Category: SAP ALM

Template Protection across System Landscapes

In large SAP system landscapes, there will always be inconsistency between the systems through local changes in the course of the lifecycle of SAP applications. This may stir up a lot of trouble for SAP users. SAP Solution Manager, applied professionally, can avoid this. It reduces costs and time expended on interventions – and the responsible people can put their minds at ease. The approach to a protection of SAP Templates by the use of SAP Solution Manager all across a system landscape is described in the blog “SAP Template Distribution – A One Way Street”.

But before company templates on systems in use can be protected, it will be necessary to free them from inconsistency across the different system landscapes. A really company-wide template will hate to be created, one that in fact deserves this name. Without an effective template protection, it is often the very first cross-system roll-out which is accountable for inconsistency, caused by local system changes. So before giving some thoughts to the protection of templates, a general template worth being protected needs to be created – a consistent company-wide SAP template consolidated across systems.

How to proceed

With the help of the IntelliCorp and SAP Solution Manager tools, the procedure is as follows:

First, with the help of IntelliCorp IntelliCorp LiveCompare, all systems of the SAP landscapes are examined for inconstistency in the rolled-out templates. The aim is to identify and document all duplications caused by changes and all occurrences of inconsistency across the systems. This allows measures to be developed for the creation and management of an integrative company template, and all change management and roll-out processes involved, including template protection, to be defined and planned.

The next step is to use Solution Manager for realization of these measures. The “real” company template is now defined and implemented as Corporate Template. Subsequently, there will be no possibility to locally change templates that are implemented on the systems.

Summary

In large SAP environments, the roll-out of changes across the system landscape is continuously causing inconsistency between the system templates currently in use. This result is large-scale additional expenses for elimination of faults and quality deficiencies created by the rolling-out of changes. Instead of accepting these problems as inevitable facts, suitable measures and tools can ensure that they cease to exist. This effort is worthwhile and affects areas far beyond IT.

The results from the introduction of protected SAP company templates are very encouraging. They usually allow templates to be beneficially refined and extended later on.

By evaluating the insights gained from the template system analysis, also company-wide customizing tasks can be consolidated. For all SAP objects it can be defined, if and in which way they are – centrally or locally – changed. This is a further step in the direction of a consistent SAP Change and Transport Management all across the system landscape.

For testing SAP solutions, we used to depend on experts with specialized ABAP or JAVA know-how. Consistent testing of processes beyond SAP systems was quite a challenge.

Now SAP offers SAP Quality Center by HP. It enables the customer to integrate SAP testing into a comprehensive Quality Management and testing of his IT organisation. This means that SAP testing is no longer a special discipline within Application Management.

Through bidirectional integration of SAP Solution Manager and HP Quality Center, the precondition for the HP Quality Center to be used as a central control station for SAP testing – and thus for Test Management – has been created.

For SAP customers, this provides a simple and intuitive approach to controlled access to HP´s Testing Tools, which HP acquired from Mercury Interactive in 2007. In addition to HP Quality Center, at that time called TestDirector for Quality Center, the tools include HP Quick Test Professional and HP Loadrunner.

The combination of these tools allows for the test requirements to be directly derived from SAP Business Blueprints and to be used as a basis for creating test cases in HP Quality Center.

In addition to meeting the requirements for SAP applications, HP Quality Center will make it possible to also include processes, that reach beyond the boundaries of SAP systems, into testing requirements, and to test them comprehensively. Testing teams are enabled to start testing from HP Quality Center, without being dependent on SAP specialists.

So Requirements Management in IT can be standardized and optimized. A better transparency of testing processes will be achieved. Testing results can be compared and, through this, Compliance risks are minimized. Due to user-friendly Quality Management functions, testing automation and re-usability of the testing cases, time and costs will be saved.

We may summarize that the integration of SAP “SolMan” and HP Quality Center bridges relevant gaps in Application Management allowing the SAP environment to be embedded into a comprehensive IT-wide Test Management.

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In the context of large commercial software installations, the opportunity to reduce costs in the long run – all through the life cycle of the systems – is tremendous. Four fields of Application Management, pragmatically introduced and applied, are able to substantially contribute to this potential benefit.

Project Portfolio Management
A consistent Project Portfolio Management (PPM) which considers, evaluates, and releases all changing activities from a business as well as an IT point of view, will concentrate effort and reduce cost. In many cases, changes are evaluated from either business or technical perspective. To get to a comprehensive assessment of change requests by IT – concerning complexity and effects on other business processes or technical components – suitable tools are often missing. As a result, decisions are often based on wrong assumptions, and effort and cost estimates prove to be false.

Quality Management
A pragmatic Quality Management, consistently supporting the development process, and realized as an integrated tool, is often missing or insufficiently implemented. Integration of development and quality methods and tools spanning all phases from definition of requirements up to testing, will ensure completeness of testing and, above all, hold the scope of testing activities at a reasonable level. Often, Quality Management fails because the scope of testing cannot be clearly defined. As a result, complete testing gets too laborious and will be left out in parts or even completely. When attempting to put the changes into effect, then, at the latest, there will be undesirable additional costs.

Environment Protection
The presumably most difficult issue with large SAP and other packet software installations can generally be referred to as Environment Protection – and it holds the greatest potential for benefit. The number of components in modern systems is dramatically growing. The reutilization of customizing settings, data, processes, functions, program components or services helps in the first place to lower development costs. On the other hand, it increases the risk of changes taking effect on various parts of the system, intentionally or unintentionally.

So how could be made sure that one or more changes at a time will not interfere with other functions that are, at the same time, running or being edited? There are in fact approaches to address this problem by the help of methods and tools. But most of them are to a large extent restricted to the developers´ perspective. They are inadequate for customizing activities, let alone for a business analyst evaluating the effects of changes, which means inadequate on business level. Environment Protection is getting a more and more exigent issue as the amount of internally and externally created services used in the context of SOA (Service Oriented Architectures) is constantly growing.

Lifecycle Management
The lifecycle of large applications is not restricted to three or five years. From a realistic point of view, we should rather talk about ten, twenty or more years. And these applications are permanently in a process of change. A consistent Lifecycle Management for all objects, no matter if they are of rather business-related, technical, organizational or descriptive nature or relate to the technical process of their development and operation, is a pressing requirement. The issue is not only relevant for the results of development – how is a result changed over a longer period of time, and for which reason? – but also for the development process itself: What does its realization look like? And, once it is clearly defined, should it repeatedly be carried out in the same way? Changes must be targeted and documented. Useful and reasonable documentation, digitalization, administration, and automation are in demand. This is a promising approach to avoid redundant and unnecessary activities in the context of system change and development.

Summary
Application Management projects around SAP and other large packet software installations in all kinds of industries make it obvious that the targeted investment in Project portfolio Management, Quality Management, Environment Protection and Lifecycle Management is profitable. With reasonable effort, they produce high benefit all through the lifecycle of the systems. But there is also a short-term advantage, the reduction of errors. Better defined system environments facilitate parallel work on projects. And it will be possible to benefit from prior projects, with respect to development as well as testing and deployment.

Project work, in particular, clearly shows the high demand for an optimized support of methods and tools in the context of Application Management. In many cases, there is still a great deal of unnecessary manual work done – an issue bearing a great potential for software vendors and at the same time being a challenge for producers of commercial software. In our new beteo mini guides, we present a survey of Application Management tools – not only for SAP systems.

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Whether in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for PPM or in evaluations for project portfolio management tools, HP PPM (HP Project and Portfolio Mangement Center) and SAP xRPM (xAPP Resource and Portfolio Management) are always positioned as competitors. But do the specific features of these very specialized solutions justify this positioning?

What are HP PPM and SAP xRPM ideally used for?
HP PPM has more or less been exclusively designed to be used for managing IT project portfolios. When it comes to integration with software development and application lifecycle components like testing, configuration management databases (CMDB), and business process management tools (BPM), HP PPM shows its real strengths. The strong process engine of HP PPM cannot only control and drive organizational process, it can also control the technical execution of other software components and allows the integration of quality assurance measures and impact analysis steps. Traditional workflow tools rarely go beyond automating organizational flows. With HP PPM, it is possible to systematically control and track portfolio authorization and to include decision criteria from integrated application portfolio analysis. The following also need to be understood and fed back into the decision process: the impact of a project to the IT system, whether or not implementation of the existing system increases the complexity of an IT system, and if the complexity makes it impossible to make a change to the system. What is missing in HP PPM, are capabilities to thoroughly analyze a project portfolio financially.

SAP xRPM has been built to support business project portfolio analysis with financial data – not for only IT projects, but for projects of any kind. Based on information from SAP BI (SAP Business Intelligence) and SAP SEM (SAP Strategic Enterprise Management), this is readily identifiable by its architecture. The tool’s integration with SAP financial business data is SAP xRPM’s greatest advantage. SAP xRPM can access the most recent financial information from the customer’s SAP system anytime. Additionally, SAP SEM allows defining and running ad hoc financial simulations, and a “What-if analysis” can be run as part of a portfolio assessment. As opposed to HP PPM, SAP xRPM shows weaknesses in process control and in the area of specific IT portfolio analysis needs. In this area, the integration with development and application lifecycle technology is missing.

Conclusion
The decision for the right portfolio and project management solution normally depends on its integration with the management information and tools of the project resources. Missing integration means additional effort and challenges for the planning and execution. HP PPM and SAP xRPM deliver unique integration but into two very different areas: application portfolio versus financial information. The article “PPM – Alibi without Impact Analysis” provides further information on which functions should be covered by a portfolio and project management solution, and how different vendors with their products differentiate themselves.

The logical consequence from the above positioning could be a complementary use of both HP PPM and SAP xRPM. This way, portfolio management can profit from the strong process engine of HP PPM and the analytical capabilities of xRPM. From a technological point of view, the two solutions can ideally marry, and HP PPM provides the technological capabilities to do so. It can also integrate a lifecycle product like SAP xRPM Architecture, concepts and target use of the tools are different. For this reason, the key to a successful project portfolio management solution is to combine both tools and precisely define the requirements upfront. Only then can the combined HP PPM and SAP xRPM be designed, and failure can be prevented. HP PPM properly integrated with SAP xRPM can be PPM at its best!

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Searching the right information in the SAP information jungle can be quite time consuming. This guide is  intended to help to SAP professionals to quickly find answers to typical questions on the internet. For each proposed search starting point prerequisites as well as an estimate for the time needed to find the solution are listed.This list for sure does not claim to be complete, so it does not reflect information needs specific to versions of SAP. 

	Problem	Source, Categorie	Requi- rements	Search start		Procedure / Comment
General / Naming	What does SAP stands for?	Wikipedia	–	SAP AG SAP ERP		About the company and its products
	What is SAP talking about?	Terms, Definitions	– –	German English
	What stands this abbreviation for?	Acronyms, Abbreviations	–	SAP Designguild		The most important.
	Was this product renamed?	Naming	–	n/a		Will be my next Blog!
Education	Does SAP offer a course on this topic?	Education	S-User*	SAP Education Catalog
	When and where the next TechEd is planed?	TechEd	–	SAP Events		Apply > participate > Overview on future products and solutions
	Does SAP has CBTs (Computer based Trainings)?	eLearning	–	SDN eLearning		Select product in the catalog.
	Can i find a book on this topic?	SAP Press usw.	–	SAPPressAmazon
Releases	When will the next version released?	Product Availability Matrix	S-User*	PAM		Select product
	On what product do I have to count on in next time?	Special PAM Tabelle	S-User*	PAM Tabelle		Sort for Availability
	Timeline for ServicePacks?	Servicepack Stack Schedule	S-User*	SP Schedule		Use Link on products for details.
	What’s the difference between two SAP ERP Releases?	ERP Solution Browser	–	Solutionbrowser		Source-, Targetrelease and Solution area.
	Is my product still supported?	Special PAM Tabelle	S-User*	PAM Tabelle
KBase / Solutions	How to install a SAP product?	Installation documentation	S-User*	Installation Guides		Read the hole document incl. links on SAP Notes!
	How to configure a SAP product?	SAP Help	–	SAP Help		Select product (version) > Search > (follow the postinstallation configuration)
	Where to find the solution to a technical problem?		– S-User* – –	SDN SAP Notes SAPFANS SDN Wiki		According to experience: SDN > SAP Notes > Google > SAPFANS > SAPTechies Important: Check for notes to optimice your search!
	Who can answer a technical question?	Depose a problem	S-User*, License*** SDN-User**	OSS   SDN		Slowly but surely. Faster but without guaranty for success
	Who can deliver a SAP solution?	SAP partners Search	–	Switzerland
	If all else fails!	ultimo ratio				079 447 xx xx Website
Design	How to design a SAP applications?	UI Design Resources	–	SAP Designguild
	Where do I get original SAP icons?	SAP Icon Library	–	SAP Designguild

* To access http://service.sap.com/ a SAP S-User is needed. Alternative a C- or I-User works of course too.
** SDN user needed. Free subscription possible on http://sdn.sap.com/. Alternative the logon works with the S-User*.
*** For product support you need an SLA with SAP.

Inconsistent customization settings – a typical issue of decentral SAP systems
Large SAP installations with multiple decentral system landscapes struggle to keep SAP customization settings consistent across the company. Conventional approaches , e.g. SAP Template Customization, to distribute templates lead inevitably to inconsistencies. Maintaining a consistent system requires extraodinary effort.

Conventional SAP company template roll-out
In most SAP installations central customization assures the integrity of SAP’s overall company structure. It is built and maintained on a central SAP template customization client. From there it is transported to different decentral customization development systems.

SAP company templates transported in such a way get activated on the multiple decentral customization clients. Locally enriched by further customization templates get finally transported by the transport management system (called TMS or CTS) into decentral system landscapes.

It is obvious that with such a procedure decentral customization changes risk to be applied to customization that was configured in the centrally managed company template. The consequence then is an inconsistency between the central and decentral template.

It is difficult to get this under control with organizational measures since there is no technical support to alert autonomous decentral developers when changing centrally configured items.

Further updates made to the central SAP company template then just cannot be activated on the decentral systems anymore. After being transported to the decentral system landscapes they potentially overwrite decentral customization. To still adopt changes from the central SAP company template requires extraordinary efforts and inconsistences are more predictable.

By the way: In contrast to the roll-out of customization the deployment of SAP ABAP development objects is handled without any problems by most large SAP users. Organizational measures are sufficiently assuring the quality of this process.

SAP Company Template Protection with SAP Solution Manager
It is not common knowledge that above problem with inconsistencies can be cured with system support from SAP. SAP Solution Manager can be used for this purpose. Correctly configured it can prevent developers from overwriting central template adaptations when they locally modify decentral system landscapes. A very effective automated quality assurance measure. The central customization gets protected on the decentral systems. The overall system configuration remains consistent!

This quality assurance measure for the roll-out of SAP company templates by SAP Solution Manager can be introduced even after multiple central and decentral modifications and roll-outs. A quality measure highly welcome to any SAP IT managers who know what it means to suffer from template inconsistencies. They normally have a good understanding of what it needs to reactively get rid of them!