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  • ERP4IT – the Vision Found its Way into Wikipedia

    Enterprise Resource Planning for Information Technology (ERP for IT, ERP4IT) describes the automation of information technology (IT). Therefore ERP4IT focuses on the automated IT itself and not on the automation of business processes by IT.

    IT organizations define long-term strategies, integrate them into their business models and offer adequate IT services to the business. Integrated systems that support lifecycle-oriented IT management build an ERP4IT.

    Related to established ERP (Enterprise Resource Planing) systems that manage the usage of critical resources, ERP4IT aims on a process-oriented solution. Unlike the classic ERP software (money, productive capital, people, stock or information) takes the information of IT a center stage for the new concept of ERP4IT. Therefore ERP4IT targets on the management of complex data structures within databases and provide them in aggregated pieces for their different stakeholders.

    Because of a great demand but missing standards and applications the call for an ERP4IT solution becomes louder. Accordingly, ERP4IT found its way into Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERP_for_IT!

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  • SAP Template Distribution – a One Way Street?

    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-Template System Landscape

    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!

  • ERP4IT – The Vision Finds Its Way into Wikipedia

    Enterprise Resource Planning for Information Technology (ERP for IT, ERP4IT) describes the automation of information technology (IT) itself. ERP4IT focuses on the automated management of IT as a discipline – not on the automation of business processes through IT.

    IT organizations define long-term strategies, integrate them into their business models, and provide the enterprise with appropriate IT services. Integrated systems that support lifecycle-oriented IT management form an ERP4IT.

    By analogy with established ERP systems (Enterprise Resource Planning), which manage the deployment of critical resources, ERP4IT targets a process-oriented solution. In contrast to classic ERP software (money, productive capital, people, inventory or information), the new concept of ERP4IT places the information of IT itself at the center. ERP4IT therefore aims at managing complex data structures within databases and making them available in a consolidated form.

    The concept has now found its way into Wikipedia, reflecting its growing recognition in the industry as a distinct and meaningful category for integrated IT management platforms.

  • SAP Template Distribution – a One-Way Street?

    Inconsistent Customizing Settings – A Typical Problem of Decentralized SAP Systems

    Large SAP installations with multiple decentralized system landscapes struggle to maintain SAP customizing settings consistently across the enterprise. Conventional approaches such as SAP template customizing inevitably lead to inconsistencies. Maintaining a consistent system requires enormous effort.

    Conventional SAP Enterprise Template Rollout

    In most SAP installations, central customizing ensures the integrity of the overall SAP enterprise structure. It is built and maintained on a central SAP template customizing client. From there, it is transported into various decentralized customizing development systems.

    SAP enterprise templates transported in this way are activated on the decentralized customizing clients. Locally enriched by additional customizing templates, they are finally distributed further through transport management. This creates a one-way street: changes can only flow from the central template downward – corrections and local adaptations can rarely be reconciled back upward without considerable manual effort.

    This architectural limitation makes SAP template distribution a significant challenge for organizations with complex, multi-system landscapes. Tooling that supports bidirectional synchronization and automated consistency checks is essential for keeping such environments under control.

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