REALTECH Webinar - Automated DevOps and the S4 journey

Editor's Notes

• #3: This morning the plan is to start off with a snapshot of REALTECH and our product suite. I’ll then give an overview of DevOps for SAP, for those unfamiliar with the term, as well as our role in it before delving a bit deeper in our Transport Management tool. I’ll hand it back to Dave to demo before wrapping it up with a Q & A. If that makes sense I’ll press on.
• #4: REALTECH’s been around since 1994, successfully focusing on SAP Migrations and our proprietary set of tools, which we’ll review on the next slide. Along with these tools, our Consulting Services aside from OS/DB Migrations include SAP Upgrades, HANA, moving to the Cloud, and Managed Basis Services. We’re based out of Malvern, PA which is about 10 minutes from SAP’s Newtown Square headquarters. With over 2,000 customers globally and considerable technical SAP expertise, we’ve established trusted partnerships not only with SAP but with companies such as servicenow, suse, and Microsoft.
• #11: Our product suite, called Smartchange, is a complete solution for SAP Change Control and DevOps. Before we review DevOps for SAP, let’s spend a moment highlighting the solutions. Change Process Management provides for the easy definition of processes with the help of the included standard process templates. Robust reporting is provided with tight integration with Transport Management. Synchronization Management provides for the automatic synching of your SAP landscape. It supports workbench and customizing objects and is also seamlessly integrated with Transport Management. Transport Management aids in avoiding collisions and overtakers, manages your ABAP and Java transports, and ensures SOX and FDA audit compliance. I’ll cover it more as we go. From a DevOps perspective, we also offer Assessment Services which reports out on system issues like performance, cost, and licensing...and the next slide will give a clearer picture of where the pieces fit.
• #12: DevOps is essentially a more collaborative method of delivering applications where traditional organizational silos are replaced by cross-functional, multi-skilled teams that are focused on business outcomes. This, along with the high levels of automation involved in the process, provides companies with the agility they need to keep pace with the changing demands of the business. In terms of application delivery, that means they can achieve a faster time to market, higher quality, and lower costs, while reducing risk. An IBM study found that the adoption of DevOps has been seen to increase software delivery speed by up to 1,600 percent, while delivering 60 times fewer failures with organizations twice as likely to exceed their profitability, market share, and productivity goals. But without DevOps, deploying even small changes to SAP systems can take a huge amount of time due to outdated and long release cycles along with concerns about risk and stability. SAP customers who’ve adopted DevOps ways of working, on the other hand, are now able to deliver in much shorter cycles, which translates to a big leg up on their competitors who maybe have yet to see the light. We’ll look a bit more closely at REALTECH’s integral role in this methodology in a moment and although we’ll highlight our Transport Management tool this morning, it’s worth reviewing the bigger picture first such as the Foundations of DevOps. Some companies implement a "big bang" approach to DevOps but it’s also possible to get there step by step. Either way, there are some core concepts that form the foundation DevOps is built on. It’s important to understand them before getting started. The first pillar is: 1. Agile Development The concept of Agile development - where applications are delivered frequently, in short iterations - is vital. You can adopt Agile for SAP without making the step to DevOps, but DevOps won’t work without Agile. While Agile scores highly in bringing together development, testing, and the business, there’s a gap if you don’t have the ability to bring automated deployment and automated environment provisioning to the table. This is where DevOps comes in to add value to the entire process from requirements through to business delivery. The second pillar is embracing a… 2. Collaborative Culture You can’t underestimate how important it is to understand the cultural and organizational changes involved in the implementation of DevOps. The biggest change is a reorganization of teams to move away from the "silo" job functions of development, testing, operations (basis) and security towards mixed discipline teams that constantly work with the business to deliver what it needs. Management sponsorship and buy-in are vital here to support what may be a challenging transition so that adapting to new roles feels safe and rewarding. The roles of pretty much everyone will be affected to a greater or lesser degree. People should be encouraged to take on more responsibility and to blur the boundaries imposed by their traditional roles. And the third pillar is utilizing… 3. The Right Toolsets Of course, it’s critical to look at tooling to support your DevOps processes and to deliver the levels of automation that bring so many benefits. You’ll hear people talking about a DevOps toolchain and it’s important to recognize that no one single tool will support all the facets of DevOps, as is illustrated here. You really need to look at how you’ll manage the key parts of DevOps from requirements through to the processes of continuous integration, delivery, deployment, and improvement. In SAP you need to look at how you can use tooling to support: Automation of unit and regression testing Improvement in code quality Management of the sequencing and dependencies between changes and transports Enforcing risk, quality and impact checks Provisioning environments for testing Automating the deployment of transports and rollback in the case of failure Measuring the performance of development and testing teams REALTECH’s role, if only from a tool’s perspective, becomes a bit clearer with these pillars in mind. During the Agile Development phase there on the bottom left, our Synchronization Management tool is used to automatically sync up the systems in your SAP landscape. The Operations Team utilizes our Transport Management tool at both the Release and Feedback stages of the cycle as seen here under Change Approval & Deployment and Diagnosis, Collaboration & Understanding. The message here is that a DevOps methodology can only be as successful as the supporting tools being used throughout.
• #13: I’d like to call out some of the features and benefits of Transport Management. Firstly, it’s ease of use. It is Centralized in Solution Manger Security is a Single Authorization object It is SAP system and release agnostic It provides for Flexible approval workflows and Out of the box reporting It’s Easily installed and configured, Simple to use, and Scalable for simple or complex environments
• #14: Some of the key features include: Centralized access to all transport activity Proactive collision detection and Critical object definition Returncode Forecasting, including a Completeness check Identification of dependent SAP objects Location of required/missing objects, and a Consistency check the in target system There’s an Automatic import with job scheduler, Event driven email notifications, and a Complete history for audit and reporting
• #15: TM provides for the Packaging or Bundling of Transports It has Cross System Object Locking, Dependency options, and attributes like text, links, and attachments. You can Repeat your Imports via a click You can also Reject or Revoke your transports Tracking information is provided down to the Object level and Proposals allow you to Schedule a time outside your normal window for an import