SAP Introduces SAP Cloud ALM
Today SAP introduced an all-new ALM tool: SAP Cloud ALM, with the cloud intelligent enterprise customer in mind. It has been designed from scratch to answer growing market demands for a tool that drives implementation and reduces total cost of operations with end-to-end management for multi cloud and hybrid cloud deployments.
Once in a decade event
In many ways todays celebration was special. For one, it happened in a virtual setting as travel and public events are still restricted. But, what made it far more memorable, is the fact, that new product launches of this magnitude don’t come around the corner too often. In fact, Marc Thier, SVP Technology Support at SAP called it a “Once in a decade event”
One ALM Solution across the Intelligent Enterprise
Cloud ALM is designed to act as the “glue” between all intelligent enterprise cloud products. It will allow implementation and operation for products such as S/4HANA Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba and SAP Customer Experience solutions.
With cloud becoming ever more important and release cycles becoming ever shorter, the need for a reliable ALM support tools in the background is becoming increasingly important. To live up to those expectations, Cloud ALM will focus on two major stages in cloud deployments:
Implementation
Implementation will focus on topics of processes, tasks, testing, change and deployment.
The process context allows to consume SAP best practice processes, such as SAP Activate, visualize them and manage scope changes in fit-to-gap workshops. Tasks allows to manage tasks for implementation that are automatically generated and adapted to customer needs based on SAP Activate. In Testing, you will be able to prepare for manual test and soon also integrate with automated testing tools.
Last but not least in Change and Deploy you will manage your requirements lifecycle by utilizing change management workflow and deployment orchestration.
Operation
In the area of Operations topics of interest are Detect, Diagnose, Correct and as a new addition to the ALM Cycle, Automate.
The context of monitoring shifts to business processes, integrations and application performance. Diagnose gains capabilities in analytics & intelligence, such as root cause analysis, business process improvements and predictive technical analytics. Correct is comprised of event & alert management including alert clustering and intelligent event processing.
The newly added context of automation is designed with both reactive and predictive execution of operation flows to avoid repeating tasks and increase overall operational quality.
While Cloud ALM will become available to the general public this summer, the tool is just in its infancy with both further feature and product support in the pipeline. These include project management, continuous delivery and integration, 3rd-party enhancements and many more.
Leveling the cloud for cloud
During the event, Josh Greenbaum of EAConsult, shared his experience of his early-access to Cloud ALM. He calls the tool a game changer, leveling the cloud for cloud customers. His extensive summary of Cloud ALM can be found on SAP support website.
The new kid on the block
The new ALM tool will join the existing family of SAP’s ALM products. Along side SAP Solution Manager and Focused Run, Cloud ALM has been designed to strategically fill a void, not to replace any of the existing tools.
Naturally, the extensive ALM experience portfolio of SAP has help design and develop Cloud ALM.
Availability
During the course of the next few weeks SAP will onboard 70 customers to verify the tool, before releasing it to the public on August 31.
Cloud ALM comes free of charge to all existing enterprise cloud subscription customers.
Cloud ALM is designed for immediate consumption, meaning its always online, always up-to-date and you can access it from anywhere.
If you are interested in finding out more about Cloud ALM, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Certified Application Lifecycle Management Professionals. →
