Author: analyticsinbound@gmail.com

CLEAR TECHNOLOGIES | Why Your Company Needs Cloud-Based Collaboration

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During the pandemic, the collaboration tool video conferencing has turned into a pop culture phenomenon. Social media and TV advertisers use funny web conferencing mishaps to attract “likes” and customers and maybe even go viral.

The practical reality is that unified communications (UC) tools have enabled most organizations to make a successful switch to a remote workplace, whether employees are working in sweatpants and pajama bottoms or not.

An essential part of a successful business collaboration strategy is using a cloud-based collaboration platform. Cloud-based collaboration provides a way for companies to maximize and unify their business collaboration tools, making the most of their employees and better serving customers.

Optimizing the Remote Workplace

Collaboration tools are essential now that most companies have transitioned to remote workplaces. While working from home, employees want to recreate the interpersonal interactions they had in the office. UC grants immediacy of communication through instant messaging and video conferencing. These tools allow co-workers to exchange information face-to-face in real time.

Collaboration tools make it easier for project teams to work together no matter where the members are located. Project teams can use web conferencing to conduct brainstorming sessions and file sharing to ensure that team members have version control for documents related to the project.

UC helps employees serve customers and clients more effectively as well. VoIP helps customers and clients to reach the right person they need to answer questions and deliver personalized service.

Promoting Innovation Through Business Collaboration

Business collaboration has proven to be a great way to encourage employees to innovate. Giving employees access to key documents along with the ability to work with them gives them a sense of empowerment that encourages their participation and productivity.

During web conferences, employees feel their voices are being heard and their perspectives are being taken into account. Working together on projects through group chats can get the creative juices flowing and allows employees to contribute ideas and get immediate feedback from co-workers and supervisors.

Los Angeles Business Journal reported that texting or instant messaging is a collaborative tool that encourages productive conversations among co-workers, as well as between employees and supervisors, because of its brief format. Unlike longer communications, IMs and texts don’t shut employees down. Instead, IMs create a “culture of listening,” which encourages employees to participate and contribute.

Cloud-Based Collaboration – Why Collaborate in the Cloud?

Cloud-based collaboration enables companies to host and deliver their UC tools in and through the cloud. Cloud-based UC, otherwise known as UCaaS, makes it easier for companies to manage and maintain their phone systems, as well as other communications tools, such as video conferencing and instant messaging.

Hosting collaboration tools in the cloud allows anyone in the organization to access, work on, and edit documents in real time. Any changes can be viewed immediately, so if other team members are working on the document, they won’t be duplicating or missing changes or working with the wrong version.

When all the tools are hosted on a single platform in the cloud, they can be managed and maintained efficiently so your company and its employees derive the most value from them.

Cloud-Based Collaboration Tools

A wide variety of collaboration tools can be hosted in the cloud, including:

  • Unified Communications through Hosted Communications Services (HCS) such as network infrastructure and management, hosted PBX, conferencing and collaboration tools, hosted contact center, and workstream collaboration tools
  • Cloud PBX to access your phone services from anywhere you choose, migrate your existing phone numbers and users, and enable VoIP phones, desktop software, and cell phones to connect and receive VoIP calls
  • Integrated Voicemail, which ties your voicemail platform to your phone and your email, unifying all messaging in one platform
  • Centralized Faxing, which unifies the faxing process, delivering to an account structure you specify, including delivering faxes out to individual email addresses
  • Instant Messaging, which works alongside VoIP and voicemail access

Clear Technologies offers Cloud-based collaboration tools, such as Cisco Spark and Webex, which allow teams to work together as though they were in the same place even when they are separated. We can put together a suite of cloud-based collaboration tools that makes sense for your organization.

Take advantage of cloud-based collaboration at your business. Get started by requesting a cloud consultation with an expert from Clear Tech.

CLEAR TECHNOLOGIES | Key Advantages of Developing a Hybrid Cloud Strategy

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For companies that want to modernize their operations and use data more efficiently and securely, hybrid cloud is a great option. However, for your organization to advance in its digital transformation journey, you need to do more than just adopt hybrid cloud. You must develop a hybrid cloud strategy.

Executive SAP Solution Architect Bob Gagnon emphasizes the importance of a hybrid cloud strategy, stating, “What strategy is emerging? Well, the hybrid strategy is gaining a great position: a strategy where a customer virtualizes on-premises for production workloads and leverages public cloud for other workloads. This strategy allows control of, and perimeter hardening of, the data.”

A hybrid cloud strategy will ensure that hybrid cloud resources align with your business goals and meet technology challenges. Developing a hybrid cloud strategy has many advantages, including increased flexibility, control, data protection, and data management.

Hybrid Cloud brings Flexibility and Agility

Hybrid cloud is valued for its flexibility because it provides both on-premises and public cloud resources. Virtualized on-site resources can be used for more sensitive data and production workloads, while public cloud resources can be used for customer-facing applications, archiving, and setting up development and testing environments. Both private and public cloud can be scaled up and down to meet changing capacity and workload demands.

A hybrid cloud strategy has the advantage of a unified platform that provides orchestration across private, public, and edge environments. Orchestration gives your company greater control over its cloud resources through single pane of glass management.

Data Protection & Disaster Recovery

Orchestration enhances hybrid cloud’s combination of on and off-premises resources by enabling efficient and reliable backup and disaster recovery functionality. On-site data can be synchronized with backups in the cloud for tighter recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). Instant failover can be achieved in the public cloud for the purposes of disaster recovery.

When your company develops a hybrid cloud strategy that includes backup and disaster recovery, you can rest assured that your mission-critical and personally identifiable customer data will be safe from loss or compromise. Being strategic about where your data is stored in the hybrid cloud will strengthen your data protection efforts, as will using encryption.

Data Management & Hybrid Cloud Strategy

Companies can make data management part of their hybrid cloud strategy by using private and public cloud to tier data storage. Public cloud resources are ideal for storing less sensitive and frequently accessed data or for archiving data for the purposes of compliance audits. Private cloud provides the right environment for storing sensitive data, which requires strict access controls.

Data management is the key to organizing data so value can be extracted from it, meaning that data management should be part of any hybrid cloud strategy. Automating data management processes will ensure that data is moved to the correct type of storage so it can be accessed for use in advanced analytics, which produce the insights needed for optimal decision making.

How to Develop a Hybrid Cloud Strategy

When designing a hybrid cloud strategy, your company doesn’t need to go it alone. Finding the right technology partner will help you navigate those next steps in your cloud journey. Working with a cloud provider that is platform agnostic will ensure you find the ideal public cloud option to complement your private cloud resources.

Clear Technologies partners with leading cloud solutions IBM Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure to deliver flexibility and scalability to our clients. We also offer Clear Managed Services to help you optimize your hybrid cloud resources without monopolizing your IT staff, as well as connectivity solutions to support your cloud assets. Our cloud experts will help your company get the most value out of your cloud investment.

Get on the road to a winning hybrid cloud strategy. Request a cloud consultation from Clear Tech.

CLEAR TECHNOLOGIES | How to Choose the Right Cloud Model

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The number of cloud models that are available is increasing. Today’s companies can choose between hybrid and multicloud models in addition to public and private cloud. More choices can add to the difficulty of selecting the right cloud model for your company.

According to the 2021 State of the Cloud Report, hybrid cloud continues to dominate the market, with 78% of respondents indicating that they use it, while only 19% use public cloud exclusively and a mere 2% use only private cloud. Preferences for certain cloud models fluctuate, but a rise in the popularity of one model doesn’t mean it’s the best one for your business.

The cloud model your company chooses should align with company goals and the requirements of your workloads. Here’s an overview of the main cloud models and their common use cases.

Private Cloud: Great Control Over Security & Access

On its own, private cloud may not be the most popular cloud model, but it does have its uses, particularly when combined with public cloud in a hybrid cloud model. Private cloud is right for storing sensitive and mission-critical data because it provides the greatest control over IT security and access.

Essentially, private cloud is made up of virtualized resources that are hosted on-premises or at a colocation and that meet the unique needs of your organization. Private cloud is ideal for companies in industries that must follow strict compliance regulations governing access to data. Because private cloud is hosted on-premises, it also reduces the latency users might experience trying to access and run applications in the public cloud.

Public Cloud: Scalability, Archiving, & DevOps

Unlike private cloud, public cloud is a multi-tenant environment. A number of organizations may share resources, which are available on the internet, and use them for storage and running applications.

Public cloud is ideal for customer-facing applications, archiving data, and creating application dev/test environments. These use cases involve data and workloads that have less stringent access and authority requirements. DevOps benefits from the scalability that is achievable in public cloud. These environments can be spun up quickly and disassembled once they are no longer needed.

Hybrid Cloud Flexibility: On-premises & Public Cloud Resources

Hybrid cloud offers flexibility because it consists of both private and public cloud resources. Orchestration between on-premises and public cloud resources delivers control and agility, as well as data protection and disaster recovery capabilities.

With hybrid cloud, organizations can use public cloud as a backup environment and synchronize backups for ideal recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs). The public cloud resources enable instant failover for quick recovery.

Multicloud: Cloud Models & Multiple Vendor Services

Multicloud allows your company to use cloud models and services from multiple vendors according to their strengths. With multicloud, an organization can choose various types of cloud models and services and avoid being locked into working with a single vendor.

Workloads can be moved to any cloud instance, and multiple clouds can be configured to operate consistently. Multicloud can be used to eliminate shadow IT, move workloads closer to users, and achieve data protection and disaster recovery capabilities.

Weighing Your Cloud Options

All these cloud models are great options and offer economical ways to obtain additional storage capacity and performance power for running applications. Research and consulting firm International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasted that by 2022, 90% of enterprises will be using a combination of private clouds, multiple public clouds, and traditional platforms to build their infrastructures.

Partnering with the right technology provider can help your organization navigate the cloud landscape and find the cloud models and services that will help you design and operate a modern IT architecture.

Clear Technologies has the expertise needed to develop a successful cloud strategy. We take a consultative approach to helping our cloud customers, working with you to assess your goals and challenges and finding the ideal cloud solutions to meet your requirements.

Get help figuring out which cloud model is right for your organization. Ask for a cloud consultation from Clear Tech.

CLEAR TECHNOLOGIES | MAKING STORAGE SIMPLE

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Here’s a scary way to put the rise of big data into perspective. Look at these facts from the hosting tribunal – more data was generated in the last two years than ever before in human history. Google averages 1.2 trillion searches annually. Smart devices produce five quintillion bytes of data each day. And we haven’t even touched on Facebook, YouTube and smartphones.

So, how does an organization gather all this valuable data and tame it? Here are the top 7 ways Clear Technologies can simplify data storage to make data work for every size of business:

KEEP RAW DATA RAW

Raw data really doesn’t need to be accessed much. On the rare occasions when it does, raw data will cost more than usual to access, but it’s offset by low storage costs. However, when manipulating raw data, it is always best to manipulate a copy.

SWITCH TO FLASH STORAGE ARRAYS

For on-site storage, a flash array is the way to go. Hard disks have lots of moving parts which can break down or scratch the disk. There are also latency issues that slow down processing speeds. With no moving components, flash arrays are much more durable.

Flash arrays feature high data mobility speeds with microsecond latency. When using the NVMe protocol with flash arrays, storage area networks (SANs) now support thousands of parallel command queues, further bolstering high speeds.

CONSIDER IaaS

When storage infrastructure is in the cloud, companies not only gain floor space, they’ll save money by having less hardware and being able to eliminate the maintenance costs associated with storage servers.

IT staff can focus on projects that generate dollars, as upgrades are done automatically. Additionally, cloud data centers provide enterprise-level security no matter how big or small an organization is.

VISUALIZE DATA

It’s a proven point, human beings respond much faster to visual data. According to Email Audience, the human brain processes images in 13-150 milliseconds, while the time to process 25 words takes 3.75-7.5 seconds. So, a simple chart, graph, or infographic can in essence convey just as much information in a much faster amount of time than the printed word.

When stored data is visualized, noise is removed from the equation and relevant, useful information is brought to the forefront. This allows for a much better understanding of the data, and a much clear interpretation of what needs to be done for the benefit of business.

AUTOMATE

Remember at the beginning of this blog when we talked about how fast big data is growing? Big data sets are now too large to comb through manually. By automating a storage array, tasks are automatically performed that could easily take up days of manual labor. Automation tools also validate and repair data in real time, helping to ensure that data is qualitative, precise, and healthy.

USE VERSION CONTROL

Any time a data set is manipulated, it’s essential to ensure that all versions are saved. Version control will capture all versions of data and store them in cloud storage, providing a singular history of the data and Machine Leaning modules that have been run.

Version control also makes it easy to switch between different data sets for comparison. Managers can then see how a data file has changed over time, as well as records of who had made the changes to the file.

RECORD METADATA

Metadata works just like metatags. Record metadata to describe how data was collected, formatted, and organized. This will make it easier to find data sets when they’re needed at another time. This becomes essential for maintaining historical records of long-term data sets. Recording metadata also extends the longevity of data by countering data entropy and degradation.

START SIMPLIFYING YOUR DATA

Contact Clear Technologies to begin the process of examining your storage infrastructure. We’ll work with you to design and implement a storage solution that will bring speed and clarity to your data sets and analysis.

Get more details on how to prepare for your storage journey by Requesting a Readiness Assessment with Clear Tech.

CLEAR TECHNOLOGIES | HOW Visual One OPTIMIZES STORAGE

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With the seemingly exponential growth of data storage, it’s no surprise that storage can take up quite a bit of the company’s bottom line. Forbes polled executives in 2020 and found that 30% of cloud spending is wasted. It’s a good bet that a large amount of this loss is from the storage area network (SAN).

Beyond the price of storage arrays, there are also expenses relating to expansion, maintenance, redundancies, and unused data. The fact that data comes in from different sources and formats, and is unorganized, only adds to the overall cost.

THE ROLE OF Visual One

Visual One Intelligence® provides a single pane of glass reporting for all storage arrays within the company SAN, regardless of vendor or manufacturer. Data throughout the network is normalized and sent back to administrators via visual reports, providing a clear, organized picture of the SAN. From this point, the act of optimizing the SAN can begin in earnest.

LET’S START WITH ASSESSMENT

The first step to optimizing the SAN is to see what comprises the entire storage ecosystem. Detailed reports are run on all existing storage areas to determine how much storage is at each location, the ratio of unused and used storage and if the storage high performance or high capacity.

Then, it’s time to move on to capacity planning and forecasting. A flash analyzer will be used to identify specific workloads that would benefit from being hosted on a flash storage array. A health check will determine if all existing storage arrays are configured correctly and communicating with each other. Additionally, Visual One machine learning will troubleshoot your SAN to quickly identify the root causes of problems.

LUNs (logical unit numbers) will be assigned throughout the network to establish all available data storage and recovery routes. Alternative pathways are then implemented to prevent any partial failures. The entire SAN will be thoroughly analyzed, and then all steps will be repeated for each individual storage array.
Administrators will analyze the data from detailed reports to determine what room your SAN has for future expansion.

NOW IT’S TIME TO OPTIMIZE

By performing file-level analysis with Visual One throughout the SAN, the most used and unused data can be assigned different storage arrays. The data that is most often used will be put on the highest performing storage arrays. Meanwhile, mostly unused storage can be placed in separate arrays or also allocated to solid-state drives or hard disks – less expensive storage array options.

With a combination of Visual One machine learning tools and manual mechanisms, it’s time to move on to provisioning. Integrated analytics across core storage arrays and cloud environments will provide the clarity needed to provision correctly across the whole SAN as well as all connected devices to the network.
Data compression will identify and eliminate statistical redundancy, helping to clear out more available storage space across arrays. Orphaned space can be reclaimed and repurposed for current needs and future requirements.

For the last step, it’s time to gather storage consultants to determine the best cloud migration strategy. Cloud storage is highly recommended as it helps boost speed, performance, and scalability along with providing maintenance duties, enterprise-level security, and disaster recovery.

IT’S TIME TO OPTIMIZE YOUR STORAGE!

Start the conversation with a Clear Technologies SAN expert. Access your virtual storage intelligence assessment here!

CLEAR TECHNOLOGIES | SOLVE YOUR STORAGE CHALLENGES

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By 2025, the World Economic Forum predicts that 463 exabytes of data will be created globally every day. No matter what size, every business is storing and crunching data to keep ahead of the competition. According to IDC, the compound annual growth rate of data storage should reach almost 17.8 percent, with the volume of global data stored expected to double every four years.

With all that data considered, Clear Technologies has the plan to help companies solve their current and future storage challenges, beginning with:

DELIVER GREAT PERFORMANCE WITH MODERN FLASH STORAGE

The move to flash storage has been swift, as hard disks have inherent latency issues. Whether it’s flash memory chips or flash arrays, they are lightning quick compared to their hard drive counterparts with moving components, and they feature a latency of within a microsecond.

Having no moving components also makes flash storage highly durable – no disc scratching or drive heads to worry about. This comes in particularly handy with disaster recovery, as there is a significant diminishment of the chance of catastrophic data loss due to weather-related events.

All-flash arrays are also much more energy-efficient, less complex to install, and highly scalable for business needs.

TAKE CONTROL WITH STORAGE VIRTUALIZATION

Storage virtualization provides a single pane of glass management capabilities across the entire storage area network (SAN), no matter how many different vendor arrays make up the network’s composition. This can drastically improve storage capacity and performance, speeding up migrations and creating better workflows.

It also reduces the amount of hardware needed in your storage arrays, allowing organizations to get the most out of their current infrastructure. Floor space is gained and total cost of ownership can be reduced without compromising performance and functionality.

LEVERAGE SCALE AND CAPACITY WITH NVMe

Regardless of how high the storage capacity, users expect even faster response times. The NVMe protocol supports thousands of parallel command queues for both flash and next-gen solid state drives.

Not only does NVMe utilize nonvolatile memory in a vast array of computing environments, it is also future proof – it’s the new standard to incorporate into future storage technologies.

UTILIZE IaaS CLOUD SOLUTIONS WITH Visual One

Visual One Intelligence® technology (Visual One) allows organizations to take full advantage of Infrastructure as a Service in cloud environments. By bringing network infrastructure into the cloud, there is less need, and sometimes even no need, for hardware and datacenters on site. This not only increases floor space, it can also significantly lower infrastructure and maintenance costs.

IaaS also provides on-demand scalability without the need to upgrade software and hardware. If any hardware components fail or the business loses internet services, none of their infrastructure is affected, mitigating any worries about data loss. Additionally, IaaS provides storage replication as another tool to protect companies from data loss.

Utilizing IaaS can also significantly free up the time of IT staff, allowing them to focus more on tasks that benefit the organization’s bottom line.

READY TO GET A COMPLETE VIEW OF YOUR STORAGE PERFORMANCE?

Clear Technologies works with a wide array of vendors to put forth the best solutions for your storage needs. Put us to the test by requesting your free storage assessment. Our storage experts will use our Visual One cloud application to analyze your SAN and make the best recommendations to help match your storage capacity to the growth of your business.

Work with us to prepare for your SAN implementation. Request a Readiness Assessment with Clear Tech.

Building the Business Case for SAP HANA

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Before a company can make the transition to SAP HANA, the business value must be demonstrated to leadership. Business leadership is trying to understand the HANA journey.

Today’s environment is most likely on-premises. Companies are trying to decide between new implementation, conversion, and a hybrid approach.

Demonstrating business case needs doesn’t just involve providing numbers. The business case articulates what you have, how you use it, and what needs to change. These needs should be revisited frequently. Understanding how to get there will change, and the cost will change. Leadership will want to know about the business impact of cost estimates for the move to SAP HANA and the potential benefits.

The Process of Building the Business Case

Process change is a big concern for leadership. Chief executives want justification for this significant effort and the corresponding expenses. Your company will need to document key requirements. Determine how much change you are willing to put up with and what the benefits will be.

SAP Business Scenario Recommendations Report (BSR): SAP will map old business processes to the replacement in SAP HANA.

Technical Assessment: The SAP upgrade manager, readiness report, and third-party assessment will correlate the impact. This process will help you understand how much customization, testing, and training will be necessary.

Assemble the Business Case: Assemble estimates into a real business case that aligns the findings of the BSR and Technical Assessment to the requirements.

SAP HANA benefits include:

  • Analytics for a near real-time decision-making process
  • Integrations through database simplification for faster and easier integration to third-party partners and better customer support
  • Simplification through fewer and more simplified tables than ECC so it is easier to access data
  • Performance through an in-memory database that decreases run times

The BSR should be run against a particular release of SAP HANA. At the end of 2020, the 2009 release will need a new BSR because of deprecation. For the BSR, you submit details from your system to SAP, and it comes back with which transactions will not be available in the next couple of versions.

The Technical Assessment will determine what has been deprecated, code changes, and timelines around data. You don’t want to lose transactional and master data. Details are extracted from your system and compared to S/4HANA Versions. Clear Tech leverages the SAP Readiness Check, Live Compare, and other products. You need to understand what point you want to get to and the magnitude of training and deprecation needed to get there.

The Functional Inventory includes reports, business design documents, and training material. The Technical Inventory includes landscape, security, BC/DR documents, and code and customization documents. Engaging with IT allows the company to find where it can make changes to achieve lower TCO. If infrastructure needs to be resized, you will experience an outage. This is not a concern with IBM Power. Infrastructure includes design, preferences, and directional documents.

You need to combine the findings from the BSR, Assessment, and Infrastructure along with the Inventories to understand your requirements. The Business Case findings are based on best-case implementation, whether Brownfield, Greenfield, or Bluefield.

Subjective vs. Objective

Developing a business case can be difficult because SAP ECC has been implemented and changed over time. Understanding everything requires many people with diverse roles or you can assemble the facts from assessments.

Clients often say their system is highly customized with thousands of objects. They need to determine what they really use, what SAP really provides, what they really know, and what is really lost. This process separates reality from emotion. It may turn out there is one transaction that is used once or twice a year that is holding the whole project up.

Balance

To achieve balance, understand:

1) What business functions you use today

2) What S/4HANA functions exist, augment, and replace what you use

3) Impact of the changes

Gain information, not social opinions, to achieve balance between facts and opinion.

Protection

One of the challenges is quantifying the amount of change. S/4HANA is not compliant with current databases, so the quantity of change looks monumental. You need to quantify how much code really needs to be written.

Quantify change, impact, cost estimates, the impact of customization, landscape changes, and the federated landscape impact, as many applications bring data into SAP HANA. You may have 2000 objects but only use 25%. Of the 25%, you may only use 20% month-to-month. Develop a single report of the “potentials.”

Guide

You need to have a single business impact and technical impact sheet for discussion. Develop a real estimation model based on factual findings for discussion. Without documenting facts, all these discussions become emotional. As humans, we are resistant to change and wait until the last second.

Focus

The BSR provided by SAP will include estimations of business benefits, changes for elimination of customization by S/4HANA features, and process improvements. You want to know how much improvement to expect. The numbers may not be accurate, but they are guidelines.

Technical Assessment

Only 25% of custom objects are needed by most clients. A Technical Assessment will identify line-by-line changes. This is a necessity for understanding the impact of the selected approach. How much of your customization are you really dependent on? When you realize only 25% of 3000 objects are needed, it changes your perception.

Testing Impact

You want to know the total number of testing hours by area. Focus on the functional level.

Functional Transaction Impacts

You want to know what’s been deprecated, merged, and updated. Merged transactions are important in S/4HANA. They will all simplify and give savings. SAP has moved transactions from financial to other areas and renamed them.

All these factors should be combined into a single document to estimate the cost and impact of the overall project.

Licensing Models

Estimating appropriate license costs requires understanding the licensing models. SAP has 4 licensing models:

Option One: The Standard Edition includes most database, integration, and application services.

Option Two: The Enterprise Option extends the Standard Edition with advanced analytics, predictive analytics, big data, and replication. The key for most companies is replication.

Option Three: The Express Edition is a free license version that does not include HA/DR, multi-tier storage, and dynamic tiering.

Option Four: The Runtime Edition is a special version for use with SAP applications.

Most companies end up with the enterprise option. Option 3 and 4 are seldom chosen by customers.

Implementation Approaches

Are all implementation approaches equal? The type of approach will affect business impact and depends on business drivers.

Greenfield: The Greenfield approach is for customers who want to take advantage of S/4HANA to re-engineer their processes and implement a brand-new solution, reducing the level of customization, knowing that they will also lose their historical data.

Brownfield: The Brownfield approach is for customers who want to leverage existing solution, save historical data, and rapidly convert to S/4HANA. This approach impacts business users the least. Over a period of time, you will want to upgrade and move into a hybrid approach.

Bluefield: The Bluefield approach is a hybrid approach that is somewhere between Greenfield and Brownfield. This approach not only saves the value of the existing solution but also gives more flexibility for the definition of the go-live phase, allowing separate go lives for different company codes and for system downtime optimization.

Keep calm and migrate to S/4HANA with Brownfield, putting in place a foundation to adopt innovation at your pace.

Challenging Preconceived Notions

Some companies say that they’ve looked at S/4HANA and can see that it’s not feature-complete. Customers are examining S/4HANA features based on their understanding. However, some functions were aligned with other business processes and renamed.

Ask what functions you use and how frequently. How much testing are you going to need for something you don’t really use? Is your customization included but renamed so you can’t recognize it? Has the use case for your industry determined a best practice that is different? Based on need and use, is this a first-order process or a fourth-order process?

It’s imperative that businesses understand the value brought by the SAP BSR, which identifies required realignment and remapping of business functions. You can run the BSR every time there is a new release and even look ahead to future releases and run a BSR.

The real issue is not the cost of implementation or the licensing for the software. It’s the change to the business and how it impacts the business case ROI due to emotion. Determine what you really use, the business tier for frequency of use, and how things really map to S/4HANA.

Internal discussions can get lost without assessments, documents, and factual detail about your environment. With a bit of diligence, you may find that S/4 doesn’t have a huge impact when a brownfield approach is chosen. At Clear Technologies, we need to be your independent representative. We are knowledgeable about the process and can come up with a recommended approach.

Third-Party Tool Challenge

Are all tools created equal? A maintenance planner may declare that some of your third-party tools are not HANA compliant. Until recently, removing third-party tools was neither possible nor necessary. This may be a brute force effort.

Most third-party providers have HANA-specific versions. These tools are release-specific. Work with the vendor to make sure it is version compliant. Prod the vendor to get the product updated.

Developing a Well-Constructed Business Case

Business leadership can understand the HANA journey through a well-constructed business case. Understanding what S/4HANA provides is a release-by-release effort.

SAP has provided the tools to ascertain the hidden costs. Your selected implementation approach has an impact on the cost and duration of the project. S/4HANA has matured significantly since version 1511. Third-party tools and applications can pose a threat to success.

S/4HANA is going to have a different value for every business. Your company needs to determine the requirements to develop the business case. Clear Tech can help you do this and start a successful SAP HANA journey.

Get help with building your business case for SAP HANA. Request an SAP Readiness Assessment from Clear Tech.

Benefits of Functional & Technical Assessments for SAP HANA

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The SAP HANA journey is made up of an assortment of parts. It’s like breaking out the instructions and trying to put a toy together for Christmas.

You have a choice of SAP and third-party tools to help you understand your options. Assembling the details and distilling facts is something that the business and IT must perform together. SAP tools are an integral component of the journey, whether before getting started or during implementation and runtime.

You need the data to tell you which approach to implementation to take: Greenfield, Brownfield, or Bluefield. Are you going for a new implementation, conversion, or hybrid approach? You also have options of where to host: on-premises, public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid.

A Technical Assessment produces data that drives the implementation while deriving the value of SAP HANA. Details are extracted from your system and compared to S/4HANA version. The Technical Assessment Report is a high-level assessment with indications that highlight the business impact of SAP HANA implementation.

What Are Assessments?

It’s important to realize that every time SAP releases a new version, it changes these reports and changes your migration. The business case is made up by leveraging the details in the Business Scenario Recommendations Report (BSR), Technical Assessment, and Infrastructure Design, as well as Change Impact from business leaders.

Involve the right people early on. The functional side is the business, and the technical side needs to reach out to business.

Understand what you have and what needs to be customized through T-code changes. How does remediation of the code affect testing cycles? What is the business process impact and the level of effort for testing and code?

What is the usage frequency, history, and impact? Usage history helps to uncover the value of the customization. A value assessment may uncover that a transaction isn’t necessary for customization. Assessments remove fear and uncertainty.

Preparation is the key. Everything is for naught without preparation.

Preconceived Notion

Clients say SAP HANA is not feature-complete. However, when you talk to them about it, they have an older BSR that is not relevant, since the solution has matured over time. The business impact needs to be examined annually or release-by-release. When you run the BSR, tell the accounting executive that you are not ready to move to SAP HANA for a year or so.

Available Tools and Technologies

Details for a Technical Assessment are extracted from your system, so today, if you’re running a collector that is only maintaining data over 60 to 90 days, it would be prudent to open the collector parameters to grab one-year worth of info and store for a length of time.

This info is very valuable. All third-party tools depend on this information that includes code, configuration, role authority, master data changes, and landscape inconsistencies.

For Technical and Business Process Analysis, there are third-party tools, including Panaya, Solution Manager, Gekkobrain, and LiveCompare. You can perform assessments, such as business change transaction, impact analysis of change usage, and BP Impact analysis, with any of these tools.

Every tool requires distillation of information on changes and impact. To do this, you can put the report into Excel and cut it into graphs. Distillation involves grouping T-code according to business process area.

Development: LiveCompare and Gekkobrain compete with each other for quickness of process.

Testing: Panaya, Gekkobrain, and LiveCompare are at the top for test planning and automation. Solution Manager is a free solution that works well across these but requires more distillation.

Production: LiveCompare gives the best assessment for release validation and consideration of change in maturity level.

Telling a Visual Story

Telling a visual story benefits all stakeholders and helps with credibility. Graphs can show the percentage of system usage and custom code history. Using graphs, you can evaluate information and see where impacts are going to be felt. This information is about 98% accurate, which is good out of thousands of transactions. When imported into production, you can see maturation and change.

How much custom activity do you have vs. standard activity in SAP? Customers believe they are so custom that they will never get to S/4HANA. They may have custom transitions but never use most of them. You can see how many customizations are impacted and analyze the impact for the chosen approach to deployment.

Code impact Based on S/4HANA Selected Target

Companies say that they have too much custom code. Clear Technologies provides a high-level description of Code Impact. Our primary tool is capable of delivering the line-by-line changes necessary. Our secondary tool is capable of auto-remediation of most of the identified code. A customer may choose a version based on the impact and the level of functionality that can be achieved.

SAP Standard provided tools are SPDD and SPAU that identify cases that will require manual intervention and examination. SPDD is a data dictionary tool and SPAU is for programs and function modules. These are the best tools for this analysis.

Customers should recognize how much effort it is to manually determine, fix, and embrace necessary changes. The sooner you can address this and understand the modification workbench, the better off you will be.

Testing

Testing is the long pole in the tent because everybody hates testing. Testing will uncover everything they did wrong, and people will fight over who is responsible.

Testing covers code changes, configuration changes, role and authorization changes, and master data changes. Screen changes are covered by SPAU. It may not remember custom fields and won’t know what to do with them.

There may be inconsistencies across the landscape. Files that are kept on the transports include libraries that may get scrambled. Tools will help to identify these inconsistencies, as well as poorly defined and documented requirements. Training documents should be current so you can use them to check.

Many companies have too many cooks in the kitchen. They keep hiring groups, but no one hands off the information.

Where will you find defects in SAP? They may be everywhere, but you can use the tool to expose these things ahead of time.

SAP Release Considerations

SAP S/4 has a 4-year support cycle. 1511 was released in 2015 and runs out of support soon, so those customers are looking for an upgrade.

The upgrade to S/4HANA is nothing like the upgrade for ECC. There is no downtime, just a lot of reading and following instructions. There is a dual support package. Feature packets are functional changes. You don’t need to upgrade to every feature pack.

The upgrade manager gives detailed input so you can determine whether to apply a certain function set. Tools will help you get through the upgrade process.

Workshop Objectives

Workshops help you blend technology and methodology to achieve world-class efficiencies. You should know the cost reductions before implementation.

Impact Analysis: Know the details of change. Reduction of test scope, based on technical changes, saves significant resources. Enable faster changes from business requirements by understanding the impact of what must be tested.

Test Scope and Analysis: Achieve efficient testing based on the impact of changes. Develop test coverage based on changes.

Know where the custom code can be retired and made more efficient. Identify areas for code efficiency and where code can be removed. Understand what you don’t know.

See the impact to the business process. A global template is consistently implemented across regions. The dev team and business team know the impact of change.

Governance: Reach clarity of role conflicts. Quickly see the impact of SAP role changes. Ensure everyone is cooperative in their roles.

Putting It All Together

The Technical Assessment is a critical component of your business case. You end up with a business case when you combine technical and functional assessments. Understanding the technical details is necessary to complete planning the move to S/4HANA.

Third-party tools can facilitate the move. They have different strengths, so consider those when choosing one. There is also a cost involved. SAP listened to these concerns and provided their own tools.

Assessments and planning are ongoing events and should be visited upon new SAP releases to ascertain the impacts of product improvements to S/4HANA.

Clear Tech wants to be your partner. We do this by offering workshops and assessments, including those covering SAP HANA Readiness, preparing BSRs, Technical Assessments, deployment options, and infrastructure optimization. Workshops can go more in depth with 1-to-2-day engagements. We encourage you to bring the stakeholders in. We’re an infrastructure practice, so we are not trying to compete with current SIS or SAP consultants.

Work with us to prepare for your S/4HANA implementation. Request a Readiness Assessment with Clear Tech.

SAP HANA Implementation Approach Options

Posted on by analyticsinbound@gmail.com

Understanding the SAP HANA implementation approach options will help your company avoid costly mistakes. Thoroughly evaluating the different options available will help your company make informed business decisions during each phase.

Part of building a business case for SAP HANA is deciding on an implementation approach. There are 3 options to explore so you can understand them and make the right choice.

Key considerations in choosing an implementation option include: who should determine the approach, the impacts to the business and to IT of selecting one approach over another, the critical differences between approaches, and what SAP says about the selection process.

SAP Big Picture

Traditional SAP ECC customers are asking how they can get to SAP HANA. SAP HANA is the platform. HANA is the database, and S/4 is the generation.

There are typically 3 ways to get to S/4HANA: new implementation, conversion, and a hybrid approach that combines the 2.

Once you get through implementation, you’re going to be faced with where it is going to be hosted: in the public, private, or hybrid cloud. That decision can be just as important because that is the foundation for how the solution is going to run. Clear Tech can help you choose the optimal hosting solution.

Once you move to S/4HANA, it’s going to run on Linux with an Intel or IBM server. The difference between Intel and Power is stark. Intel has a lot of limitations. Power is inherently reliable and flexible.

Business Case

A key part of the business case has to do with your implementation costs and your impact estimates. Estimated benefits will be dictated against a particular approach. There is a difference in cost and scope between Greenfield and Brownfield.

The Business Scenario Recommendations Report (BSR) articulates what is available, what is not, and how it impacts your business. The BSR largely anticipates a Greenfield approach. Clear Tech is independent of the SI, so we will help you make a decision without being influenced by the fact that a Greenfield is a much bigger project for an SI.

It benefits you to run a Technical Assessment. There are a number of tools for running an assessment and they present the details differently. It’s important to figure out which of the tools is the best for your needs. The Technical Assessment gives information on what code needs to change, the impact, and the level of customization needed.

Combine findings of the BSR and Technical Assessment, as well as change impact from business leaders, and a picture will start to emerge.

Importance of the Approach

The approach should be a business decision. The business should define and articulate the need. IT should put forth impacts aligned to the defined process. There has to be a close relationship between IT and the business. A small segment of the business may decry the move to SAP HANA and the need to re-implement and redo everything.

The strategic plan will include process drivers. Why are you choosing one approach over another, and what are the business impacts? Have these decisions been included in the documented requirements? Who owns the documented requirements? They are owned by whoever has the project management role. Not documenting this is a failure on the business side.

ERP systems are built to facilitate and enable business growth, not IT control.

Defining Questions

The first step in choosing an approach is building requirements. To do so, you need to ask some questions:

  • Does your system meet your current and defined future business needs?
  • Are you sensitive to change and the associated costs?
  • Do your current processes meet business and compliance needs?
  • Do you need legacy data for business use?
  • Do you have significant costs for maintaining customization?
  • Do your processes align closely to accepted industry practices?
  • Is your current ECC system ready to move to S/4HANA?

Are all the Approaches Created Equal?

One common thread that runs through all the approaches is that, when you are finished, your SAP system will continue to drive change.

Bluefield Approach is covered first because Clear Tech has never known an implementation that hasn’t eventually gone through change. Even if you started as a Greenfield, you will move to a hybrid approach because the decision to go Greenfield is often colored by emotion. Bluefield is somewhere between the Greenfield and Brownfield approaches. It saves the value of the existing solution but gives more flexibility for the definition of the go-live phase, reducing the downtime needed.

Greenfield Approach is for customers that want to take advantage of S/4HANA to re-engineer their processes and implement a brand-new solution, reducing the level of customization while realizing that they will also lose their historical transaction and master data. This data will be recaptured through daily processes. There is a data migration tool, but it adds cost to your plan.

Brownfield Approach is a migration. It populates the tables with data from your existing systems. This is an approach for customers that want to leverage their existing solution, save their historical data, and rapidly convert to S/4HANA. It minimizes testing. The Brownfield approach will affect business users the least. It puts a foundation in place to adopt innovation at your pace.

Greenfield Is a Revolution

Greenfield is a new implementation. As such, it is the most disruptive approach. It consumes the largest amount of business time. The business must be integrated, and while it is being integrated, the business team can’t do its job.

Greenfield also causes the largest loss of legacy data within the SAP landscape. You can try to move your own data using the data migration tool, but this approach is expensive.

Essentially, your company is starting over. Is your SAP system that bad? Are you out of compliance?

Brownfield Is an Evolution

Brownfield is a migration, so it is more transitional. This approach causes the least amount of disruption. The system is pretty much the same as it was.

Brownfield consumes the smallest amount of business time. You’re not re-engineering your processes, except there will be deprecation with merged transactions. Those must be remediated. Clear Tech can walk you through this.

There is minimal loss of legacy data within the SAP landscape. The Brownfield approach is the least expensive because it has minimal impact. Your company moves what fits into the new S/4HANA environment.

Bluefield Is Managed Evolution

There are 2 ways to take a Bluefield approach. One is hybrid with BPR. This approach is a migration/transition with a Selective Process rework. This approach involves some disruption based on the need. Business time requirements vary. There is some loss of legacy data within the SAP landscape. The cost of this approach could be extensive and close to that of the Greenfield approach. Your company moves what fits into the new S/4HANA redesign processes that improve efficiency or that cost money to maintain customization.

The second — and preferable — way is hybrid phased. This Bluefield implementation begins with a Brownfield approach and goes through a phase 2 redesign of selected business processes. The resource time impact is controlled as is strategic spend. Your company is able to retain legacy data and functionality. Business benefits are quickly realized.

Comparing Paths to SAP S/4HANA

Key questions influence your choice of transition scenario.

Do you want to keep your solution enhancements or your transaction data history? When you ask this question, people get emotional. If yes, you are heading toward Brownfield. If no, you are heading toward a new implementation.

Does your system fulfill all conversion prerequisites? If yes, take a Brownfield approach. Be sure to take care of these prerequisites because, if you don’t, you’re heading for a Greenfield.

Do you need a phased business roll-out? If yes, you need a Greenfield. You’re probably not using ECC much. If no, you can do a migration.

Do you need a renewal of your complete ERP solution? Is it so bad that the IRS is breathing down your neck? Do you need to close your books down numerous times? If yes, then you need to choose Greenfield.

How do you perceive your current system? If you perceive it as an innovation blocker, go Greenfield. If you perceive it as a key asset, choose Brownfield. This perception depends on who you ask. Business perceives it as a key asset, while IT thinks things can be done better.

A Preconceived Notion

Customers think that S/4HANA isn’t feature-complete. They need to consider what version they are looking at. Each time a release happens, you need to rerun the BSR. New features are available and features are renamed and moved to different areas of SAP.

Most customers are only using 25% of their customizations. They need to consider the impact of their testing and how the Brownfield approach requires much less testing than Greenfield.

When deciding on an approach, start considering what needs to be deprecated and customized. Which use cases in your industry require you to do things a certain way and how much testing needs to take place?

S/4HANA Journey

Stage 0: Go through the Business Case. Value crowd insights. It won’t help to have one member of the business advocating for the entire business. You want to get users from each business process area to talk about their experiences. This discussion should be driven by the business or hardware vendor but never the SI.

Stage 1: Move to Unicode. Look at what breaks, how to fix it, and what to test. Enable a new GL. It is simpler to do this before conversion.

Stage 2: ECC6 EMP7 Upgrade. Look at what would break, how to fix it, what to test, and functional testing.

Stage 3: Suite on HANA (SoH). Today, customers shouldn’t go to SoH, because there are no savings as far as a migration. Save the money and put it toward the predecessors.

Stage 4: Implement S/4HANA Simple Finance (sFIN). Take baby steps to get ready for S/4HANA. Many of these steps are not affected by your approach and do not affect your approach.

Key Takeaways

The selection of the implementation approach should be a business decision and should be made by those who face customers.

The impact of the approach is often underestimated. Impacts include transactional data loss, master data loss, extra cost for data migration, and effect on customers when information is left behind.

The 3 approaches are very different. SAP has provided options within the process to assist you in moving safely. Clear Tech understands that the system keeps changing, so a Greenfield approach may not provide much value.

Clear Tech offers no-cost workshops and assessments to help you get started on your SAP HANA journey.

Get unbiased advice on your approach to SAP HANA implementation. Schedule a Readiness Assessment with Clear Tech.

3 Steps to Setting up Your SAP HANA Journey

Posted on by analyticsinbound@gmail.com

Migrating to SAP HANA is a big step. Migrations are complex processes that can interrupt production and create the risk of losing data. Many companies have put off planning for their SAP HANA migration because of the pandemic. PricewaterhouseCoopers found that only 25% of companies surveyed have already migrated to S/4HANA. However, the longer such a major project is delayed, the greater the chance for error.

Preparation is the key to making a successful move to the latest generation of SAP HANA technology, if that is the right path for your company. To prepare for your SAP HANA journey, there are 3 steps you can take: building a business case, performing a technical assessment, and choosing an approach to implementation.

Here’s an overview of the 3 steps to laying the groundwork for SAP HANA migration:

Step 1: Building a Business Case

Before your company moves to SAP HANA, you need to convince business leadership that the move is a good idea. Company leadership wants to understand what the impact of the move will be on the business, what the related costs will be, and how it will benefit the business. Leadership needs to know that all the changes to processes, time, and expense are worth it.

Many organizations have an inflated view of the level of customization they need and mistakenly believe that S/4HANA is functionally incomplete. An SAP Business Scenario Recommendations Report (BSR) will give a more accurate picture of how current business processes map onto the new version of SAP HANA. By combining the findings of the BSR with a Technical Assessment, you can show business leaders how much customization, testing, and training is really necessary to make the transition.

Step 2: Performing a Technical Assessment

Along with the BSR, a Technical Assessment is an important way to prepare for SAP HANA migration. The Technical Assessment determines what customizations your company has and what T-code really needs to be changed based on usage and business impact.

Technical Assessments help remove fear and uncertainty by showing which transactions don’t need customization. Of the thousands of customizations most companies think they need, only 25% are actually required. In S/4HANA, some functions have been associated with other business processes and renamed. Out of the 25% required customizations, many are used infrequently.

By putting the information from the Technical Assessment in a graph or chart, you can visualize the findings, making it easier for business leadership to see where business impacts are going to be felt.

Step 3: Choosing an Approach to Implementation

Before moving to SAP HANA, your company must select the right approach to implementation. Clear Tech calls the 3 main approaches to implementation Bluefield, Greenfield, and Brownfield.

Every time SAP releases a new version, your company needs to perform assessments that extract data from your system and compare it with what is available through SAP HANA to determine the ideal approach to implementation.

The Bluefield approach is a hybrid approach that combines the Greenfield and Brownfield approaches. With the Bluefield approach, your company can retain the value of your existing solution while segmenting the go-live process for less potential disruption.

The Greenfield approach is a new implementation. With Greenfield, your company re-engineers processes and implements a new solution, surrendering all your historical data and starting over. This approach is the most disruptive and potentially expensive and should be undertaken if your current system really isn’t working for you.

The Brownfield approach is a migration that allows your company to leverage its existing solution. Tables are populated with data from your current system for a faster, less disruptive implementation.

Guidance Through the SAP HANA Migration Process

SAP has provided tools to help your company through the 3 steps needed to lay a foundation for an SAP HANA migration. Turning to a technology partner for guidance in choosing an approach and a hosting option may provide an unbiased second opinion about migration.

Clear Tech can take on the role as your trusted advisor. We offer many workshops and assessments related to SAP HANA migration, including an SAP HANA Readiness Assessment. We encourage you to involve your business stakeholders in these workshops.

Get more details on how to prepare for your SAP HANA journey. Read the Clear Tech eBook The Complete Guide to Upgrading to SAP HANA.