Technical Articles
Cloud Operations Best Practices for SAP Integrated Business Planning Run Operations
Run Operations for SAP software systems and services are typically embedded in the organizational and procedural models and practices of Customer Center of Expertise (CCOE) and therein the Operations Control Center (OCC). The latter is responsible for the two main processes of Run Operations scenario Detect-to-Correct: Event Management and Continuous Improvement.
Customer Center of Expertise with Operations Control Center
See the appendix for further documentation of Operations Control Center topics. In this document, operations topics specifically for running SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) are suggested and outlined. The intention is to provide and refer to a list of Cloud Operations Knowledge Base Articles (KBAs), which address these operations topics, and which have been made available for SAP IBP. This article focuses on operations challenges for which the customer of an as a Service software is responsible for according to the simplified Cloud Responsibility Model (displaying only public cloud).
Simplified Cloud Responsibility Model: Roles and Responsibilities for Different Deployment Options
Please note: While SAP’s Customer Center of Expertise and Operations Control Center concepts are aligned and compliant with standards such as ITIL, the operations topics or challenges listed below are more functional in nature, i.e. represent a framework for activities in an Operations team or applications, features, and functions of an Operations toolset – rather than a structured set of processes. However, these activities mapped to functionality are part of the ITIL processes Event Management and Continual Improvement and hence part of the OCC and CCOE organizational model.
Knowledge Base Article: 3011150 – SAP IBP Operations Best Practice: Organizational Model
Application Monitoring and Metering
Application monitoring provides application specific insights in cloud services and systems, including background job monitoring, availability monitoring, performance monitoring, configuration and change monitoring, access and security monitoring, usage monitoring and metering as well as potentially further aspects.
Goal: Ensure the healthiness of application processing and measure the basic quality and usage of services.
Knowledge Base Article: 3011130 – SAP IBP Operations Best Practice: Application Monitoring and Metering
Technical and Business Process Analytics and Improvement
Technical Analytics and Improvement allows the analysis and visualization of technical data and exceptions.
Business Process Analytics and Improvement allows the analysis and visualization of business documents/transactional throughput and backlog data as well as quality of master data.
Goal: Ensure the structured and visual identification of functional painpoints for improvement purposes.
Knowledge Base Articles:
3011166 – SAP IBP Operations Best Practice: Technical Analytics and Improvement
3011182 – SAP IBP Operations Best Practice: Business Process Analytics and Improvement
Data Management
Data Management ensures consistency and integrity of data as well as data interoperability and data volume management.
Goal: Ensure that data models and storage are documented, data volume is monitored and analyzed, initial and delta data loads are governed and logged – error situations being resolvable by repeated data loads not leading to permanent data inconsistencies.
Knowledge Base Article: 3011137 – SAP IBP Operations Best Practice: Data Management, Data Consistency Procedures/Contents
Event and Alert Management
Event & Alert Management allows to handle events and alerts efficiently and efficiently, consuming data from the monitoring use cases and calculating alerts to be followed up with the help of predefined root cause analysis and alert follow up procedures/guides (including notification management and automatic event reaction).
Goal: Ensure the structured, guided, immediate follow up of events and correction of alerts – anytime and in consistent quality.
Knowledge Base Article: 3011118 – SAP IBP Operations Best Practice: Event & Alert Management, Incident Management, and Problem Management
Integration Monitoring
Integration Monitoring provides near-real-time monitoring of interface calls and/or message flows, i.e. the handling of single message flows processed by SAP Cloud Platform Integration as well as peer-to-peer interface usage via REST service or SOAP service calls.
Goal: Ensure the healthiness of interfaces and interface steps of business services and detect anomalies of interface executions.
Knowledge Base Article: 3011172 – SAP IBP Operations Best Practice: Integration Monitoring
Integration with 3rd Party ITSM Tools and Systems
Inbound and outbound integration from and to application management toolsets and systems ensures a best of breed approach for Operations.
Goal: Ensure that APIs and content templates for metrics, events, KPIs/PPIs, scores etc. are available on all relevant granularity levels – at least for data consumption by unified operations platforms aka managing systems.
Knowledge Base Article: 3011120 – SAP IBP Operations Best Practice: Integration with 3rd Party Tools and Systems
Job Management
Job Management allows for the documenting, planning, scheduling, and execution of IT automation, aka background jobs in a defined and guided manner.
Goal: Ensure that background jobs are documented, scheduled, and governed – to diligently safeguard and optimally automate task execution.
Knowledge Base Article: 3011157 – SAP IBP Operations Best Practice: Job Management + Mass-Processing Runtime Management
System Health Monitoring
System Health Monitoring allows Operations Control Centers to monitor managed systems and services as published by the service provider.
Goal: Ensure the healthiness of cloud services to the degree possible utilizing the information published by the cloud service provider.
Knowledge Base Article: 3011181 – SAP IBP Operations Best Practice: System, DB and OS Monitoring
Appendix: Further Information
SAP Solution Manager 7.2 Public Demo System
SAP Solution Manager 7.2 Media Center
SAP Cloud ALM Public Demo System
Background Job Management with SAP Solution Manager
Background Job Request and Documentation Process Variants with SAP Solution Manager
SAP First Guidance – Implement SAP BW/4HANA in the Azure Cloud
Blog - SAP MacGyver – Installing SAP SolMan 7.2
Best Regards Roland