*In the beginning continuous delivery for SAP S/4HANA Cloud
has also been referred to as Continuous Feature Delivery (CFD)
SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers have received 2111.1 - the first update based on the current 2111 release. What are the benefits of updates? Which updates and releases are planned next year? How can you as a customer make use of features provided via updates?
This blogpost is the first out of a series that aims to inform about these questions and related news around the topic of continuous delivery. Let's start with the basic idea of updates!
What are updates?
Explaining why we introduced updates I would like to draw the attention to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud release strategy of continuous delivery:
Coming from a quarterly release cycle, SAP S/4HANA Cloud has started to reduce the number of releases and system upgrades per year, while introducing frequent updates between releases.
The now semi-annual releases include the usual system upgrades with more extensive developments. Updates in between releases deliver functionalities without disrupting the day-to-day business of end-users.
Since the entire scope of all updates is included to the following biannual release, customers can choose whether to put a feature into operation – or not. In this sense, features provided via updates can be considered as optional pre-deliveries of the following release.
continuous delivery for SAP S/4HANA Cloud
What are the benefits of our continuous delivery strategy?
We see the following benefits with continuous delivery for SAP S/4HANA Cloud:
- Deliveries without disruption
Updates will not interfere with the daily work of SAP S/4HANA Cloud end users. No regression tests are necessary. Through updates, we keep your systems more stable. - Flexible adoption of innovations
Features delivered via updates behind toggles give customers the flexibility to choose the right time when to activate them. They will be made available to all customers in the next release or the one following. - Faster action on feedback or improvement requests
The higher update frequency of continuous delivery allows us to innovate faster and respond more quickly to improvement requests. Some functionalities delivered via update 2111.1 directly respond on votes out of the SAP customer influence portal.
Which features are included in 2111.1?
Like with releases, we are publishing features delivered via updates in the "What's New Viewer". Two weeks before an update, SAP publishes the preliminary What’s New documents. Starting with the release of the update, the final version is available.
What's New - 2111.1
As you probably noticed, we introduced a filter to the What’s New viewer “Feature Activation Required”. This will filter all features with day-1 impact, that require an activation of the related toggle.
For 2111.1 one feature is hidden behind a toggle as all other features in this update do not cause any day-1 impact (see below for more details, how we ensure that updates do not cause any day-1 impact).
Which releases and updates are planned in 2022?
Current planning includes two SAP S/4HANA Cloud releases. The below visual gives an overview of releases and related updates.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud - Release and Update Plan - 2022
For more specific dates, please check out the
Release, Update, and Maintenance Calendar for SAP S/4HANA Cloud
How does SAP ensure that updates do not have a day-1 impact?
With continuous delivery we follow the principle of regression-free deliveries. Reference for us is the so-called day-1 impact.
Changes with day-1 impact affect daily work, since they require downtimes, for example, or additional trainings for end users. To avoid this, any feature-development for an update delivery undergoes additional quality measures on top of the standard quality processes for releases.
Features in updates that cause a day-1 impact are delivered behind a toggle. Toggled features can be activated by the customer using the Activate New Features app.
A toggle introduced in an update has a limited lifetime. In the next release or the one following, the toggle will be deleted and the functionality will be active for all customers.
The below visual explains what we mean with day-1 impact and how this is managed via toggles in more detail.
Managing day-1 impact using toggles
Where do I receive further details on the implementation of new functionalities in continuous delivery?
For more information, please visit the following documentation:
This blog is the kick-start of our continuous delivery for SAP S/4HANA Cloud. I am looking forward to your questions and ideas. Please use the user tag "continuous delivery for SAP S/4HANA Cloud" in your question.
And - last not least, please stay tuned - we are about to release a community landing page on continuous delivery under the topic page of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Christian Geldmacher is member of the continuous delivery program in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud engineering team. He enables customers and partners to become accustomed to continuous deliveries and leads a multidisciplinary team that internally supports the engineering units on their way towards continuous delivery.
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