Technical Articles
Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management – Frequently Asked Questions
This collection of frequently asked questions provides brief answers to common questions about Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM). If you don’t find answer to your questions, please add them as comments.
Stay tuned and watch out ISLM SAP Community topic page for regular updates!!
- Miscellaneous
- How do you integrate SAP HANA ML scenario prepared on SAP Data Intelligence?
- Do you support ISLM integration for trainings that are performed with SAP HANA side car approach?
- Do you support SAP DI Private Cloud Edition as well?
- What is the difference to PAi?
- What does it mean for me, when I am using PAi today?
- Further information
- Where do I find information about in SAP S/4HANA out-of-the-box integrated machine learning functionality?
- Where do I find the roadmap for SAP S/4HANA – ISLM?
- Where do I find more information on how to develop ML with SAP Data Intelligence?
- Where do I find more information about APL and PAL?
- ISLM Limitations
ISLM Scope
What is ISLM?
Intelligent Scenario Lifecycle Management (ISLM) is a standardized framework that enables end-to-end lifecycle management operations and consumption of Machine Learning scenarios in SAP S/4HANA
What are the key benefits of ISLM?
ISLM Provides:
- Standardized framework to connect machine learning artefact to consuming business application and manage the lifecycle of these scenarios
- Harmonized cockpit to manage scenarios based on:
- SAP HANA ML (APL and PAL) embedded in the SAP S/4HANA stack
- Side-by-side machine learning scenarios where the machine learning artefact is running in the cloud like SAP BTP.
- Support for both SAP S/4HANA on-premise and SAP S/4HANA cloud
- Option to create your own intelligent scenarios and manage the model training, deployment and activation process.
What are the key functionalities of ISLM?
ISLM offers two SAP Fiori Apps to:
• Display the details of the intelligent scenarios.
• Create intelligent scenario for your specific business need.
• Train the scenario to generate a trained machine learning model or artifact for the business consumption.
• Deploy the trained machine learning models for inference consumption. (This functionality applies to Side-by-Side scenarios only.)
• Activate the trained machine learning model for which you want to get the inference results in your productive environment
• Inference Results – Get the access points for inference calls to get the predictions based on the trained models.
Availability
Is ISLM available already?
Yes – ISLM is released with SAP S/4HANA 2020 FPS0 (October 2020).
Is ISLM available for SAP S/4HANA cloud?
Yes – ISLM is available since SAP S/4HANA 2011.
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How is ISLM Shipped
It is shipped with SAP S/4HANA as part of SAP BASIS layer.
License/Pre-requisite
Is ISLM available for ECC?
No. It is delivered with SAP S/4HANA. It is available since SAP S/4HANA 2020 FPS0 for on-premise and with SAP S/4HANA cloud 2011.
Is there an additional license required?
No – it is part of the SAP S/4HANA license.
(For all remote scenarios it depends on the ML service/platform used – for which additional licenses are required.)
Will this capability require a SAP HANA Full Use Enterprise license under SAP S/4HANA?
No, it is part of the SAP S/4HANA license.
Prerequisites
Miscellaneous
How do you integrate a HANA ML scenario prepared on SAP Data Intelligence?
You can use the Python integration of SAP HANA ML and push developed PAL based scenarios to ISLM – this is available with SAP S/4HANA 2020 FPS01.
Do you support ISLM integration for trainings that are performed with a SAP HANA side car approach?
Currently not. It might be supported in the future in case there is a high customer demand.
Do you support SAP DI Private Cloud Edition as well?
It is not officially supported but should be technically possible as well. The next release of SAP Data Intelligence Private Edition should work for SAP S/4HANA ISLM integration.
What is the difference to PAi?
ISLM is the successor to Predictive Analytics integrator (PAi). In addition ISLM offers support for remote machine learning scenarios and development of SAP HANA ML based scenarios (based on APL and PAL).
What does it mean for me, when I am using PAi today?
With the upcoming release we offer migration support for the PAi content to ISLM. You can continue using predictive scenarios in SAP S/4HANA by using ISLM in the future, renamed to Intelligent Scenario.
Further Information
Where do I find information about in SAP S/4HANA out-of-the-box integrated machine learning functionality?
Please use the SAP Best Practices Explorer and search for the Scope Item to get more details. You will find the ID of the Scope Item there of each scenario. For example, you can search for Scope Item 55Z, you can find all details described in the configuration guide. SAP Community blog provides comprehensive list of scope Items of each scenario.
Where do I find the roadmap for SAP S/4HANA – ISLM?
Go to the SAP Road Map Explorer and search for “Machine Learning Scenario Management”.
Where do I find more information on how to develop ML with SAP Data Intelligence?
Join openSAP online course to learn about SAP Data Intelligence.
Get Started with SAP Data Intelligence, trial edition
And find tutorials here.
Where do I find more information about APL and PAL?
For more information on Automated Predicted Library (APL) & Predictive Analysis Library (PAL),
refer SAP Help Portal.
ISLM Limitations
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Participate in our customer engagement initiative project.
Great article. Happy that it is part of standard S/4 licensing.
Not available for ECC? That is very sad.
I do not see why SAP does not support this on an "ECC on HANA" system. I do not see any technical limitations here. SAP should reduce artificial entry barriers like this for increasing the adaption.
Thanks a lot for your comment and feedback, Krishna. It is always a question of capacity and resources. We have so many new requirements that we want to implement over time that the strategy is to invest in new innovations based on S/4HANA.
When do you plan to move to S/4HANA? And if you don't want to, please share your reasons, if you like.
Innovation goes along with movement in the new direction :-).
But - I totally understand, that a migration project is something that takes time and might cost a lot.
Let us help you to move to S/4HANA.
Thanks, Marion Schlotte for the reply. We are a partner company and on a pursuit to build intelligent applications for our SAP customers. However, there are lots of customers on BS on HANA who do not see an immediate need to move to S/4HANA. (Especially since SAP supports BS till 2027).
But they have already invested in HANA, they have all the capabilities for PAL/APL, still, they are unable to use it due to the high cost of ownership.
Technically, I do not see why ISLM cannot be supported in a BS on the HANA system.
I agree that adding prebuilt scenarios can be expensive, but just enabling ISLM for 'BS on HANA' should be a minor effort for SAP and it can go a long way in customer success and in showing SAP's commitment.
Nice article. Thanks for your effort.