SAP homepage redesigns through the years

Let's remind the design of SAP's homepage evolution.

One of some very first homepages at early 1996:

Version of 1977:

In 1998 the new dimension products were introduced:

More tabstripped style of homepage came in 1999:

Year 2000 e-business slogan arrived:

Year 2001 the best-run e-business run SAP slogan came in reality:

Year 2002 – when SAP’s classics layout of its web pages was introduced: horizontal menu under left side logo and right pane:

Year 2003 just a quite lot of new marketing slogans were introduced like:

SAP TO MAKE MONEY.SAP TO SAVE MONEY

YOU RUN A STRONG BUSINESS. YOU NEED A STRONG SOLUTION.

SOLVE TOMORROW’S CHALLENGES. TODAY.

INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS. TO INNOVATE BUSINESS.

And many more…

Year 2004 – classics layout was changed, horizontal menu became vertical:

Year 2005: change in the most famous slogan, e-businesses became businesses:

Up to year 2007 there were a few minor changes in pages layout till June 2007 when SAP is abandoning its blue base colors and gets more bright colors in there:

Around beginning of year 2010: 

Around May 2011, catching up the newest trends, e.g. all major social media-networks integrated:

Year 2022:

P.S.: web.archive.org has been used to capture some of screenshots.

Unsucsessful BI projects

Here's an interesting article about (not)success of BI projects:

http://www.cbronline.com/article_cbr.asp?guid=BE8BE7D0-CD23-48CC-9FD4-42EF5486A846

Have you ever worked for such a project?

BW Go live Optimization report

SAP AG always recommend to performing the SAP Going-Live Checks for your production system. Depending on the phase of your project, these checks, offered by SAP, analyze the hardware sizing, check the configuration of the server and components, find performance bottlenecks, and verify the capacity of CPU and memory. The results of the checks are issued in a report (approximately 50 pages) provided by SAP.

EP Going-Live Check Analysis Session (GA) - The GA session checks whether the available hardware is sufficient for the planned workload. Recommendations for the component settings are made.

EP Going-Live Check Optimization Session (GO) - The GO session simulates workload on the system and identifies performance bottlenecks and potential risks.

EP Going-Live Check Verification Session (GV) - The GV session checks the behavior of the production system after going live and provides appropriate recommendations.

What does such a GO session report contains in case of BW system is depicted below. The purpose of the session is to analyze most important InfoCubes and Queries, and to assess any potential problems in system. SAP takes few InfoCubes and Queries and makes this session based on them. Report may have following structure:

1. BI Overview checks
1. BI Administration and design

1. Data distribution

2. Analysis of InfoProviders

3. Analysis of aggregates

4. Recommendations for BI

5. BI Statistics

2. BI Reporting and planning

1. BI Runtime Statistics

2. Analysis of Query Definition

3. Analysis of OLAP Cache

4. Frontend Servers

3. BI warehouse management

1. Upload Statistics

2. Process Chains - Runtime Overview

3. Source System Settings

2. BI application checks
1. Optimization of InfoProvider

1. InfoCube 1

2. InfoCube N

2. Analysis of reporting and planning performance

1. Report 1

2. Report N

3. Upload checks for
1. Configuration for BI uploads

1. Important SAP Notes for data upload

2. Process chains

1. Chain: 1

2. Chain: N

For more information check out http://service.sap.com/safeguarding.

Web template adjustment is not working while running on portal (SAP EP)

If you change some attributes of web template in Web Application Designer for example no of row and columns displayed in report.

You might worry why those settings are not applied by system if you run your query from portal environment.

According the documentation:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/en/33/39fa40ee14f26fe10000000a1550b0/frameset.htm there is important property, BEx Web Application Query String, set automatically for the BEx Web Application Designer and the BEx Query Designer. You need to enter these properties manually in the Portal Content Studio:

Then you will be running the same web template on portal and with your raw URL query links.

Technical info on launching BI objects from SAP EP

Here some abstract form SAP documentation about technical implementation of running BI object (report, query or web application) via the Java / EP runtime that I have found on service.sap.com.

Technically a Launcher-iView (com.sap.ip.bi.bex) is being parameterized. For example if the object is a formatted report it is the parameter REPORT=xyz. That means technically a parameterized iView is executed (The portal navigation is per default not visible, only the iView directly in a browser window). You can save such an object directly in a portal role. Just create a BI iView, in our example the parameter REPORT=xyz has to be specified.The objects are also available via BI favorites or via the BI PFCG roles. Here the URL is being generated with placeholders similar to the ABAP runtime approach. Queries & Enterprise Reports are opened within a default template. The templates (for example the report default template 0REPORT_DEFAULT_TEMPLATE can be copied and modified according to your needs.

Changes in password rules in NW2004s

A lot of new features have been introduced with NetWeaver 2004s and its ABAP SAP Application Server 7.0. Finally password is case sensitive and may have from 8 to 40 characters in length. Huge bunch of new system profile parameter have been acquaint as well:

login/min_password_lowercase

login/min_password_uppercase

login/password_max_idle_productive

login/password_max_idle_initial

login/password_history_size

login/password_change_waittime

login/password_downwards_compatibility

login/password_compliance_to_current_policy

For details see following SAP notes:
862989 1023437 992855 968558 943505

Something about Support Packages

What SP or SPS is? It is a collection of software corrections (SAP Notes) consisting of the best combination of aligned support packages and patches for a certain release published on quarterly basis.

I was asked to find the newest level of Support Package (SP) for client’s SAP BW system. Since SAP introduced Support Package Stacks (SPS) this gets little bit difficult. While you click at

http://service.sap.com/bi -> Product Information SAP NetWeaver 7.0 - BI -> Support Packages ->

then you choose:

Support Package Stack Schedule

service.sap.com/sp-stacks -> Support Packages and Patches -> SAP Support Package Stacks -> SP Stack Information -> then follow main NetWeaver release e.g. SAP NetWeaver 7.0

You will get just the version of SPSs but not SPs. If you want to see SPs which may differ because SPSs is valid e.g. for whole SAP NetWeaver 2004s for particular component of it e.g. BI there can be higher version of SP. There is a nice page where you can directly find SPs which you are interested in:

https://service.sap.com/sap/bc/bsp/spn/spat/index.htm?sp1=>

Just replace with the component that you need e.g. SAPKW70013.

-      update on 02/01/2014 –

New valid links added.

Culture differences as a barrier to SAP growth

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) yesterday brought insight (subscription required) concerning the SAP AG internal affairs about globalization. This article puts more light to reasons of recent Agassi’s departure.

The story started five years ago when SAP as Germany's largest software company decided to begins to become less German. In terms of statistics: in year 2000, SAP employed 3900 software developers, 75% of whom were based in Germany. In 2006, the software development headcount increased to 8500, but only 60% were located in Germany. SAP adopted strategy in company language and English became official in every communication within company even meetings in headquarter – Walldorf. In terms of software engineering they started to adopt rapid product development approach instead of traditional methodical approach. Such changes have been droved by influence of former member of the Executive Board of SAP and the changes created a bit conflict situation in company. German’s employees started to be worried and they complained about “March of the Americans”. WSJ quotes one German manager: “It's clear Agassi would like to get as many functions as possible to the U.S.” What else had happed meanwhile? “In April 2006, SAP executives hosted a town-hall meeting in Walldorf on the "Americanization of SAP," where workers aired concerns over the increasing use of English and the hiring of engineers overseas. A few months later, a handful of SAP workers, including Mr. Schick, won enough support to start a workers' council, roughly equivalent to a labor union.”

Germans workers worried about to much and too fast global oriented company and US and other countries workers worried about too less and too slow in changes. SAP’s highest executives were trying to calm down both sides assuring to Germans hat they would still have jobs while saying to others that SAP is still committed to change.

They want to align all development groups worldwide “work hard, and impress them with content”. An example of dissimilarities is that Indian developers like frequent attention while Germans prefer to be left alone, or Americans might say "excellent" when a German would say "good".

Strategy to be more open to other markets and be cost comparative in today’s fast moving world is must for SAP and must to get this real if they don’t want to close the business. Strategy to be less German is right but is not so easy for every company.

- update on 27/05/2007 -

Shai Agassi's thoughts about WSJ arcticle is here.

Last and at least Sapphire key note from Shai Agassi

Here’s some abstract of Shai’s key note as he supposed to present it before he left SAP AG. For full version see his blog.

At first Shai is struggling with critics who say that SAP could invest in area where SAP was really good – in its business processes, they programming language (ABAP) etc in order to improve it like transformation of ABAP to more object oriented languages of it instead of getting in to JAVA industry and trying to become a big JAVA application server vendor. Shai says that approach to new technologies like JAVA, web service architecture and so on was “essential for the continuous success of the company”. On other hand there could be a “back to basics” approach in field of ABAP and implementation of business processes improvement. As a evidence that his strategy (JAVA path) was right he claims that Oracle followed SAP by announcement of Oracle’s Project X which has similar foundation as SAP’s xApps strategy.

According Shai there are 3 axis plus x-factor of thinking how SAP employed beyond the development of their products during last years:

1^st: functionality axis that what SAP is developing for last 30 years, this is what SAP built as transactional modules and they continue with those modules nowadays as a genome.

2^nd: NetWeaver axis as an open platform, with its documented web services to enable many of Independed Software Vendors to build solutions that target SAP backend.

3^rd: SAP simplification axis, in order to exclude consumption of SAP solutions – “SAP tax”.

x-factor: SAP ecosystem a chain of partners, software vendors and others who can contribute to innovation and effectiveness of SAP platform.

Shai believe that SAP software is not only covering more and more functionality but more important is getting this software simpler to deploy, improve usability and make it open by using open standards.

If you attended this year Sapphire you can compare if the key not presented by somebody else has something to do with this Shai’s virtual key note.

There is no power point version of this key note :-)

All-in-One (A1S) business suite

There are couples of rumors regarding new SAP’s product for middle size segment of enterprises it is pretty fresh and SAP is hiding its secret very well. Because of fact that about 65% of SAP’s customers are small and medium ones they are going to more focused on them.

SAP is targeting SME market with All-in-One (A1), aimed at the upper mid-market, with a deep industry and micro-vertical focus, and Business One (B1) aimed at the pool of small businesses.

Nowadays is SAP expanding its portfolio for small and middle size companies via new solution called A1S. SAP is being working for 3 years in development of this product. It is based on NetWeaver platform, web services, ESA architecture, SOA foundation, Web 2.0 with the intension to be act as on-demand platform for companies with limited resources but with high potential to grove. It would act as service when application will be hosted outside the company available as a monthly subscription fee. There would be possibility and flexibility to set up and test the software on their own before deciding to make a purchase - "try, run, and adapt" model.

Comparing A1 to A1S, A1S is an off-the-rack product which enables some customization while A1 is more hand-tailored product that allows many kinds of styles and flavors.

When we are gonna see it?

According the news from SAP they are demonstrated a beta version of product to select groups at the CeBIT 2007 trade show in Hanover, Germany. A1S, is currently being tested by around 150 customers worldwide. Ramp-up date is still not confirmed but it is expected around second half of 2007.

Shai Agassi is leaving SAP AG

Yesterday on 28^th of March 2007 has been announced that Shai Agassi, President of SAP's Products and Technology Group is leaving company effective April 1, 2007.

Agassi’s farewell do SAP SDN community is here.
Company official press release is here.

-update on 18/04/2007-

Shai has started blogging at his The Long Tailpipe blog.

- update on 12/05/2007-

Shai is podcasting his journey as an entrepreneur at Standford Technology Ventures Program. He describes his route to SAP and some general thoughts of startup companies.

- update on 16/05/2007-

Udi Ziv one of Agassi’s associates when they co-founded TopTier Software is leaving SAP AG as well. He founded and consolidated SAP’s Israeli development center and was responsible for its SMB unit. SMB Market seems to be very important for SAP so we'll see how this change affects SAP as itself.

ORACLE sues SAP for software stealing

At first sight it looks real big deal. Official accusation has 44 pages. In short, ORACLE claims that SAP committed violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, and intentional and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage.

The point is that somebody from IP address which belongs to wholly owned SAP company TomorrowNow made thousands downloads of ORACLE software from password protected ORACLE customer support site. Based on such a downloads SAP could undercut Oracle's support prices in an attempt to attract customers.

The fact is that TomorrowNow is a support services company for PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, and Siebel Products. Those products were bought by ORACLE in the past. So it is no wonder that such a support company is connecting PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, and Siebel support sites very often in order to support their customers which run these systems. So for ORACLE must prove in trail that SAP as an owner of TomorrowNow is making profit based on the matter of accusation.

Most likely Oracle won’t achieve anything except making new rumors in the market and presenting itself as more and more aggressive company. We will see. Oracle regularly and very often belittles SAP's products and strategies in public. They call SAP's NetWeaver product as "net deceiver". On other hand SAP has reacts to Oracle's "Project Fusion" as "confusion".

More information can be found at:CNN site, ORACLE site

-update on 26/03/2007-

Here's official SAP response statement issued late Friday 23/03/2007:

"SAP will not comment other than to make it clear to our customers, prospects, investors, employees and partners that SAP will aggressively defend against the claims made by Oracle in the lawsuit, SAP will remain focused on delivering products and services -- including those from TomorrowNow -- that ensure success for our customers."

-update on 28/03/2007-

The Wall Street Journal reported that chief executive of SAP's TomorrowNow subsidiary, Andrew Nelson, defended the unit's business practices in his first public response to a recent lawsuit from Oracle.

"We believe we've done absolutely nothing wrong, and we're going to defend our position vigorously," the newspaper quoted Nelson as saying. "We believe our model is an appropriate and legal way to do business."

-update on 11/04/2007-

TomorrowNow issued statement which says that they are still considering over what Oracles's accusation is about and what official SAP response to the legal action should be.

See more information here.

-update on 05/05/2007-

Oracle in their Motion for Interim Preservation Order is asking the judge to argue SAP to preserve electronic evidence related to the Oracle complaint. 

-update on 12/05/2007-

Judge Maxine Chesney of the U.S. District Court for Northern California announced that she decided to resign from the case because she found herself disqualified. This statement could cause a significant delay in the case.

-update on 03/07/2007-

In today's announcement SAP has declared that one of its units - TomorrowNow was authorized to download materials from Oracle's Web site on behalf of TomorrowNow customers."At the same time, that some inappropriate downloads of fixes and support documents occurred at TomorrowNow," SAP acknowledged. "We regret very much that this occurred," SAP Chief Executive Henning Kagermann said in a statement.

-update on 30/08/2007-

According statement introduced by Routers SAP AG is calling for quicker resolution of suit with ORACLE. SAP wants to have an appointment of a mediator which presense could lead to a settlement or at least help the parties.

-update on 15/09/2007- SAP has introduced special web site dedicated to its trail with ORACLE. ORACLE's page on this suit is here.

-update on 03/12/2007- CEO of TomorrowNow and other members of high management resigned and SAP is considering to sell this business unite.

-update on 07/01/2008 - Joshua Greenbaum is sharing his insight within this issue after attending SAP analyst summit held on December 4 and 5, 2006, at the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel and Resort.

-update on 18/02/2008 - Judge in charge of this law suit has ordered a mediation between two fighting companies.

-update on 18/04/2008 - ORACLE plans to extend charges in this trial according paper that was submitted to curt. Based no this new charges ORACLE claims that it is getting more serious since high management of SAP have been involved in in case saying that were aware of this "inappropriate downloads". Next case management conference will be held on April 24 of 2008.

-update on 29/06/2008 - ORACLE estimates its damage caused by TomorrowNow around $ 1 billion. Number seems to be unreal but event if that would be hundreds of millions $.

-update on 07/22/2008 - SAP is shutting down its company TomorrowNow as responsible for trial with ORACLE. After trying to find some buyer for this troubled unit they see this is a best way to do not get too much damage within trial. Most of TomorrowNow’s customers is shifting to its competitor Rimini Street – which is support provider for former independent software solution bought by ORACLE such as Siebel, BEA, PeopleSoft or JD Edwards.

-update on 09/22/2008 – SAP and ORACLE achieved agreement on terms of postponing of deliberation over TomorrowNow.

-update on 10/08/2008 – SAP and ORACLE talks on settlement has failed on meeting held behind closed doors at the U.S. district court in San Francisco. It is not surprising since SAP admitted "inappropriate downloads" but not that ORACLE is claiming. As a next step a teleconference call with court is scheduled to be hold on October 20th this year.


-update on 10/22/2008 – Federal judge ruled ORACLE to make an settlement till 13th Feb. 2009. This is suppose to be a sum of damage caused by TomorrowNow to ORACLE.

- update on 01/30/2010 – Oracle sues another firm by same subject. Now it is company called Rimini Street. This company was founded by same person - Seth Ravin as TomorrowNow was founded. The subject of more less same: “massive theft”. Rimini Street is well known as 3^rd party support organization for EPR software. Check out more.

- update on 11/02/2010 – Finally court hearing is approaching. Let’s see if SAP can convincingly articulate its reasons in the case. Oracle has estimated damages to 2.3 billion of dollars and is pretty sure about its victory. Even FBI is interesting in this case – as FBI agent was in the court room during the hearings.

- update on 11/05/2010 – Ellison as Oracle CEO is going to testify on Monday Nov 8^th; after testimony from SAP CFO - Werner Brandt. Brandt had to testify as Oracle counsel could not find former CEO and now-HP CEO Leo Apotheker. Reason of why Apotheker could not show up is that he traveled to visit HP’s offices around the world. It is just because he got on HP board recently J

- update on 11/08/2010 – Ellison in the court. As expected his speech was too theatrical. He doubled possible damages to 4 billion. He also estimated amount of lost customers to 20-30% of existing oracle’s customer portfolio. Simply it was theater for the masses.

- update on 11/15/2010 – SAP has admitted TomorrowNow's wrong doing and apologized that. That was done my testimony of current co-CEO Bill McDermott.

- update on 11/23/2010 – Jury Issues Verdict in Oracle v. SAP: Oracle must be paid interest on the 1.3 billion of dollars from SAP.  That what’s jury’s verdict is over the case of stolen intellectual property. In statement issued by SAP is written that amount ordered is inappropriate.

- update on 12/13/2010 – Oracle wants another 211 million.

- update on 12/31/2010 – Judge gives SAP a break on interest owed Oracle by different calculation as Oracle proposed.

- update on 01/26/2011 – SAP recorded record quarter Q4 as total revenue is 5.04 billion dollars. However they said that recent verdict of jury in Oracle suit will have an impact on this number.

- update on 01/26/2011 – SAP tries to reduce payment to Oracle by filing a motion to a US court.

- update on 04/27/2011 – SAP  is about to issue bonds in order to pay what was order by judge. Just still negotiating the amount and considering that case is not over. SAP was granted its request for a "stay of execution" while it proceeds with post-trial motions in the trial.

 - update on 07/13/2011 – SAP is arguing to lower amount of money order to pay by jury. This is supposed to be achieved by post-trial motions. See more details here.

- update on 01/09/2011 - A federal judge today granted SAP’s bid to overturn the  $1.3 billion verdict a jury awarded to Oracle in November. By thsi statement Oracle has 2 options. To accept $272 million award by judgment or run another round of trial one more time and prove in front of judge that damages are that extensive. Oracle is supposed to take decision by Sept. 30. Details here.

- update on 19/09/2011 - SAP on behalf of TomorrowNow has agreed to pay a $20m fine for unauthorized access to servers belonging to Oracle. See details here and here.


- update on 03/03/2012 - Oracle filed files for a retrial arguing damages awarded just aren't enough. Hearing in new case will start in July this year.

- update on 03/08/2012 - SAP agreed to pay ORACLE not less than $306m in order to close this trial.

SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator (BIA)

SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator (BIA)

SAP is introducing new approach to raise the performance of its BI platform. Foundation of this approach is search and classification engine (TREX) and special hardware where BI solution runs. The goal is to get significant analytical processing performance improvement in terms of query executing via:

• horizontal data partitioning – BIA is divided into partitions, typically one partition per CPU
• shared nothing parallelism – querying is divided into multiple steps, one per partition, each step is executed concurrently by separate processes, since each step is processing different amount of data in single CPU, steps are performed independently without interfering to each other – they share nothing
• vertical decomposition/column based storage – BIA stores data separated by columns, instead of keeping all columns and rows all together
• data compression – comprises with column based storage with dictionary based algorithm that represents dictionary index as small as possible number of bits
• in-memory database processing – data retrieval for first time caches infocube data and indexes of each partition into memory – so called “in-memory database”

BI Accelerator runs only on SAP NetWeaver 2004s and you need to have hardware infrastructure based on Intel’s Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) which adds 64bits capability to Xeon family of processors. Currently are HP (Blade Servers) and IBM (eServers) supported hardware vendors for BIA.

What you will get when you would buy it? BIA is delivered as appliance which runs BIA functionality with Blade based server equipped with Intel processor and build-in storage. Appliance is connected into existing SAP NW BI 7.0 (NW 2004s or higher). BIA uses an RFC connection to BI backend which is to be accelerated.

For more information about BIA see on SDN.

SAP NetWeaver is 10 years old!

SAP NetWeaver is 10 years old!

Some analysts say that SAP NetWeaver was born approximately before 10 years. The main events were:

· TopTier has been founded as a company at 1997, later on in 2001 was acquired by SAP AG and their portal technology became foundation of SAP Enterprise Portal.

· SAP AG rolled out SAP BW in 1997.

· SAP’s ITS (Internet Transaction Server) and IACs (Internet Application Components) was introduced in 1997. Those technologies are foundations of SAP Web Application Server.

· In 1998 Symbol, Abaco and 3Com’s Palm introduced development initiative which became foundation of SAP NetWeaver Mobile Infrastructure.

For more details see Happy 10th birthday, NetWeaver.

This is good one :-)

Hi, this is totally out off topic post. I've found very good blog. If you need to switch off your brain for a minute try check this out:

sapfacts.elsewhat.com/rand

Have fun.

SAP GUI for Windows 7.10

On 5^th of February 2007 new version of SAP GUI for WINDOWS has been introduced. As I mentioned in my article called Short history of SAP GUI you need this version of SAP GUI to access SAP systems based on “SAP Web Application Server 7.10 / NW Application Server 7.10”.

A list of SAP GUI for WIN versions as a prerequisite for accessing SAP functionality in systems based on SAP WAS:

• SAP GUI Win 6.20 with all SAP systems up to and including systems based on WAS 7.00 (with the exceptions being BI 7.0 and SCM 5.0 systems).
• SAP GUI for Win 6.40 with all SAP systems up to and including systems based on WAS 7.00.
• SAP GUI for Win 7.10 with all SAP systems up to and including systems based on WAS 7.10.
• You can not use SAP GUI for Win 6.20 or 6.40 SAP systems based on WAS 7.10.

You can obtain this version of SAP GUI via SAP service support portal. Then navigate yourself to downloads area->Installations and Upgrades->SAP Frontend Components->SAP GUI FOR WINDOWS-> SAP GUI FOR WINDOWS 7.10 CORE. Put two following components put to your download basket:

50083078_4 NW 2004s Presentation - 7.10 Compilation 1 Present. 1/2 379566 kB – contains main executable files

50083078_5 NW 2004s Presentation - 7.10 Compilation 1 Present. 2/2 210375 kB – contains SAP GUI for the Java Environment Release 7.00 rev 2

Right after that you can start with the downloading it via SAP Download Manager:

Version 7.10 of SAP GUI comes with following new components:

• SAP web dynpro Active Component Framework (ACF) - framework to integrate Active Components (ActiveX / Java Applets) into the Web dynpro. It is not a generic framework that allows integrating any component available into web dynpro. Instead, for every component that should be integrated into Web Dynpro there must be a specific adapter which in turn uses the ACF services. At the present there are two supported Components:

• Office Integration

• Adobe Integration

In the case of windows the adapters are written as ActiveXs. These ActiveXs can be installed onto the end user PC via an installation program "xACF.exe" provided by SAP.

• BI pre calculation service for MS Excel – you can install BI frontend as a standalone.
• SAPSprint – server-based printing on Windows (formerly SAPLPD)
• SAP GUI Screen Reader Extension – an interface allows a screen reader to access the SAP GUI object model at runtime and select the required information for speech and Braille output. It is based on SAP GUI Scripting API.

I selected a standard installation of GUI therefore I started:

X:\NW_2004s_Presentation\PRES1\GUI\WINDOWS\WIN32\SapGuiSetup.exe from first file 50083078_4. Here’s a selection of GUI components:

If you have used older version of GUI installed on your computer already you don’t need to de-install it first. Setup program will do this automatically.

Some of new features:

· In case GUI was installed from an installation server users have the possibility to enable automatic update from this server.

· System tabstrip of SAP Logon pad has a new popup window with tabstrips:

As well as a wizard for new shortcut to SAP system creation.

New frontend editor – for ABAP programming. Is integrated to ABAP workbench (TA: SE*), SE38, SE37, SE24). Its new user interfaces and is completely customizable. Frontend editor integrates all modern code editing features like: code hints, code completion, . It is a universal programming tool and works with most programming languages with defined syntax schema, such as ABAP, eCATT, BSP and so on. It is fast, flexible and easy to use. Is available with SAP GUI for Windows 6.40 Patch level 10 or higher however, you need SAP system using NetWeaver 2004s since basis version 700 - SAP Application Server 7.0.

• New debugger – has a high volume of new and known functions that can be called using menus or icons. It requires an additional external session where it runs. By usage of this session has certain handling advantages as well as advantages with regard to resource consumption. It is possible to process an unlimited number of data objects simultaneously and their visibility depends only on size of screen.

Have fun with new SAP GUI :-)

SAP Active Global Support (AGS)

Have you ever created SAP OSS message and wondering how it has been processed? Have you been surprised when your message has been marked as “Send to SAP” then answered from somebody from Germany then set back to “Customer action” after you replied message was transferred to some other SAP support site at different continent because in Germany was nigh time?

So let’s image. It is Friday’s afternoon and you can’t wait for weekend to begin. Some SAP function people raised an issue, it looks like that it requires immediate attention of SAP. You raise “Very high” priority message on OSS. Message comes to AGS center which belongs to your region. Within the SAP AG group Active Global Support centers are organized in Global Support Centers (GSC). Most likely your customer message comes to GSC Ireland, in Dublin. This centre handles following regions: northern and central Europe and North America. Dublin’s GSC is a part of Primary Support this includes: GSC Austria for the German speaking countries, GSC Spain for southern Europe and Latin America, as well other units in Asia and Australia as well. Particular person in GSC responsible for the SAP module/component to which is your message related starts to process your message proceeding. As a first task this person controls completeness of your message like: component, priority, etc. Once very high message is received person makes phone call to customer and inform him about receiving and starting processing of message. As a part of message solving person analyze an issue, looks for relevant SAP notes which solves this issue if it is already known, search in knowledge base where similar problems are tracked, connects to customer SAP system via remote connection (you as a customer must enable this connection on SAP service portal) in order to reproduce the issue live in the system, seek up error in program via debugger, trying to adjust SAP standard coding to fix problem. If person is unable to resolve the problem because it as very application specific related to some sub module of SAP software message just will be rerouted to relevant support group which pays an attention to specific sub module to some Centers of Expertise (CoE) e.g. at Walldorf in Germany, Philadelphia USA. CoEs are involved in deep problem analyzing of very high customer messages. Application specialist in Walldorf analysis an issue and consider to change of coding. He needs to discus this issue with development specialist who directly developing particular functionality of SAP sub module. They contact each other through CoE chat room. Because of time – remember it is lately Friday’s afternoon they just agree on resolution – there must be change of coding. Physically change will be done by another colleague from India’s support centre. SAP is accompanying “follow the sun” principle.

The principle is based on exploiting the time difference between the GSC sites to extend services during times when a local site is closed. It takes place 3 times a day:

• afternoon: Walldorf -> Philadelphia
• night: from Philadelphia to India
• next morning: India -> Walldorf
  

By usage of this principle SAP can assure that new messages processed/received 24x7 without interruption regardless of where the customer is located.

Colleague from Dublin and Philadelphia are gone home for weekend. India processor of message is implementing the change. He issues new SAP note with the solution of this particular problem. Customer is informed about this solution immediately via service support portal. This is only one particular example of customer message solving. A lot of different scenarios may happen in all kinds of computer problems. In such a cases SAP is suppose to cooperating with all involved/affected parties (hardware, operating system and database vendors) very closely in order to solve the issue.

SAP AGS organization is taking care of around 20.000 SAP customers with 64.500 SAP software installations across six continents. There are over 2.000 employees involved, over 40 countries and 6.000 developers serve as a backend. Their workload consists of solving more then: 800.000 customer messages per year, 34.000 service sessions (GoingLive Check, EarlyWatch Check), 1.500 onsite services (Safeguarding and Optimalization Services).

I think SAP support came a long way and the procedures and processes within are quite matured. A lot of SAP application management companies may take an insight to SAP AG’s AGS and take lessons learned.

There’s a nice blog related to SAP support topic at blogs.ittoolbox.com/sap/support. Homepage of SAP AGS is here.

In addition, here’s SAP’s classification of customer messages:

• Very high - This priority is reserved exclusively for situations in which you production system is down or you intend to go live very soon and this issue will prevent your production system from going live.
• High - Used for situations where there is a severe functionality loss but the system remains operational and processing can continue.
• Medium - A program or functionality error has occurred but processing can still continue, or a non-business critical function is not performing properly.
• Low - Request for service or information or a problem has been identified. Minor impact.