Secure agility advantages

Flexible, agile and efficient processes are essential for digital transformation. Processes, some of which have been established for decades, must be redefined.

For example, new models such as "pay as you go," "pay per use," "pay per transaction," or "pay what you want" have a massive impact on the traditional order-to-cash process. The ability to adapt such new models quickly and flexibly will be critical to the success of digital transformation.

But how can companies lay the foundation for this? One proven and beneficial guideline has turned out to be to prefer a holistic approach in order to be prepared as an SAP user company for today and tomorrow in terms of digitization.

This holistic approach focuses on achieving agility benefits. However, intransparent processes and high operating costs due to complex system landscapes often stand in the way. Simplification and transformation are therefore the main fields of action on the path to agility benefits.

IoT, Industry 4.0, SAP Leonardo

Fujitsu's SAP solutions are designed to create smart, connected and future-oriented enterprises. One example of this is the Fujitsu Connected Enterprise IoT solution based on SAP applications and Fujitsu solutions. It is also a core element within the Fujitsu Industry 4.0 Competence Center, which was recently opened in Munich. There, the company combines and bundles its wide-ranging competencies in the field of industrial IoT (IIoT). The primary goal is to support and sustainably drive the digital transformation of European industry.

Simplification...

Simplification is usually aimed at being able to use a company's limited resources to successfully plan and implement transformation.

This means that services are switched or taken over by an experienced IT service provider - this can be realized by a managed-on-premise cloud in the company's own data center or by a hosted private cloud in the provider data center.

KPIs (such as availability, performance, number of transactions) and pay-per-use models are used. If the service is provided by in-house resources, customers can use the Prime Flex 4 SAP Landscape powered by FlexFrame Orchestrator solution.

Many SAP customers have already been able to optimize their SAP/Hana operations with this operating concept and thus achieve cost savings, especially in the operation of different SAP infrastructures.

The private cloud solution will now be expanded in Stage 1 to include, for example, the functions of integrated and automatic backup management, automatic Hana high availability, and monitoring for the infrastructure including SAP applications.

With digitalization, SAP customers will need flexible IT resources in the future. As a long-standing SAP infrastructure supplier, Fujitsu will therefore offer more hybrid concepts in the future. This will enable SAP customers to deploy Hana target systems in a public cloud, including cross-cloud monitoring and corresponding holistic management of the SAP systems concerned.

In the course of digitization, structured and unstructured data is increasingly being collected, e.g. in Hadoop, and exchanged and analyzed with SAP systems via SAP Vora. The Prime Flex 4 SAP Landscape supports such scenarios and provides a uniform operating concept for SAP customers.

...before transformation

The first step in the transformation is to analyze the business processes that are supported by the SAP deployment. The goal is to create seamless transparency.

This is best done by using a process mining toolset. Existing inflexible processes are identified in particular, which are to be optimized in accordance with a roadmap to be drawn up and are worth undergoing a kind of agility fitness cure.

At the same time, it can be used to perform an S/4 delta analysis with the identification of corresponding process improvements. A concrete business blueprint including a technology blueprint and a project plan can also be derived from this.

Plus point: SAP existing customers are thus in a position to assess how they can implement S/4 (or also BW/4 Hana or other analytics functionality), for example, and in what way they can best benefit from the value propositions of Hana and new Hana-based application solutions or also from IoT deployment in conjunction with SAP.

At the DSAG Congress 2016, Fujitsu presented XPressWay (formerly Process/4), a roadmap for implementing SAP solutions such as S/4 as the basis for digital transformation.

The roadmap consists of the core elements Discover, Prove, Apply as well as Evolve and covers all requirements for SAP application companies to derive the best possible benefit from their digitization initiatives using new SAP solutions.

Digitization package

The Discover part also includes the aforementioned process mining with a sophisticated inventory. A benefit/cost analysis and an examination of the customer's own developments are also planned - all tool-supported.

Also integrated is an S/4 Hana discovery workshop including access and use of S/4 from a demo center. In addition to a transformation roadmap, the Prove module also provides for the creation of an architecture plan with concrete project planning.

Also included are: application consulting services, a dashboard-based process KPI framework, and a sandbox system with an application prototype.

The XPressWay Apply element focuses on agile system implementation based on Fujitsu Best Practices and SAP Activate. It also covers the topics of system conversion (with determination of whether brownfield or greenfield approach), customer code alignment (Hana-ready, S/4-ready), and UIS usage with SAP Fiori.

Last but not least, the Evolve phase ensures continuous development. Business process monitoring identifies process deviations and feeds them directly into optional SAP Basis operation, SAP application management, and license maintenance.

In this context, all building blocks or fields of activity of the services digitization complete package are supported by change management and coaching services as required.

For S/4 Hana deployment and the use of other Hana-based solutions, a comprehensive portfolio of services and solutions is provided by Fujitsu. Whereby managed SAP services are provided via 16 data centers and 2800 SAP consultants support customers with words and deeds.

Service Catalog Manager for multi-cloud management

Fujitsu's cloud product portfolio also includes the Service Catalog Manager. Among other things, it enables IaaS orchestration on an Open Stack basis (with Suse OpenStack Cloud). It represents a far-reaching cloud management solution for both IaaS and PaaS as well as SaaS deployment, including multi-cloud management. Customers and service providers are further supported with a service set to transform business-related functions and features of on-premise software applications as SaaS offerings that can then be consumed as cloud solutions. Also integrated are ready-to-use account and subscription management, online service provisioning, billing/payment services or reporting features. The Service Catalog Manager has an interface to the Prime Flex 4 SAP Landscape solution "powered by FlexFrame Orchestrator". In the future, SAP users will be able to select and deploy predefined IT infrastructure solutions in a coordinated manner with the IT department. The monitoring and management of the systems, including backup, will then be coordinated by the IT department.