The truth about DevOps in SAP
SAP systems are the backbone of many critical business operations for companies all over the world. But SAP works very differently from most other software systems in use today. Building and delivering changes to production systems in a traditional manner is a slow, tedious process driven by a significant amount of manual effort.
The uniqueness and relative opacity of SAP applications has led some IT professionals to believe that DevOps workflows aren’t possible within SAP. The truth is quite different. DevOps automation tools designed for SAP do exist and they’re empowering more and more SAP teams to deliver updates with the same speed and quality that non-SAP DevOps professionals have come to expect.
Why should DevOps professionals care about SAP?
The benefits of a modern approach to SAP software development extend well beyond SAP systems. DevOps for SAP enables dependent enterprise apps to move at even higher speed, allows businesses to be more agile, and enables DevOps professionals to add even more value by applying their knowledge and expertise across more of the IT landscape.
The Business Cares
Don’t assume that SAP is slow because no-one cares about making it faster. SAP’s role in core business operations – from finance to manufacturing, supply chain and more – means the benefits of moving faster are significant. The question was always how to do so safely. DevOps can be the answer, but SAP teams need the help of experienced professionals to achieve DevOps success.
Strategic Alignment
Adopting DevOps in SAP gives organizations the chance to standardize processes, leverage toolchains that are already in place and give business owners and other development teams a window into the ‘black box’ of SAP. Want to use the same Jenkins-based CI/CD pipeline across all your enterprise applications? SAP DevOps automation gives you the means to do it.
Real Agility Needs SAP
IT landscapes are becoming increasingly fragmented as enterprises adopt new tech and tools. But SAP still sits at the heart of many processes. That means no matter how fast other applications can change, true agility is impossible until SAP can move at the same pace. More agile, responsive SAP systems are good for everyone.
What’s different about SAP?
SAP is built on proprietary architecture and technology that makes it unique. Everything from the code used to build changes, to the way changes are moved through the development pipeline, even down to the way SAP developers think, SAP teams do things differently. Key differences include:
Our Product: ActiveControl
ActiveControl’s range of powerful automation features allows SAP development teams to respond to business change at high speed. Its advanced automation technology, engineered for SAP, eliminates manual effort, letting you break the shackles of traditional SAP release cycles and adopt agile development, DevOps and Continuous Delivery. Accelerate innovation and deliver more value, without putting business continuity at risk.
Shared Development Environments
in SAP DevOps
Even with an effective SAP DevOps workflow in place, when major changes happen a different approach is needed. SAP teams commonly employ 'dual track' (or N+1) development for big projects, in which a totally separate system landscape is used for project development and testing. Some organizations may use even more tracks for multiple concurrent projects, or to support an agile approach.
Without source control, aligning changes across these systems is a major challenge. ActiveControl, DevOps automation from Basis Technologies, automatically merges changes between systems, and even across different SAP technology platforms like ECC and S/4HANA, proactively flagging potential conflicts along the way.
How to Enable DevOps in SAP
The building blocks needed to bring DevOps to SAP are similar to those required anywhere else, but each needs to be tailored to the specific nature of SAP teams and technologies.
People
The cultural challenge of extending DevOps to SAP is perhaps the least unique part of the process. The same kind of coaching and cross-functional team reorganization employed elsewhere will be necessary in SAP. Just bear in mind that it might take a bit longer, and require a bit more effort than usual. Though many are open to change, some SAP teams have been set in their ways for quite some time.
Process
Agile development is typically considered a foundational requirement for DevOps in SAP (typically Scrum; sometimes Kanban or SAFe). In fact, you may find that the language of agile resonates more with SAP teams than DevOps terminology. Many are looking at widespread adoption of agile as their first step towards modernization, so helping to make that a success may ease the path to DevOps.
Technology
Technology is where SAP diverges most from other DevOps processes. As you'll have clearly seen if you've read this far, normal DevOps tooling either doesn't work in SAP, or can't be connected to an automated workflow when it does. SAP-specific DevOps automation is required, both to help build an automated software delivery pipeline with SAP, and to integrate SAP change with development of other applications.
Building an Integrated DevOps
Workflow in SAP
ActiveControl from Basis Technologies is engineered for use in SAP systems. It provides the SAP-specific automation necessary to replicate, and connect to, the rest of your Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) tech stack. It even gives you the means to drive an automated cross-application software delivery pipeline from non-SAP tools like GitLab and Azure DevOps.
Companies Around The World Are Adopting Agile and DevOps in SAP
“Customers love to hear that we are following a DevOps methodology and successfully automating deployments, and it is something that adds a lot of value to our solutions.”
Uday Poranki
Senior Solutions Architect | Ericsson
See What DevOps for SAP Can Do for You
What could your team accomplish with a modern, automated approach to SAP delivery?
