My last thoughts on this blog were published some two and a half years ago, and the topic of RISE with SAP and where it best fits has evolved over time. By now, SAP RISE is familiar to the SAP marketplace and has become more understood and recognized – though how SAP markets the solution leaves some subtle and important details unclear.
Picture the SAP Kernel as the heartbeat of the system, vitalizing the core programs upon which the fundamental functionality of SAP applications rely on. It's the life force pulsing through the application server, executable programs, database, and operating system, rather than merely encompassing them within itself. SAP Kernel upgrades refer to updating the system's current executables with upgraded versions. These upgrades are essential to patch security vulnerabilities and fix bugs. Besides bug fixing, SAP Kernel upgrades improve hardware compatibility, boost speed, and enhance stability.
Managecore is a managed service provider (MSP) offering solutions ranging from data center transformation and public cloud services to virtualization and IT managed services. The company wanted to ensure operational transparency for its clients. In doing so, Managecore planned to improve customer service by making it easier for clients to monitor their SAP environments and get real time alerts. Avantra, an automation platform for SAP and non SAP environments, stepped in with its AIOps platform to offer a multitenancy solution to Managecore. Besides automation, Avantra provided a real time SAP monitoring solution.
E-3 Magazine, in the June 2023 issue, featured a cover story about Avantra and the collaboration with our customer Nagarro. Reason enough to let the mind wander a bit and write a little more about this exceptionally good collaboration. It all started in 2013, back when CIBER Managed Services GmbH and our solution was not yet called Avantra, but Xandria. From the initial product presentation in Freiburg im Breisgau, my hometown, it was easy to see how well the attendees understood the solution, and from the questions and answers, it became clear how well we, at Avantra, knew the problems of a fast growing managed services business.
With around 130 employees, Innflow, one of the leading SAP consulting companies in Switzerland, implemented the Avantra AIOps platform for its private cloud infrastructure, three and a half years ago. Initially, the aim was to monitor its customers' SAP systems more precisely. After deploying Avantra, the SAP Basis team at Innflow quickly gained better control over the status of all customer systems and recorded significant quality improvements, as Felix Hausheer, Team Lead SAP Basis, confirms.
Time is precious and not for sale. Or is it? UMB AG, a leading Swiss IT service and managed services provider, takes the opposite view. Under the company motto "Creating Time", UMB provides its customers with more time which they use for their core business instead of IT administration. A core UMB service is complete support for SAP landscapes, be it on premise, in the UMB data centers or in the cloud. Here, UMB has relied on the artificial intelligence of the Avantra AIOps platform for a good five years in order to manage both its own SAP systems and its customers' as efficiently as possible.
It’s my pleasure to announce that the newest version of Avantra, 23.2, is now available for download through our customer hub. In this release we’ve focussed on bringing performance enhancements and usability improvements as well as enhancing our platform extensibility experience and bringing new automation templates to remove some of the mundane tasks that we know SAP operations teams get stuck doing rather than spending time on the more important stuff.
SAPPHIRE 2023 marked another significant milestone, leaving a lasting impression in the books. Returning to the Orlando Convention Center, the event had that ‘SAP energy’ we’re used to as thousands of like minded individuals congregated to exchange experiences, delve into SAP's upcoming plans, and foster valuable connections. Going beyond the walls of the convention center, SAPPHIRE extended its reach into the surrounding areas of Orlando.
With the 34°C / 104°F heat and a far cry from the 18°C / 64°F I returned home to, it was time to reflect on SAP Sapphire Orlando 2023, the trade show that was the first, in my opinion, post pandemic Sapphire since 2019. Over 13 thousand business leaders, partners and SAP staff descended on the Orange County Convention center in Orlando, Florida to discuss and debate all things SAP. So what were the key takeaways from my side?
Observability of an SAP environment is critical. Whether you have a large complex and hybrid environment or a small set of simply architected systems, the importance of these systems is probably crucial to your business. Just thinking about system outages keeps us up at night, let alone the pressure of system performance, cross system communication and proper backend processing.
