘soap’ and expects to double its turnover from €40bn to €80bn by 2020. The company readies their SAP systems by moving to HANA databases. HANA so far has already enabled Unilever to speed up the month-end close from three days to one, which is leading finance users to push for more HANA. In a proof-of-concept application, HANA enabled Unilever to reduce the time it takes to process 200 million records from 440 seconds to just 30 seconds, allowing the company to determine the cost of how much a product costs using pricing information for raw materials. Unilever’s European HANA roll-out is set to begin in January 2013. It is expected to roll-out the following HANA accelerators: Continue reading “Unilever’s HANA adoption”
Test driving SAP HANA Development – the quick and easy way
Do you want to test drive SAP HANA Development? Probably the quickest, easiest and cheapest way is to source a license-waved installation from the Cloud. Continue reading “Test driving SAP HANA Development – the quick and easy way”
Key differentiators of SAP HANA
Wondering why SAP HANA is such ground-shaking technology? What are the key advantages of SAP HANA over disk-based database solutions? Well, there are quite a few technical differences between databases that were designed to be stored on a disk versus one that was built to be entirely resident in-memory, as per the SAP HANA Essentials e-book. Here is a brief summary of some of the key advantages of SAP HANA over its disk-based cousins. Continue reading “Key differentiators of SAP HANA”
ABAP for HANA – Strategy and Roadmap
With the rise of key technology trends like Cloud, Mobile, and In-Memory you may start to wonder how these affect the good old ABAP Application Server (AS). A recently published document describes SAP’s vision, strategy, development, and commitment to enable ABAP for SAP HANA. It addresses the following questions:
- What ABAP support do customers and partners get with regard to the technology trends?
- How does the AS ABAP help to leverage the benefits of the technology trends?
- What is the impact on customer-specific developments (existing ones, new ones)?
In essence, SAP has started improving the AS ABAP in a step-by-step approach:
- Step1 – “ABAP can access SAP HANA”: ABAP-based applications can use the SAP HANA database as secondary persistence (side-by-side scenarios)
- Step 2 – “ABAP runs on SAP HANA”: ABAP-based applications can use the SAP HANA database as primary persistence (analytical use-cases)
- Step 3 – “ABAP optimized for SAP HANA”: the optimization of ABAP-based applications for the SAP HANA database is actively facilitated by the AS ABAP (transactional/hybrid use cases)
The new enhancement package to optimize ABAP for SAP HANA is planned to be available to first customers and partners by the end of 2012. Standard availability is planned for 2013. SAP intends to invest in ABAP technology beyond 2013. This means that SAP plans to continuously update the AS ABAP which might involve the deprecation of some selected functions.
– Mendel