The most comprehensive explanation of what, why and how to deploy SAP Rapid-Deployment Solutions is explained by SAP experts in new book (SAP Press, Nov. 2013., 408 pages).
An SAP Rapid-Deployment Solutions tell-all book is being launched. Tell-all’s give you the inside scoop as to what it really going on. Right? And this new book, Rapid Deployment of SAP Solutions (SAP Press, Nov. 2013 with Executive Editor Bernd Welz) has the straight story of this deployment paradigm shift that has analysts, media, customers, and partners talking.
For those of you who are new to SAP Rapid-Deployment solutions, there is a broad portfolio of these packaged solutions that deliver a combination of software, predefined services, best practices content, and enablement.
They have a specific scope and predefined deployment schedule—and are notorious for deploying within an average of 8-12 weeks (with some deploying in days, others longer, depending on the complexity). The value proposition is apparent to customers. The way the deployment works is not well known by those who have not been a part of a rapid-deployment solution project. The new book is designed to help.
This book, which details the SAP Rapid-Deployment Solutions approach explains the deployment paradigm and targets the interests of the deployment leaders. It is written by 30 SAP insiders. Here is a link to the SAP Press site.
Collectively, these authors embraced the opportunity to tell you all about the essentials of rapid-deployment solutions—including how to best deploy them.
So who are these bold authors and what are they talking about in the book?
Look Who’s Talking
The authors are true solution experts. They have lived and breathed SAP Rapid-Deployment solutions with incredible dedication and commitment. They’re delivering innovative packages every quarter. They’re pushing the envelope on this IT paradigm shift of speed, predictability and best practices. And, they are creating ways for business solutions to be more sophisticated, democratic, and powerful. They know how to unleash SAP’s knowledge about business processes and technology and make it available to organizations that never thought this level of performance would be available to them.
At this price.
As fast as we’re able to deploy them.
And within this work scope.
These are amazing people with extraordinary persistence, business genius, and technical know-how.
Leading a packaging team like the one who helped our executives prepare this book is nothing short of daring. It is a team that creates the enormous portfolio of SAP Rapid-Deployment solutions, and with them is the perfect place to be if you have a passion for excellence and you are the kind of business executive that never tires of changing, emerging, and innovative technologies. The team covers the research and scoping, the content development, the asset production, and the deployment methodology, for large topics like big data, cloud and mobile.
They dig into current user practices.
They dissect the business processes.
They look for the best of the best and they begin to design content, test, and package a solution that both meets today’s needs and has the ability to scale with changing business requirements.
Then it is all documented into deployment guides.
That’s an over-simplified explanation. Then again, that’s why the book is being published. You probably need the details to be effective within the new deployment paradigm.
The team who authored this book are some of the most noted experts in HANA, Cloud and Mobility packaging topics. But they are also experienced in SAP’s core Enterprise Resource Planning, Enterprise Information Management, and the Lines-of-Business and Industry rapid-deployment solutions. The packaging team knows the technology, the solution capability, and the information requirements and how to harvest the best practices from real live customers and actual projects.
So, that’s a little about who’s authoring this new book. What about the book? What’s in it?
Diving Right In
There are 408 pages that cover topics from core concepts of SAP Rapid-Deployment Solutions (what they are), the new implementation paradigm (what it means and what types of deployments there are), value case studies, the rapid-deployment solution content architecture, the end-to-end tools (from discovery in the cloud to deployment tools), support services for SAP Rapid-Deployment solutions, and SAP partner programs, including the SAP Rapid-Deployment Solutions partner qualification program and case studies.
Yes, 408 pages is a lot to consume. Then again, accelerating multi-year programs into months, requires new thinking about solutions, the structure, the methods, the architecture, the package contents, the customer needs, the deployment team needs, the support systems, and the information technology. This book explains it all.
Let me provide some perspective. Two years ago, the paradigm was year-long, even multi-year programs. If you’re a deployment professional, nothing in that statement is a surprise.
Along came SAP’s accelerated deployment methodology, and packaging methods, which soon evolved into SAP Rapid-Deployment solutions. SAP promoted the new way of thinking about rapidly-deploying enterprise solutions, and, let’s say that it was met with mixed remarks.
Some earlier IT analysts raised their eyebrows at the idea. The packaging team kept going.
Soon, critics were being won over—in droves. Speed and cost-effectiveness were two terms that would get anyone’s attention, and customers with successful deployments were showing up in social media, in the news, and at events. SAP’s rapid-deployment solution methodology was emerging as something very different than that of our competitors, and the differentiator was becoming clear. We had quick-time-to-value coupled with the SAP best practices content (i.e., best ways that SAP customers deploy the SAP solution). It was a powerful equation.
Now, add a new approach to the rapid-deployment mix: Assemble-to-Order.
Assemble-to-Order is a term that refers to multiple SAP solutions, typically SAP Rapid-Deployment Solutions. A2O’s, as we call them, are integrated by an SAP Services team prior to being delivered to the customer. For example, SAP HANA A2O’s are one of the best ways to tackle big data challenges while the organization strives to move into the cloud (e.g., SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud). A2O is detailed in this book, too. By the time you are done reading that chapter, you’ll be able to converse in this topic with your stakeholders with greater ease.
When Rapid Deployment of SAP Solutions is released, you will find that the content details the topics I have mentioned. Even the taxonomy and tools for SAP Rapid-Deployment solutions, the very instruments have served to help us drive this new implementation paradigm shift are contained in the book to a level never available outside of SAP until now.
Many IT and business professionals acquire books for their comprehensive reference value. This book contains the single most comprehensive document about deploying SAP solutions according to the new implementation paradigm.
About the first 350 pages of the book describes the fundamentals of the packaging concept, the models that we use, the tools and how to use them, and practical deployment case studies. There, you can find deployment information and proof-points about the latest cloud, SAP HANA, analytics, mobility, and line-of-business RDS solutions.
We had a challenge selecting which deployment case studies to highlight, knowing the SAP Press team only allocated a certain amount of pages. In the end, we settled on 17 case studies to provide a well-rounded variety. We negotiated for a larger book to include that many case studies, thinking it was important to clearly illustrate how the deployments work in all types of business structures, business areas, technology topics, and business challenges.
In many cases, the team exposes key success factors that made the deployments stand out as real star deployments.
The cases are different—some explain the expansive nature of the package and how the teams managed them, some emphasize the effectiveness of the package methodology and point out the tricks inside the packages that made them look brilliant, and others clarify the candid fact that SAP Rapid-Deployment Solutions have options, to point out that pre-defined solutions are not as strictly limited as some would say.
If you are not quite ready for a book, maybe check out a few of the recent stories. Just weeks ago, SAP Business All-In-One received a prestigious Leader’s Quadrant position in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Single-Instance ERP for Product-Centric Midmarket Companies. Ability to execute was one of the strengths—that’s solid packaging.
Also, the international press featured the RDS approach to enterprise database migration for organizations that were adopting SAP HANA. A business blogger wrote from recent conference in California about the value of SAP Rapid-Deployment solutions in the context of SAP HANA. You can read about that here: Changing customer views on HANA at Controlling 2013.
