SAP DevOps


What is SAP DevOps?

Today’s technology space is defined by rapid application rollouts, upgrades, and updates to meet growing business demand to be agile, innovative, and competitive. The landscape is also characterized by an interconnected network of SAP and non-SAP software that needs to function in tandem. Agile and DevOps approaches can transform software change management in a big way with software development teams delivering change faster and more frequently, along with automation enabling testing and deployment to keep pace with rapid development.

DevOps for SAP builds upon the principles of agile development by emphasizing collaboration, openness, and automation for delivering new features and services with speed and flexibility. Limited accountability, visibility, and satisfaction are the results of traditional IT development and delivery methods that often involve separate departments working independently. However, in DevOps for SAP, eliminating departmental barriers and creating a versatile team that consistently communicates with each other is the focus. This results in collaboration between Development, QA, Operations, and the business side, and fosters effective communication, a sense of ownership, and trust. The ultimate objective is to establish a smooth and uninterrupted workflow for integrating, delivering, deploying, and enhancing services.

SAPinsider’s report on Change Management and Testing in SAP found that while the traditional waterfall model dominates for SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) or SAP Business Suite (37% vs. 28%), Agile and DevOps are starting to make inroads within SAP teams (43% plan to roll them out and 38% plan to roll out DevOps orchestration tools).

SAP teams, used to multi-year development projects followed by years of maintenance, must now adapt to this rapid, multi-modal development world. Many SAP teams struggle, leading to subpar application quality, suboptimal business value, security and compliance issues, business disruption, project delays, and budget overruns.

SAP teams need a suitable SAP-specific solution, with the capability to connect SAP to external continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) tools for non-SAP software. Several DevOps tools are available to accelerate workflows and enable CI/CD from ServiceNow, Microsoft Azure DevOps, and Rev-Trac; there is also open-source software such Jira, Jenkins, and GitLab.

These tools include change requirements management, source code, version control, and configuration management, among other things. Several of these tools can work across SAP and non-SAP and offer several features to enable DevOps.

  • Service Management: ServiceNow enables SAP change tickets to be stored and managed with the tickets for other systems. It’s possible to create an integration between ServiceNow and the SAP development environment using an SAP DevOps solution. DevOps for SAP orchestrates and synchronizes approvals across multiple development tracks while updating status in ServiceNow as change progresses through the pipeline.
  • Agile Backlog Management: An agile tool like Jira can enable the management of user stories as the business requirements change, with the SAP DevOps platform ensuring SAP development stays in sync with the current priorities in Jira, supporting reporting on status, Kanban boards, and traditional agile retrospective reporting such as burn down charts.
  • Automated Testing: By integrating SAP development through a DevOps automation platform, it’s possible to keep SAP testing aligned with non-SAP testing. Testing automation tools from vendors such as Panaya ensure that testing results are verified across pipelines, preventing the deployment of change until everything passes testing requirements.
  • Pipeline Integration: Many parts of the development cycle – approving code, release to quality assurance, and ultimately deployment to preproduction and production – are part of the integrated pipeline. With DevOps tools, there is full visibility of all software development through standard tools and greater efficiency resulting from standardized processes.

Why Adopt DevOps for SAP?

With customer expectations continuously rising as digital transformations pick up pace, businesses need to be agile and flexible enough to adapt to these changes or risk losing relevance. This is particularly true for traditional software Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) methods that are manual and lack transparency. DevOps allows us to update and enhance SAP systems and effectively respond to growing business demands. DevOps for SAP enables organizations to deliver new products, features, and services to their customers while minimizing risks. DevOps practices in the SAP development lifecycle can enable significant enhancements in software delivery holistically. Organizations can streamline process implementation for innovation and technical rehabilitation with reduced effort and minimized risk. With process automation in a DevOps framework, the need for manual intervention is eliminated and risk is reduced. Organizations can use automation to redirect valuable development resources towards addressing business challenges and innovation, and to seamlessly integrate SAP development into broader software delivery pipelines.

DevOps empowers IT to swiftly adapt to evolving market conditions and meet customer expectations. This ensures that IT remains highly responsive and delivers solutions that truly address the demands of the market and end users. With DevOps, organizations can free themselves from traditional SAP release cycles and transition to a Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) approach as deploying changes becomes easy and SAP systems gain enhanced agility and responsiveness.

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11 results

  1. SAP DevOps: Your Roadmap to Success

    Published: 30/July/2024

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    The 2024 DevOps FactSheet outlines the latest trends, tools, and methodologies that are transforming the software development and IT operations landscape. It highlights key statistics on DevOps adoption and performance improvements across various industries. The fact sheet provides actionable insights on integrating DevOps practices to enhance collaboration, efficiency, and product quality. Case studies demonstrate significant…

  2. Continuous Ransomware Protection and DevOps Data Appliances by Delphix

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    Delphix, the foremost authority in DevOps test data management, is set to release two innovative data appliances – the Delphix CDP Appliance and Delphix DevOps Appliance. These state-of-the-art devices, developed in collaboration with Dell Technologies, aim to enhance performance reliability in software solutions. The Delphix CDP Appliance provides organizations with a potent tool for continuous…

  3. Establish DevOps Practices for SAP during your SAP RISE and SAP Modernization Program

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  4. Masterclass: DevSecOps, SecDevOps and Secure Cloud Transformation: Accountability Through Cloud Security Engineering

    Learn how SAP incorporates a DevSecOps approach, focusing on security controls throughout the development cycle to secure their cloud services. Discover how they ensure compliance, detect and respond to incidents, and leverage data integration and enrichment for effective security operations. Gain actionable insights on how SAP "shifts left" and "shields right" to protect the cloud…

  5. CIO Change Executive Forum SAP

    How Tech Leaders Are Using DevOps for Change

    Published: 08/July/2022

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  6. Why SAP customers need DevSecOps now more than ever

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    Business leaders today are demanding greater responsiveness from their IT teams, and SAP is no exception. Join Ericsson’s Solution Architect Ravi Shah to learn how the company refined development methodologies and aligned SAP with the other elements of its complex software portfolio. In this session, you will examine Ericsson’s adoption of DevOps for SAP and…

  8. DevOps Is Coming To Your SAP Team: Three Steps To Take Before It Arrives!

    Published: 19/August/2020

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    If your organization is like most, you have a dedicated IT team just for responding to break-fix and small enhancement requests made by your SAP users. The author of this article explains how applying DevOps to your SAP change control process can improve time to market and add formality and structure to incoming requests. This…

  9. How to get started with DevOps for SAP

    Published: 27/February/2020

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    10 things you can do to get started on your journey to DevOps for SAP There’s a compelling business case for adopting DevOps for SAP, but how do you make the move away from a traditional approach to development? This ebook from Basis Technologies sets out 10 steps that can help you to shift from…

  10. Ericsson Delights Customers with DevOps SAP Integration

    Published: 30/April/2019

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    After 140 years in business, global technology giant Ericsson knows a thing or two about staying at the forefront of a changing industry. Learn how the company has modernized its IT delivery approach, and increased customer satisfaction, by adopting a continuous delivery model for its digital business support systems portfolio, and how it used the…