SAP S/4 HANA On-Premise implementation
In a previous blog I wrote about the SAP’s Cloud solution implementation strategy where I mentioned some of the drawbacks of the old ASAP methodology for implementing SAP.
If I may step back about 20 years or so, SAP had this great ERP software which everyone wanted but very few knew how to implement and it soon became an embarrassing mess for SAP’s brand. Remember MySAP.com and SAP’s attempt to offering tools & accelerators to assist with implementing its software and using the ASAP roadmap?
Fast forward to today and here we are with a new database, new code line, new technologies, new interfaces and a new methodology. If anything SAP has not forgotten its past mistakes and although slightly late off the mark, it does provide a slick new way of doing an On-Premise implementation.
Welcome SAP Activate Best Practices!
SAP’s main aim with SAP Activate Best Practices methodology as depicted in the diagram below is for lower total cost of ownership, faster time to market and involving the business in the design phases already.
Discover – Experience Trial
Try before you buy? Absolutely!
SAP wants you to jump straight into a trial system which is already set up with trial data and a model company code, ready for use. These trial systems (Cloud or On-Premise) cater for different needs. You have the option of which one to select and for both the software is already installed, fully configured and includes SAP best practices. Where they differ are in terms of scope, technical environment and length of trial. Cloud edition runs in a shared environment and focus on business highlights and user experience whilst the On-Premise runs in a virtual environment, covers the full scope (more later) on end-to-end scenarios, allows you to make changes and do a detailed evaluation. The latter virtual environment is SAP’s Cloud Appliance Library (or CAL as per image)
on an Amazon Web Services account. Cost is per hour USD 3.45 or $2484.70 if you use it non-stop for a month, but who is staying awake that amount of time?
There is no need to set up prototype systems from scratch and also no obligation to buy. It is a 30 day trial with the option to extend e.g. for demo, Proof of Concept or an evaluation.
The system is configured and in some areas to also support certain country specific requirements and has broad coverage of basic settings. At the moment 51 scope items (more on this later) are configured across the end-to-end solutions as per sample below. For the FI folks, it even includes design & configuration for parallel accounting and IFRS standards for local or group reporting. Below is a sample of some of those scope items.
Prepare
So, let’s assume you liked what you saw and want to proceed with the purchasing decision. It is now time to get you started.
For an On-Premise implementation a customer will have to download the S/4 HANA Best Practise documentation (easy to do), set up the SAP S/4 HANA Appliance development system in the customers system landscape and engage either SAP Enterprise support or an SI of your choice.
I need to point out here you have 2 options, either use SAP’s Cloud Appliance Library (CAL) on a virtual instance or you can use SAP’s Software Provisioning Manager and a set of Blue Ray disks (pictured)
from SAP to install on your own hardware. The blue ray appliance comes with 4 clients (pictured below), each with its own purpose and use which I am not going to delve into detail here for now. Hint, client 400 is your config client in old terminology.
I am not going to delve into the implementation from blue ray, save to say that if you are a Techie with lots of experience, this can be done in an hour. You need the Software Provisioning Manager (SWPM) to do this. And make sure that you have an SAP-certified environment. SAP HANA is certified for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, versions 11 and 12. Also for Red Hat, I think 6.5 is on the list of supported operating systems. So your HANA server definitely must run this. That and roughly 175-200Gb of space for all the bits and pieces. The Appliance consists of S/4 HANA Core 1511, NW750, HANA Platform edition 1.0, SAP Fiori and SAP Best Practices for S/4 HANA on-prem 1511.
Explore – Fit Gap based on model company
Let’s start with an analogy first. Your smart phone or Tablet. When you got it new, it was already configured, had some pre-installed apps and once you switched it on, ask a few basic questions and you are ready to use it. And as time goes on you install more apps and personalize it for your convenience.
So, here the SAP S/4 HANA Appliance is your phone and has the software installed and configured. All you need to do now is to analyse what is NOT required and what need to be changed to set up the system to suit your needs by adapting the delivered SAP Best Practices instead of starting from scratch. Much like you wouldn’t buy a blank phone and struggle with installing operating systems, right?
This process above is referred to as scoping in SAP Activate. I believe you can also do your scoping exercise on a virtual instance (i.e. not the blue ray delivered one) and then only activate the items scoped in your On-Premise DEV system.
You will also notice the use of Solution Manager (7.2 if you must know). This version uses a new and different design and the purpose is not only to support the implementation but also manage the complete life cycle of the solution. You must import from SAP Activate Best Practices content into Solution Manager to support your Project and Processes (image below).
Good news for us Project Managers, there is content for all 3 scenarios (new installation, system conversion, landscape transformation).
The Process best practise is all about fit-gap analyses and use what is already there. The templates are all modifiable and also fall in line with change management that is managed in Solution Manager.
Realize – scope and configuration
Now it is time to activate the SAP Best Practice from the prior scoping exercise for your solution. Here you use SAP Best Practices Solution Builder provided in S/4 HANA to do the activation. Note, you can also use this for activation of PoC, Sandbox, Training or Exploration systems.
Activation is the last step pictured below after aligning from the delivered best practises for what you need and what you don’t need.
A little more about scope items included in S/4 HANA. Remember earlier I mentioned currently S/4 HANA offers 51 scope items? Scope items may have dependencies and every scope item is assigned to building blocks. Building blocks are the methodology for SAP Best Practices development and delivery.
Building blocks are reusable units of content including Business content (solutions, processes, or combinations), Technical procedures (connectivity, technical setup of a system) or Common standards (organizational structures, basic logistics) and can be part of more than one scope item. Examples of items that a building block can contain:
eCATTs Business Configuration Sets (BC Sets) Sample master data Configuration documentation Print forms or reportsTo activate a scope item, you have to install a number of building blocks in a predefined sequence. This happens with Solution Builder. And the beauty of this is that SAP also supplies the sequence in which these building blocks and their activities are applied. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but how many times on a project has this sequence issue not become a bone of contention?
Once all the scope items are activated, you can now start adjusting the design and configuration processes to meet your needs as identified during fit-gap exercise.
Realize – migrate, integrate, extend, test.
Now this is probably the section that I got most excited about and I’m not making any excuses for it either. Despite being the biggest LSMW fan by a mile on any project and once earning bragging rights for leaving conversion tools and ABAPers eating dust whilst still coming to terms with what they need to do, I must sadly say, LSMW is no more. So out with old and in with the new.
SAP Activate included in S/4 HANA Best Practices the Rapid Deployment Migration methodology. The steps as seen below are capabilities and all covered by SAP! Just add the word “capability” to each step below and I’m more excited than a fox terrier that discovered the neighbours cat in a tree.
Shown in the above drawing is a summary of the process I witnessed. The legacy information on the left and target system on the right. Now connect the left to SAP’s (new) Data Services tool via ODBC. This ETL tool can do the extract, transform and loading of the legacy data. In the extraction it also supports cleansing, parsing of records and validation of data via profiling. During transformation the tool also support mapping of fields and values. After transformation it can also validate against S/4 HANA structures before loading. Because the S/4 HANA instance is linked to this tool, it extracts the config information from S/4HANA. Think of all the ISO codes and org structures from your instance and you get the idea. Loading then happens back into S/4 HANA and finally the reconciliation process at the end. The beauty of this tool is that it has on top a dashboard and reporting tools with performance analyses, all thanks to the BI platform it sits on.
The BI Launchpad for Business Objects also provides access to business users to see what is going on and if corrections are required they can log into the migration services sections to fix and are as easy as drag and drop.
Deploy
On-boarding of users is also included as part of SAP Activate as well as access to SAP learning hub.
Conclusion
So, if you are a SAP Project Manager, Solution Architect, functional/technical consultant, maybe this will give you some insight into where SAP is heading and I only just scratched the surface here.
If your company is one of the big end SI’s and got accustomed to milking the customer for the most money provide the most value-add to the customer, you might have to pay attention to this and rethink your strategy. Or maybe not. What I can say there are in excess of 35 000 pairs of very eager eyes (mostly from a certain outsourcing country) that has already witnessed this in even more detail and I bet money on them working frantically on how they are going to adopt this to provide implementations cheaper and faster than the historical bloated delivery model.
Still not convinced? Thanks to the internet, access to SAP information is now easier than ever. Wait till your customer gets wind of how SAP Activate methodology can save them hundreds and thousands of dollars to get S/4 HANA up and running faster, cheaper and with more input from within. In the words of Lord Snow: “Winter is coming” - for you.
That's it. Hope you enjoyed this and feel free to comment, good or bad. I appreciate the diverse views and it helps to keep me honest. If any of the above resonates with you, by all means get in touch, I’m as eager to sink my teeth in and be part of this exciting new journey SAP is taking us on.
