#SAPSysArchs – Preparing Your SAP Landscape For S/4HANA – call deck

The recording of the call is here

Call Deck for:

Invitation: #SAPSysArchs – SAP S/4HANA Preparing Your SAP Landscape and Moving to S/4HANA Architecture Call – Wednesda…

     Subject:                     SAP S/4HANA Preparing Your SAP Landscape

                                        and Moving to S/4HANA Architecture Call

     Date:                           Wednesday 16th March – 20:30 CET                              

     Meeting Url:                https://sap.emea.pgiconnect.com/C5236419

     Conference Code;      Participant Passcode: 329 122 3879

     Local Dial-in Numbers are here

During this #SAPSysArchs journey, for the first two calls, #SAPSysArchs – SAP Gateway Architecture Call – Wednesday 20th January 21:00 CET & Invitation: #SAPSysArchs – SAP Fiori & SAP Portal Architecture Call – Wednesday 17th February 17:00 CET we ran the calls in a way that we presented a PowerPoint and walked through the subject following the Powerpoint and discussed as we went. Let’s call the Powerpoint the “call deck”.

I am currently preparing the Powerpoint for the S/4HANA call, and we have some great SAP Product Manager Experts who have kindly volunteered to attend the call taking the role of Subject Matter Experts. Nevertheless, the call needs to have a strategy and that is the role of the  “call deck”. This S/4HANA call is going to be a difficult one to moderate because none of us have the comfort of being an S/4HANA expert.

This evening while preparing the S/4HANA call deck Powerpoint, I’ve come the conclusion it would be even more, useful, fun, transparent, to deliver the call notes as a blog, ahead of the call, giving everybody the chance to digest the strategy of the call, the attendees and the SME’s, and also giving chance to adjust the call notes as we go, ahead of the call.

So here goes, next Wednesday’s call Invitation: #SAPSysArchs – SAP S/4HANA Preparing Your SAP Landscape and Moving to S/4HANA Architecture Call – Wednesday 16th March 20:30 CET has laid down the gauntlet of wanting to answer 5 typical questions that a SAP System  Architect might find on their table when preparing for moving their SAP Landscape to S/4HANA.

In this blog, we will lay out these questions and the answers, and link to supporting documentation which is available to everybody [ in some cases as long as you have an S User 😉 ] enabling everybody to prepare for  the call and get even more value from the call by bringing even more targeted questions to the Experts from SAP. As ever, any questions which cannot be answered in the call will be noted and answered afterwards.

This blog, will then be used as the call deck for us to walk through during the call and openly discuss and question.

Top Tip: #1 read the S/4HANA Getting Started Guide

SAP S/4HANA replaces SAP ERP in your landscape, SAP are saying that S/4HANA is a new Product, which

it is, but this is confusing Customers, who are wondering if S/4HANA sits in their Landscape next to ERP ECC.

The answer is, S/4HANA is the product evolution of SAP ERP ECC. We can think of this like when Ford

replaced the Ford Sierra product with the Ford Mondeo (I can’t use Volkswagen as an example as they don’t change

their Product names for Products in the same category, the Golf and Passat have been around nearly as long as me,

and let’s not even think about the Beetle 😀 ).

1) How should a Customer prepare for moving to S/4HANA – new installation or migrate to S/4HANA and then upgrade to S/4HANA ? What are all of the alternatives paths to get to S/4HANA – the alternatives paths will dictate how the Customer can prepare their landscape

Boris Rubarth has very nicely shown in his blog System Conversion to SAP S/4HANA: SUM is the tool that:

notice the guidance that we’re not talking about a migration to S/4HANA, but a Transition

The Transition Paths are as follows:

Source: S/4HANA Migration Scenarios and Services

At the highest level, the 1st question is answered, there are three paths for transitioning to S/4HANA,

• New installation

     If you have an S Users, the S/4HANA Installation Guide is the must read as is the S/4HANA Conversion Guide

Source: S/4HANA Migration Scenarios and Services

• System Conversion

     System conversion is interesting, because, if you have the right pre-requisite ECC version

      SAP ECC 6.0 EHP 7 whether you already have your ECC on S/4HANA or not, you can go to S/4HANA

     in one step, this one step takes care of the S/4HANA migration and transition to S/4HANA.

Source: S/4HANA Migration Scenarios and Services

     Boris Rubarth has really described this nicely in the blog System Conversion to SAP S/4HANA: SUM is the tool

     where he shows:

                                  Ref: Frank Wagner ‘s blog The road to SAP S/4HANA: the different transition paths

     This is all beautifully shown in this picture:

• Landscape Transformation

Source: S/4HANA Migration Scenarios and Services

Other useful material related to this question:

     2189824 – SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition 1511: Release Information Note

     SAP S/4HANA Cookbook: What is SAP S/4HANA

     Upgrade, Migration, conversion to SAP S/4HANA

     SAP S/4HANA Cookbook: What is SAP S/4HANA

     The Road to SAP S/4HANA Transition and deployment options for SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA

     The Transition to SAP® S/4HANA

     Strategic Choices in S/4HANA Deployment

     The SAP Hana Journey

We could do with discussing further why an existing  Customer running ECC might take a New Installation over Transitioning an existing ECC ?

2) What Data preparation should the Customer make in their system, is there any data cleanup required before moving to S/4HANA ?

These are the steps in the Conversion Process:

Let’s make the assumption that we are doing On-Premise, and this is a Transition to S/4HANA of an existing ECC, including the conversion step, starting again with Boris Rubarth ‘s blog, System Conversion to SAP S/4HANA: SUM is the tool , the steps are summarised as:

• Code check
• post activities during downtime (like reports) to migrate the data from old to new data model

Going into more detail, (S User needed) and checking the S/4HANA Conversion Guide there are a list of steps which are described in detail including:

• Data Volume Reduction
• Maintenance Planner
• Pre-checks
• Custom Code Check

The must read on this subject is the (S User required) Simplification List for SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition this 300 page document’s goal is:

3) Are there and HCP Cloud dependencies on running on Premise S/4HANA, “How deep are cloud offerings integrated/how strong is the dependency?”, Do customers have to integrate the SAP HANA Cloud Platform necessarily to introduce S/4HANA?

S/4HANA On-Premise is not dependent on S/4HANA on Cloud.

It will be interesting to understand if there are any features in the S/4HANA on Cloud which are not available On-Premise.

4) What about Custom Code, let’s say a Customer has a lot of custom code in their ECC, and wants to migrate to HANA and upgrade to S/4HANA, how does the customer check that custom code will not cause any problems, does SAP have any reports which can be executed which will tell

you if custom code will migrate to S/4HANA ok, or if you will have problems ?

This really crosses over with Question #2, a very useful read for questions about Custom Code is the (S User required) Simplification List for SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition which very nicely explains SAP’s expectations regarding Customer’s Custom Code.

Page 14 of the Simplification List for SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition document links to ABAP Workbench Tools – SAP Library

which is publicly available, and introduces the Custom Code Migration Worklist:

I think that answers this one, we can go into more granular detail in the call with the Experts.

5) Like in preparing BI for a HANA migration does SAP have any reports which have to be executed as a pre-step for the journey to S/4HANA to enable the customer to see how healthily prepared for S/4HANA their system is ?

The SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition – SAP Help Portal Page contains a lot of documentation, going through the different paths and steps including the Installation Guide and the Simplification Guide and the Conversion Guide

The Conversion Guide describes the Pre-Checks as:

and refers to the OSS Note 2182725 – S4TC Delivery of the SAP S/4HANA System Conversion Checks

6) Front End User Interface Technology

The is an important development too, according to the S/4HANAUI Technology Guide, S/4HANA requires Fiori.

SAP’s recommendation is to install Fiori ABAP Front End Server as a Hub installation.

Ok, and here’s the best bit, the last paragraph on Page 8 of the S/4HANA UI Technology Guide says,

This is a heads up to everybody, according to the (S User needed) Fiori Road Map , SAP S/4HANA architecture

differs from the classical SAP Business Suite architecture, SAP Fiori Launchpad is a required point of entry.

This brings even more relevance to the previous two calls,

#SAPSysArchs – SAP Gateway Architecture Call – Wednesday 20th January 21:00 CET

and

Invitation: #SAPSysArchs – SAP Fiori & SAP Portal Architecture Call – Wednesday 17th February 17:00 CET

7) S/4HANA RoadMap

We’ll ask the SAP Experts to give a little insight into what else is coming with S/4HANA

The SAP S/4HANA RoadMap Edition Q1 2016

WrapUp

We now have the “call deck” which we’ll use to walk through the call. Let’s all between now and

next Wednesday dig a little deeper into this subject so that, we can really get the interesting

information from discussions with the Subject Experts from SAP S/4HANA Product Management

who will be present in the call.

We now know the basic principles of S/4HANA and moving to S/4HANA:

. S/4HANA although a new Product is the evolution and replacement of ERP ECC

. For an existing Customer to transition an existing ECC to S/4HANA there are three options

     . New Installation and data transformation

     . Transition an single existing ECC in place

               . this involves

                    . Unicode Conversion

                    . HANA DB Migration

                    . System Conversion

                         . which includes

                              . Maintenance Planner

                                   . Checks if Add-Ons in the system are accepted for conversion

                                   . Checks if Business Processes in the system are accepted for conversion

                              . Data Volume Reduction

                              . Pre-Checks

                              . Custom Code Checks

     . Landscape Transformation – eg consolidating regional ECC’s into 1 S/4HANA

     . With the SUM Tool from SAP these can be executed in one big bang

. There is no S/4HANA Cloud dependency on S/4HANA On-Premise

. Custom Code must be checked for acceptance in S/4HANA

. Fiori and Gateway are required components for S/4HANA, recommendation is a hub solution

. Fiori ABAP Front End Server must run on one of SAP’s databases, HANA, ASE, SAP MaxDB

In the meantime, myself and the Subject Experts from SAP S/4HANA Product Management

will try to fill in the gaps highlighted above.

Everybody is welcome to put questions in the comments here, or bring them to the call directly.