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Author's profile photo Juergen Jakowski

Every end is a new beginning: SAP EA Explorer to be discontinued in July 2018

Dear SAP EA Explorer users,

Almost 5 years ago, two colleagues and I had the idea of providing an information platform for customers, using a semantic network to relate technical concepts with SAP products.

When we launched this project, semantic approaches of this kind were relatively new, so it made a lot of sense to start with a specific, individual tool that we later called SAP Enterprise Architecture Explorer.

Now, five years later, the SAP world has moved on (in a positive sense), with much stronger focus on simplification, and new initiatives to relate valuable content for our customers.

I really like this development, although it also spells the end of the Explorer.

SAP Enterprise Architecture Explorer to be discontinued by end of July.

It’s been a great journey but– unfortunately – it has to end here. After many years of successful collaboration with the German SAP User Group (DSAG) and with individual customers throughout the world, this is a sad moment. The fact is however that there are simply too many SAP information platforms at present, meaning that some inevitably have to disappear for the greater good.

Why so sudden?

Why do we need to shut down so suddenly and quickly though? The plan was to carry on until the end of September. Unfortunately, with some global changes in the SAP environment, we now have a pretty serious bug in the Explorer that limits our capabilities to make changes to its content.

Considering that the Explorer is going to be shut down anyway, it makes no business sense for us to invest in further bug fixing.

We have therefore decided to bring forward the discontinuation to the end of July.

Will the content be distributed to other places?

A lot of content has already been transferred to other places. If you have been following the history of sap.com, you might recognize that these pages contain a lot more detailed information than back in 2013, when we started with the Explorer. Also, the SAP Help Portal has evolved over time to more of a knowledge portal. Finally, there are tools like the SAP Transformation Navigator.

While most of the various content types can be found at these places, some types might be lost for now. We are obviously trying to avoid this, especially for particularly popular content. In the case of the “Enterprise UX Strategy” and “Enterprise IoT Strategy” topics for example, I plan to create two blogs containing all the information previously stored in the Explorer.

Every end is a new beginning

As the blog’s title points out: “Every end is a new beginning”. And so, this story too will turn into something new, something bigger and something with even more value for all of us.

Some of you might wonder what will happen to me, as most of the external communication for SAP EA Explorer went through me. Besides being the guy on Twitter, LinkedIn, SAP Community and TechEd, I was also the project lead, major architect, and the content owner for numerous topics.

Since April 2018, I’ve been working in Christian Klein’s new board area. Katja Mehl leads a team here that focusses on customer experience at SAP across all digital interactions between customer and SAP. Working as a solution architect for this team, I’m going to steer individual customer requirements into something that we currently call “MyHome”, a central location that connects customers with the various locations and content types within SAP.

You can therefore still count on me to bring together the different strands within SAP that are of most value to your daily business. For me this is an even greater chance to support our customers. I’ll tell you more about this project once it gets well and truly off the ground.

Thank you to all our users and contributors

By way of closing this blog, I would like to say a big thank you to all of you who supported this project, either with content or with feedback. And I also want to thank all of our users for their amazing support and interest throughout the course of the project. I would be delighted if you would continue to follow me as I embark on my new adventure with “MyHome”.

All the best,
JJ

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      8 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Jesse Leal
      Jesse Leal

      Hi JJ,

      We were trying to find the "Landscape Deployment Recommendation for SAP Fiori front-end server" mentioned in SNote 2355644, as we usually did in the past for guidelines and up-to-date SAP recommendations for Fiori deployment options, but this seems to be affected by this change of direction

      May I ask you if this information in particular is somewhere else that we can access it?

      Many thanks in advance,

      JL

      Author's profile photo Juergen Jakowski
      Juergen Jakowski
      Blog Post Author

      Hi JL,

       

      Thank for you question and sorry, that for the delay. Just saw the notification for it.

      You can find what your are looking for here: https://www.sap.com/documents/2018/02/f0148939-f27c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.html 

      Be aware of what my colleage Carola Steinmaier just wrote to me two weeks ago in regards to this link:

      We are currently working together with the collegues from Knowledge Mmgt on a wiki page in SAP Community as central place to access the FES deployment recommendations information. It should be available soon.
      Currently you can access most of the information via the document and the links mentioned in this document (see link).

      Maybe Carola can add something to it.

      All the best,

      JJ

       

      Author's profile photo Suresh Subbanarahari
      Suresh Subbanarahari

      Hi JJ, Wondering if the previous contents of "Enterprise UX Strategy” and “Enterprise IoT strategy" are available anywhere now. Thanks indeed for creating such a wonderful information sets for others to follow.

      Regards,

      Suresh

      Author's profile photo BRENDA OLIVOS FUENTES
      BRENDA OLIVOS FUENTES

      Hello!! There is still a reference to the "SAP EA Explorer" in the ACTIVATE Roadmap Viewer/ Transition for SAP S/4HANA. Hopefully this could be fixed. Regards!!

      Author's profile photo J. Jansen
      J. Jansen

      Good luck to you Jurgen. I found EA explorer very informative. Thanks for your effort and happy holidays.

      Regards,

      JJ

      Author's profile photo Wilko Sattler
      Wilko Sattler

      Thanks Jürgen, always loved your ability to create a source of condensed truth. best regards, Wilko

      Author's profile photo Roman Becker
      Roman Becker

      Maybe you should also work together with your colleagues from help.sap.com, the ea explorer is still linked there...

      https://help.sap.com/viewer/d71464d9f3204ea8be1144d62acd9ac3/7.50.10.0/de-DE/4cca4152fc94b610e10000000a44176d.html

      Hub-Deployment für multiple Backend-Systeme

      In diesem Fall wird ein dedizierter AS-ABAP-Frontend-Server mit SAP Fiori Frontend Server in einem eigenständigen System „vor“ mehreren Backend-Systemen implementiert. Diese Deployment-Option ist nur für bestimmte Szenarios verfügbar. Weitere Informationen hierzu erhalten Sie im Enterprise Architecture Explorer unter https://eaexplorer.hana.ondemand.com Landscape Deployment Recommendations for SAP Fiori Front-End Server.

      Please fix.

      Author's profile photo Michael Toft Schmidt
      Michael Toft Schmidt

      Also linked from https://help.sap.com/viewer/0a236c1f1d9b4bbd83fded76c190ee21/Fiori%20Tech%202.0%20(NW%207.52_FES%204.0%20SP01)%20Ship/en-US/870d75052255414c8d1fac04ebdec377.html