Integrate SAP into your Continuous Delivery pipeline

I’ve just landed back home after spending a week with a client that recently implemented the latest ActiveControl technology.  Their requirement was to create a Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline for SAP changes and integration with non-SAP application deployment.  This way of working will bring huge benefits to the business, enabling continuous delivery through their complex SAP landscape and aligning changes across multiple platforms to deliver business innovation at pace.

This integration request isn’t just a one-off – we are seeing this trend more and more as companies start to realize the importance of end-to-end automation of change. In the last six months, integration of SAP automation tools into non-SAP CI/CD tools has become something that we are asked for on a regular basis.

The thing is, no one application can do it all.  Even in organizations that rely on SAP for their core business processes, there are still a multitude of supporting applications that form the software ecosystem which the SAP applications sit within – let’s call it a ‘best-of-breed’ ecosystem.

But the whole concept of developing a best-of-breed ecosystem necessitates the ability for the different applications to work seamlessly together, to deliver a toolchain that leverages the benefits of each individual application – essentially, integration of these tools allows us to create an end result that is better than the sum of the individual parts.

With DevOps, this is especially true.  There are a whole multitude of different best-of-breed applications to help automate the development and delivery process, from backlog management and continuous integration hubs, to automated testing platforms and system monitoring tools, all of which can have a part to play in the end-to-end automation of change and the ability to deliver continuously into your production systems.  So, if you are looking at the adoption of DevOps for SAP delivery, it’s important to understand how the toolchain fits together and what strategy you are going to use when developing your integrated CI/CD pipeline.

At Basis Technologies, we understand that no single application can be the best at doing everything, which is why our SAP automation technology – ActiveControl - includes a built-in integration engine and a whole host of available plugins to ensure that our customers can seamlessly integrate with other tools that make up their CI/CD pipeline.  We have out-of-the-box connectors for all of the most popular ITSM and DevOps solutions - ServiceNow, Remedy, JIRA, Rally, and Github – and are building out more and more to meet our customers’ requirements.

Integration and automation give you the ability, not only to build an effective CI/CD pipeline for continuous delivery into your SAP applications but to also align this with your non-SAP applications, which brings real enterprise-wide benefits.  Think of the possibilities when you can continuously deploy into all of your landscapes (SAP and non-SAP) in a coordinated way – the nirvana of application delivery! Well, the future is here - right now - and we’ve proved it with the latest successful implementation of ActiveControl, fully integrated into the customer’s existing CI/CD pipeline.

If you want to learn more about how integration can increase business agility through faster, more frequent change, please watch our webinar ‘The network effect. How the integration of Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery automation tools bridges the SAP delivery gap’ or request a demo of ActiveControl.