In 2015, SAP introduced SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (abbreviated as SAP S/4HANA) as the successor to its popular SAP Business Suite.
The History of SAP HANA
Behind the technological revolution represented by SAP HANA lies a fascinating story of innovation, challenges, and transformation within SAP. This ambitious project not only changed the way data is processed and analyzed but also shook the foundations of the leading enterprise software company.
Origins of the HANA Project
In the early 2000s, a small group of visionaries within SAP recognized the need to reinvent how companies managed and leveraged their data. Led by then Chief Technology Officer Vishal Sikka, this pioneering team faced widespread skepticism within the company. The idea of building an in-memory database capable of processing large volumes of data in real-time seemed overly ambitious and even unrealistic to many.
However, the HANA team persisted, convinced that this disruptive technology would be the future of enterprise computing. Working in secrecy with limited resources, the HANA developers overcame numerous technical obstacles, from optimizing memory usage to designing highly efficient data compression algorithms.
Innovations of SAP HANA
The most innovative aspect of SAP HANA was its ability to perform complex calculations directly in the database, avoiding the need to transfer data to external systems. Another fascinating aspect of HANA’s development was the interdisciplinary collaboration that took place. The team consisted of database experts, software engineers, data scientists, and hardware specialists, all working together to address the technical and performance challenges as the project progressed.
As HANA took shape, it became clear that this technology would not only revolutionize data processing but also lay the groundwork for a deeper transformation within SAP. The company was forced to rethink its software development approach, adopting agile methodologies and faster innovation processes to keep pace with HANA’s rapid development.
When SAP HANA was finally launched in 2010, after years of intensive development, it was met with enthusiasm from SAP customers and partners. However, the real revolution was yet to come with the launch of the S/4HANA suite, designed from the ground up to fully leverage the power of HANA. This paradigm shift not only transformed how companies managed their data but also sparked a wave of innovation throughout the enterprise software industry.
What is S/4HANA Suite?
This new generation of applications is designed for the digital age and built entirely on the SAP HANA in-memory platform. Unlike a simple update, S/4HANA represents a fundamental change with a simplified architecture, a non-redundant data model, and integrated analytics capabilities.
SAP has focused on making S/4HANA the intelligent ERP suite of the future, ready to handle big data “on memory,” meaning real-time computing capabilities, with a user experience enhanced by SAP FIORI, which significantly improves decision-making ease, simpler management, and even integrated predictive capabilities. Although migrating from Business Suite may be a complex project, the new capabilities and benefits of S/4HANA are well worth it. Let’s explore some of the key components that make up this powerful platform.
Components of SAP S/4HANA (SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA)
1. SAP S/4HANA Finance
The financial component is the core of the S/4HANA suite. It simplifies and modernizes major financial processes such as:
Financial Accounting
Unified and simplified structure for general ledger accounts
Universal currency conversion in real-time for multi-currency
Overhead cost engine powered by HANA
Universal ledger for consolidation without data redundancy
Accelerators to reduce the time for financial and fiscal closures
Tax Management
Real-time tax calculation with tax code determination
Integrated compliance for indirect taxes like VAT/IGV
Deferred tax provisioning and management of tax obligations
Automated fiscal reports, provisions, and declarations
Treasury and Financial Management:
Centralized treasury management with intelligent cash forecasting
Integrated enterprise risk management
Agile financial planning with real-time simulations
Refined access governance and compliance controls
Account Foundation and Parallel Accounting
2. SAP S/4HANA Logistics
This robust component helps optimize all facets of logistics and supply chain operations, including:
Procurement and Sourcing Operations
Treasury and Financial Management
Simplified acquisition-to-payment processes with intelligent automation
Supplier risk evaluation and management
Strategic and collaborative sourcing with integrated negotiations
Centralized contract lifecycle management
Enhanced ATP calculation engine, allowing for rapid MRP simulations
Inventory and Warehouse Management
Real-time inventory control with HANA
Advanced optimization of picking, packing, and shipping
State-of-the-art warehouse management with voice and vision
IoT integration for complete visibility and intelligent logistics
Demand Planning and Effective Response
Collaborative and intelligent forecasting with AI/Machine Learning
Hierarchical and integrated demand planning
Availability checks to prevent stockouts
Efficient response with optimal replenishment planning
Transportation Management
Air and ground transportation planning
Route optimization and freight consolidation
End-to-end shipment tracking visibility
Freight cost management and collaboration with carriers
3. SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing
Whether discrete, process, lean, or mixed-mode manufacturing, this comprehensive S/4HANA solution covers all aspects of production and operations:
Manufacturing Planning
Detailed demand planning based on constraints
Production scheduling from plant to the cloud
Collaborative planning with real-time simulation capabilities
Optimized scheduling and sequencing of orders and operations
Manufacturing Execution
Production order management and operation execution
Integration with Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)
Plant data capture and process control
Component and ingredient traceability
Manufacturing Analytics and Quality
Real-time analysis of efficiency and compliance
Quality reports and non-conformance management
Custom dashboards powered by HANA
Predictive maintenance with IIoT sensor data analysis
4. SAP Fiori
SAP Fiori is the new and intuitive user experience driving the core processes of S/4HANA through web and mobile applications. Some of its key features include:
Modern and Fluid Interface
Role-based design and frequent tasks
Consistent and customizable experience across all devices
Access from any mobile device or web browser
Configurable start pages and tiles for agile work
Ready-to-Use Applications
Over 500 ready-to-deploy Fiori applications
Cover end-to-end business scenarios
Designed with optimal user experience patterns and controls
Integrable and extensible with SAP Fiori Cloud
Analytical Application Platform
Rapid creation of analytics with SAP Analytics Cloud
Real-time operational and ad-hoc reporting
Dynamic dashboards with enriched visualizations
Predictive analytics integrated with AI/Machine Learning
Intelligent Application Development
Low-code/no-code platform for building Fiori applications
Agile and modern development with Fiori Elements
Integration with cognitive services and machine learning
Flexible deployment in the cloud or on-premises
5. SAP HANA
At the heart of the S/4HANA suite is SAP HANA, the revolutionary in-memory database and analytics platform. Some of its key capabilities are:
Real-Time Analytical Processing
Complex calculations at lightning speeds in-memory
On-the-fly aggregations and modeling without indices
Massively parallel processing and scalability
In-memory data replication synchronization
Simplified Data Model
No data redundancy thanks to real-time calculations
Unified views without the need for OLAP cubes
Integrated business semantics in calculation views
Continuous optimization via HANA data management
Integrated Intelligent Servicesl
Business rule engine, text mining, procedures
Predictive, streaming, and geospatial analytical libraries
Integration with cognitive services and machine learning
Extensibility with modern languages like SQLScript
Advanced Data Virtualization
Unified access to SAP data, Hadoop, cloud sources
Real-time replication and intelligent data integration
Distributed processing and query optimization
Dynamic management of data levels and temperature
With all these components working together seamlessly, SAP S/4HANA (or SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA) delivers business agility, real-time visibility, integrated intelligence, and a future-proof platform. Migrating from SAP Business Suite may seem like a significant challenge, but the rewards are substantial. If you need a detailed and practical guide on how to plan and execute your migration to SAP S/4HANA, check out our Complete Migration Guide.
And if you want to learn more about our services, please contact us.
We present the SAP S/4HANA and BW/4HANA Upgrade project on RISE with SAP in Azure, from the hand of those responsible in Colbún, one of the leading energy companies in South America.
Colbún S.A. is a Chilean company dedicated to the generation and commercialization of electricity and the provision of energy solutions. It has 27 power plants in Chile and Peru, more than 1,000 workers and an installed capacity of close to 4,000 MW. It has a 13 % share of the Chilean market and is currently working to double its size by 2030 with 100 % renewable energies, offering energy solutions that help the sustainability of its customers. For this reason, the company is actively seeking opportunities to grow in Green Hydrogen and water treatment.
As we told you in the article Colbún and the advantages of having a single SAP service provider (SAP AMS), in an interview with Claudio Gutiérrez, head of Corporate Systems at Colbún, SAP is its main corporate platform, on which all financial, accounting, logistics, purchasing, maintenance, project management, human resources, billing, commercial, etc. processes are supported. Among the SAP solutions they have S/4 HANA, I-SU, SuccessFactors, Employee Central Payroll, PO/CPI, Concur, Ariba, IAG, etc. Their platform was in SAP HEC, and they migrated to SAP RISE. Novis has been since 2020 the partner in charge of technical and functional continuity of their SAP solutions, on both platforms.
The innovation that Colbún needs to comply with its Strategy 2030 requires a flexible and powerful platform. Therefore, in 2023, the company decided to upgrade the SAP S/4HANA system version, as it was already incompatible with the new requirements.
On Colbún’s side, this project was led by two people:
Claudio Tejos, head of Corporate Systems, Information Technology Management, who was the functional leader of the project. His tasks mainly included managing all the impact that the change would have on users, reviewing the project plan and user testing.
Eduardo Cortés, SAP IT Infrastructure specialist, also from Colbún’s IT Management, was the technical leader. He oversaw all the infrastructure required for the operation of the project and the technical activities necessary to coordinate with the companies participating in the project.
From left to rigth: Claudio Tejos and Eduardo Cortés.
Reasons for doing the S/4HANA Upgrade project.
Claudio Tejos points out: “It has been about 3 or 4 years since we had done an upgrade. We had several initiatives stopped for this reason, such as the connection with SAP Ariba. We needed to be updated to support the new business strategies.
The objective of this project was to reduce the technological obsolescence gap of Colbún’s SAP systems, for which the SAP S/4 HANA and SAP BW/4 HANA version was updated, to maintain operational continuity and to be able to grow in a sustained manner. Novis is our SAP partner, their consultants provide support and maintenance to our users, they are very validated internally”.
Eduardo Cortés indicates in turn, “this was a very transversal and visible project in Colbún. We evaluated several options and selected Novis not only because they presented the best proposal, but also because we were already working with them, and we trusted in the great experience of their team of consultants and their knowledge of our internal systems. In addition, Novis had experience in SAP S4HANA migrations”.
Project details
The project proposed by Novis included:
S/4HANA upgraded from version v1809 to version 2022 SP1..
Upgrade of BW/4HANA to version 2021 SP4.
Upgrade of systems hosted and managed by SAP ECS.
The proposed solution was a technical upgrade project, for both systems, which included all technical and functional consulting, as well as:
The technical upgrade tasks that are not executed by SAP.
The interaction with SAP for the coordinated execution of the tasks.
Functional corrections required for the systems to continue operating as they were.
Support for testing and test monitoring.
The modules included in the functional scope are all those currently implemented, except IS-U.
Developments (Z).
How was it developed and what was the result of the project?
Claudio Tejos adds “it was a very challenging project, the most complex was the first month of planning, when we coordinated the work commitments to achieve synergy between the six companies and more than 100 people involved.
The knowledge and experience of the Novis team shows when there are errors, and they can quickly find the solution. We were very satisfied, this project ended successfully, and we were recognized internally.
In the coming years we expect to do annual upgrade processes. We are looking for tools for test automation, to demand less time from our business users”.
For his part, Eduardo Cortés emphasizes “at the beginning of the project we were all a bit tense because of the challenge. The knowledge of Novis consultants was a great contribution. It is a consolidated team, you can see that they have been working together for a long time, which made the development of the project with them very smooth. Novis was also in charge of the relationship with SAP.
When we were in the testing stage, we were pleasantly surprised that we had a very low error rate, around 3% in more than 3,000 user tests.
For the project, our approach was to first do just the upgrade and then do stabilization, and only then start with the innovation issues. It took us three months and now we are already doing the innovation projects.”
This is part of the project team. From left to rigth:
Felipe Soto: Logistics Systems Manager
Jorge Castro: IT Project Manager
Juan Alarcón Ramírez: IT Infrastructure Manager
Claudio Tejos: Head of Corporate Systems
Eduardo Cortés: IT Infrastructure Technical Leader
Luis Jiménez: BI Consultant
If you would like to know more about Novis services, we invite you to contact us.
Article by Gilda Valderrama, Novis Newsletter Editor.
FinOps, or financial operations, is a practice that emphasizes the importance of updating traditional methods of infrastructure expense management to avoid high cloud bills, as the move to public clouds seems to be an unstoppable trend in the technology market.
In large clouds, the latest technologies are hosted and at a very low cost, from advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, tools for IOT, as well as SAP solutions and many useful services. Not to mention that almost all new developments and applications are hosted there. The clouds allow to mount numerous project platforms in parallel and use pay as you go pricing models, to schedule the platform depending on the availability of development teams. A managed public cloud allows the deployment, scheduling, and backup of transient development platforms to be done without significant costs. In this way, multiple projects can move forward based on their own development capabilities, multiplying the output capacity of the same budget.
As companies move their applications and workloads to the public cloud, the task of controlling and optimizing their costs to ensure efficient resource utilization in a highly dynamic environment becomes increasingly essential. And it becomes more complicated when workloads are distributed between different accounts or even between different clouds. In these cases, achieving a single point of review becomes a highly complex problem. The solution lies in robust and effective cost management that provides visibility and control over spend across all cloud environments used, especially when it comes to SAP cloud solutions. This is what we talked about in the article How to have visibility and control over the cost of SAP cloud solutions.
Cloud operation presents significant challenges, which can be grouped into three parts: cloud infrastructure optimization, cost management and security. Each of these challenges is addressed by Novis Cloud Controller (NCC), Novis’ cloud optimization platform, which is already operating in more than 40 companies.
Optimization of the cloud infrastructure:
The use of the cloud requires very precise management of the infrastructure being used. In contrast to on-premises infrastructure, inefficient use immediately results in cost overruns (on-premises in the medium term as well). To handle this in a simplified way, NCC evaluates numerous efficiency indicators, such as CPU utilization, reservation management, backup policies and many others that, if properly managed, allow to substantially reduce the cloud cost without losing any functionality. The evaluation of efficiency indicators is performed simultaneously on the three major clouds (GCP, Azure, AWS) for those clients operating in a multi-cloud environment.
Cost management in the cloud:
In addition to efficiently using resources, it is extremely useful to be able to analyze where they are being consumed, in which units or projects in the company and determine where costs are increasing and where they are improving. Many companies run multiple projects in multiple clouds and need to know if those costs are evolving as expected.
NCC generates trend dashboards with analysis of which components are increasing and which are decreasing, making it easy for project managers to visualize trends and verify whether original budgets are being met. In this way, by monitoring efficiency and costs, companies can keep a granular and effective control of their cloud usage, as well as being an important input for project post-evaluation.
Cloud security:
NCC integrates the information provided by different World Class security solutions developed by Microsoft, such as the multi-cloud Defender for Cloud and the multi-platform Defender for Endpoint (leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant 2023). These products, powered by the most modern Threat Intelligence, will deliver multiple indicators of the different layers of Security, allowing you to get a 360-degree and centralized view of the security status of all your platforms (even in hybrid and multi-cloud deployments). This information is available in NCC and allows you to make efficient use of resources, prioritizing efforts in the areas of the architecture that require it, facilitating decision making and reducing cybersecurity-related risks.
Life in the cloud is a constantly evolving journey where optimization, cost control and security play a crucial role. At Novis we are committed to improving our clients’ experience by developing the necessary tools for optimal management of the cloud environment.
Please contact us for more information about our services.
In this article we want to introduce you to a solution that can contribute to the way your organization leverages cloud tools to analyze your SAP data: Google Cloud Cortex Framework.
Cortex is a platform that provides pre-built models and templates for processing and visualizing the main SAP ERP data, which facilitates and accelerates the construction of analytics solutions.
accessibility, flexibility, collaboration, scalability, and cost, which we discussed in the article Advantages and challenges of cloud analytics for companies using SAP.
Today we are going to focus on another crucial aspect: access to a wide range of tools that the cloud has to offer, including Google Cloud Cortex.
SAP solutions are characterized by a high level of complexity, the analysis of which requires technical and specialized knowledge. Cortex has been specifically designed to streamline and optimize SAP data migrations to the cloud, simplifying the process and drastically reducing implementation times for analytics projects. How does it achieve this? Through pre-built data processing and visualization options, making use of reference architecture patterns and packaged services.
Through Cortex, it is now possible to implement the entire data lifecycle for your SAP system (ingestion, storage, processing, and visualization) in weeks instead of months. This provides the ability to obtain critical information, such as:
Order fulfillment: how efficient is your supply chain? What percentage of deliveries are on time? What is the average delivery time?
Accounts receivable: How much do your clients owe you? How is your collection process? Who are your main debtors?
Once your SAP data is loaded into the platform, Cortex makes it easy to integrate and cross-reference this data with information from other systems or public data. This enables advanced analytics, such as correlating product demand with weather conditions or Google.com search trends. It also gives you the ability to make accurate forecasts about future demand for your products, using GCP’s Machine Learning platform as a basis.
The information can be visualized in dashboards such as the following:
It is important to note that once your company is on Google Cloud, you will not be charged for the use of Cortex Platform and its pre-built features. The costs are associated with the services used in the underlying Google Cloud Platform (GCP) infrastructure, such as Google Cloud Storage, Dataflow, BigQuery or Vertex AI. This allows full control over your cloud expenses.
At Novis, we have a team of specialists with experience and expertise in: SAP data mining, Data Analytics and the GCP platform, which are the foundation for a successful implementation of Cortex in your company, thus unlocking the potential of your data and accelerating your digital transformation.
If you are interested in exploring how Google Cloud Cortex can drive efficiency, decision making and growth for your organization, please feel free to contact us.
Traditional security measures are not enough to protect SAP systems and their data. One of the flanks to protect is the Security Notes, which SAP releases every month, which we suggest doing through a permanent application to minimize vulnerabilities, as we saw in the article Security in SAP: What are the flanks to protect.
What are SAP Security Notes
Security Notes are small patches that cover, and fix vulnerabilities detected in different components of SAP systems. Vulnerabilities are certain flaws, such as program errors, that could allow a malicious attacker to expose sensitive data, crash the system, or obtain data that can be exploited to initiate another attack. Vulnerabilities are detected by SAP or third parties, and are rated according to their severity in Low, Medium, High and HotNews priorities.
The fixes developed by SAP, or SAP Security Notes, are generally released on the first Tuesday of each month, in its traditional Patch Tuesday. Exceptionally, in the case of a very critical vulnerability, the fix is released immediately, on an individual basis. In addition, all Security Notes are eventually incorporated into the Support Packages Stacks (SPS).
Why we must keep our SAP systems protected
All SAP systems have vulnerabilities in their various components (data engine, Netweaver, Java, ABAP, etc.). The greater the number of vulnerabilities, the greater the attack surface and, therefore, the greater the chances that a malicious attacker will exploit one of these known vulnerabilities to gain access to the system, obtain confidential information, damage, or crash the system, or even hijack an entire database by means of ransomware.
Access to a system for an attack can come from anywhere in the world, in the case of one that is exposed to the Internet; but it can also originate from within a company or institution, or from its suppliers or business partners with enabled access (see for example the case of the hacking of the Chilean Army by a corporal).
So, the attack surface that is exposed in an SAP system increases to the extent that it is not updated, that is, Support Packages or Security Notes released monthly by SAP have not been applied. The direct consequences can be the attacks themselves, in the worst case, but they can also be a poor score in a security audit or a penetration test.
Keeping SAP systems secure
According to SAP Insider’s 2023 Benchmark Report: Cybersecurity Threats to SAP Systems, clients’ top security challenge is keeping systems current with patches and updates.
To keep up to date with SAP Security Notes, a constant process is required that includes:
Ongoing collection of security note information released by SAP.
Analysis of the notes to determine if they are applicable to the client’s landscape
Determination and evaluation of the side effects and risks of the implementation of the notes.
Implementation planning, in coordination with the client.
Implementation, according to the plan, necessary human resources, and project requirements (e.g., testing).
Transport to production.
This is a process that is not normally implemented for SAP clients. It is labor-intensive and requires very specific technical and functional skills. Although various tools have appeared to support this process, they do not constitute a solution on their own, as they require technical knowledge of the associated security concepts, in addition to mastery of the tool itself.
For this reason, comprehensive solutions to the different vulnerabilities, in the form of services delivered by a specialized provider, are more effective.
Novis offers a standardized service for the permanent application of SAP Security Notes, structured according to SAP best practices, and based on recognized SAP Vulnerability Management tools. This service can be delivered to any SAP systems client, regardless of whether their systems are In House, in Private Hosting, in Public Cloud, in SAP HEC, in RISE, etc.
For more information on this and other of our security services we invite you to contact us.
Author: Glen Canessa.
San Pablo Pharmacy (Pharma Plus, S.A. de C.V.) is a leader in the pharmaceutical sector in Mexico. It is a company dedicated to the sale of medicines and health and wellness products, with 100 branches and an online sales channel.
It offers a loyalty program to its customers, as well as laboratory services and medical consultations in person or virtually.
San Pablo Pharmacy selected Novis as its SAP partner in the project of merging companies and migrating to S/4 HANA. The Novis team carried out the project, which was successful and went into production on April 1, 2023.
If you want to know more about our services, we invite you to contact us.
Grupo Lamosa is a Mexican company, leader in the ceramics and construction products sector.
The acquisitions of Grupo Roca’s tile business during the third quarter of 2021 and of Fanosa in early 2022 showed an outstanding performance in 2022. Thus, Grupo Lamosa’s constant development makes it a company with consolidated revenues more than US$1.5 billion and the largest in the coatings industry in the entire American continent. Source: Video https://grupolamosa.com/desarrollo
With more than 130 years, Grupo Lamosa faces the constant challenge of modernizing and optimizing its technological infrastructure to improve business management.
More than 10 years ago, it started operations in SAP, initially acquiring the infrastructure and operating OnPremise. At the end of 2022, it decided to migrate to the public cloud, motivated by technological obsolescence, lack of flexibility to scale according to the company’s needs, and limited infrastructure capacity to implement new functionalities and upgrades quickly. To carry out the migration project, the company chose Novis, which is also in charge of the operation of all its systems in AWS, under a managed services model.
Rubén Figueroa, CIO of LAMOSA, commented: “We chose Novis because of their vast experience in migration projects, upgrades and operation of SAP technology platforms. They perfectly understand the development and criticality of this type of project and the impact on the business operation. Novis has always been a technology partner committed to accompanying LAMOSA, and today we are very satisfied with the result. The strategic partnership with Novis provides Lamosa with the peace of mind of having expert and continuous technical support, allowing the company to focus on its long-term growth and success”.
Recently, according to reports from cybersecurity companies such as Check Point and Kaspersky, cyber-attack attempts in Chile have increased significantly (see article in El Mostrador). Among those affected by this type of attack are important organizations such as Sernac, the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the National Defense, BancoEstado, the Administrative Corporation of the Judiciary and, recently, Mercado Público. In the latter case, the Chilecompras web platform had been down for about ten days (see Interferencia’s note).
SAP systems are, in general, very critical systems and, therefore, highly desirable for ransomware-type attacks; in addition, they usually handle very valuable data. Potential threats include not only external cyber-attacks, but also attempts at fraud or information leaks, which usually come from within companies or institutions. In this context, in its Trust Center SAP promotes different actions to take care not only of security, but also of data privacy, compliance and transparency.
Given the increase in threats, it is now necessary to protect the operational continuity of SAP systems and the data residing in them with multiple additional security measures, to cover all exposed flanks – the attack surface – and mitigate the risks that cannot be eliminated with all these layers of protection.
Traditional SAP security
Until now, the security of SAP systems was mainly concentrated in three areas:
Infrastructure security, which includes datacenter, servers, storage, etc.
Communications security, mainly VPNs and firewalls.
SAP access security, through credentials and authorizations, with the traditional system of roles and profiles.
Given the new nature of attacks, these traditional security measures are not sufficient to safeguard SAP systems and their data. In this year’s SAP Insider “Cybersecurity Threats to SAP Systems” survey, respondents were asked to rank the top cybersecurity threats to their SAP systems from highest to lowest. Ransomware (data hijacking) attacks, unpatched systems and credential compromise were ranked as the most important to systems, as they were last year. The continued growth of cloud migration, integration, data augmentation, virtualization, mobile device access and the Internet of Things (IoT) have made securing these connections a critical element of cybersecurity. Vulnerabilities due to unsecured systems and connections can be a direct channel to SAP for ransomware, malware (malicious software) and other attacks.
The new security requirements for SAP
If we look at the different layers that make up the security of an SAP system (see figure), we can see the following:
1) Communications security is traditionally entrusted to a scheme of private links and firewalls, or to the use of VPNs. Although these solutions provide a basic level of security, they are not sufficient and other measures are required to complete an acceptable range (application firewalls, proxies, etc.). The current trend is to move towards a Zero Trust security model, as shown by Gartner in its report Zero Trust Architecture and Solutions, where it predicts that by 2023, 60% of organizations will use the Zero Trust security model instead of VPNs (see Zero Trust Security: what it is and why it is important).
2) The security of the infrastructure should be well covered by the hosting provider, either with a traditional datacenter or with a public cloud. In the case of a public cloud, the responsibility is shared between the cloud itself and the client or the cloud hosting provider. Here it is very important to have the expertise of a specialized provider, hopefully certified by the cloud itself (see article Our cybersecurity solutions in SAP’s cloud operation).
3) Security within SAP applications themselves should cover at least the following:
SAP security notes, and their ongoing implementation, hopefully as part of a larger vulnerability management process.
Access security, secure credentials, key protection, etc.
SAP roles and profiles, including proper request and authorization process, and ongoing risk analysis and mitigation.
SAP roles and profiles, including proper request and authorization process, and ongoing risk analysis and mitigation; Custom Code (Z) security, based on best practices, analysis, and auditing.
Threat detection, in the form of suspicious activity within the SAP application.
The new advanced security solutions for SAP
The current threat environment has prompted the emergence of various tools to provide additional security for SAP system environments. However, these do not constitute a solution on their own. Technical knowledge of the associated security concepts is required in addition to the tool itself. It also requires ongoing, structured processes for monitoring, detection, notification, and response to security incidents.
For this reason, comprehensive solutions to the different vulnerabilities, in the form of services delivered by a specialized provider, are more effective. Among these solutions we can highlight the following:
Zero Trust Access Service, which includes the implementation of the secure communications solution, and the ongoing support and operation of the solution.
SAP Security Notes Service, a permanent service of information gathering of SAP security notes, applicability analysis, planning and implementation of the notes.
SAP Threat Detection Service, a permanent service for monitoring and detection of suspicious activity in SAP, including manual and automatic structured responses for the most critical cases.
SAP Function Segregation of Duties Service, including the initial analysis of associated risks, their remediation or mitigation, and a permanent service for managing access change requirements, and the analysis and mitigation of associated risks.
In Novis we have services and new advanced security options for SAP systems, of which we will show more details in later deliveries. For more information about our services, we invite you to contact us.
Feedback/discussion with the author: Glen Canessa.
The course registration process is a challenge for universities and can be very stressful both for students and for the IT services areas in charge of ensuring that the systems work well. At the Universidad Católica del Maule, also known as UCM, they are very satisfied in this regard, because with the support of Novis, in their recent process of taking classes they successfully attended to their students, at a rate of 1,700 every 30 minutes, through the student portal, designed in SAP Fiori, which is integrated with the SAP solutions of this house of studies.
Universidad Católica del Maule is one of the six traditional Catholic universities in Chile. Its main campus is in Talca, with eight faculties and a general education department, distributed in three campuses.
UCM implemented SAP S/4 HANA in 2019, selecting Novis as its partner, who provides the SAP IT service, which consists of providing the infrastructure for SAP solutions in the Novis cloud, operational support, and administration.
We spoke with Moisés Ahumada, head of applications at UCM, responsible for continuous functional improvement, support and projects, and Juan Manuel Espinoza, head of IT infrastructure at UCM and who oversees the administration of SAP solutions, which are managed by Novis. Both described to us how they are coping successfully with the course registration process:
“We currently have more than eleven thousand regular students, who take classes the same week, according to a calendar for each faculty, which gives us an average of about 3,500 per day. The students are anxious; they want to be attended to quickly to choose their courses, professors, and to match schedules, in short. When the daily process opens at 9:00 a.m. we have an average of 1,700 students waiting, which we can serve in less than 30 minutes.
The first time it didn’t work out very well, we were not able to attend them during peak hours, so based on the results of that process we worked with Novis adjusting and enhancing the infrastructure in their private cloud (on premise). In the second year we improved a lot and in this third year we achieved a flawless process.
Our strategy has been to set up more application servers during periods of high demand and implement the use of a virtual waiting room to regulate the flow of attention, while we monitor with the tools provided by Novis both the response time for students and the use of the servers.
We are attentive both functionally and operationally, so that the process is orderly, and our students have good experience.
Being in the Novis cloud has given us the flexibility to increase the number of servers only at peak times, which are the enrollment and grade-taking periods, paying according to usage. Normally we have five application servers, and for the process of taking classes we increase to eight. The virtual room also has a cost, which we do not pay every month, but only when we use it.
Sometimes the calendar for taking grades coincides with the financial closing of the month, which is also done in SAP, so that in addition to the students, we must attend to the users of the budget and finance units.
During the process of taking grades, we set up a call center with a unique number to assist students. Another indicator we look at are the comments on social networks, and so we know that our users this year are satisfied with the results of the process. So we have the peace of mind that we have fulfilled our mission well.”
If you would like to receive more information on this or any other topic, please contact us.
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The channel has more than 50 videos and the content is organized in several lists, some of them:
Client cases
Here you will find the experience of Mexican companies such as CasaIdeas, Empresas Taylor, Kidzania, RCD Hoteles, El Manantial, Prodemex, Bodesa, Grupo Merza and Sigfried Rhein.
Recorded Webinars
Here you can review the recordings of the webinars we have already conducted: How the role of IT is changing to support digital transformation; Migrating to SAP S/4 HANA; Tips for selecting SAP outsourcing; Migrating from datacenter to public cloud; and more.
In this article you will find summaries and descriptions of the webinars.
SAP Upgrade and HANA Migration Services
Three videos are available here on how to approach SAP upgrades, upgrades, and migration to HANA in one step, as well as an overview of the services we have designed to support our clients.
Services for SAP in public cloud
We have designed a service model, based on our experience since 2015 operating in the public cloud, that maximizes the benefits of this platform. NovisCloud Manager automates SAP operations on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), with high standards of security, agility, and efficiency.
We invite you to check out our new YouTube channel for Novis USA which includes videos in English only. And to follow us on LinkedIn.
Our social media channels are available to hear your views. We would love to know what topics you would like to see us develop in the future. You can comment on any of the above networks or send an email to Gilda Valderrama, gilda.valderrama@noviscorp.com, newsletter editor.
Chile
México
Estados Unidos
