An Introduction
CTC builds the central point of Access for all tasks related to technical configuration, mainly:
Automated Initial Setup (post installation tasks) of single system, depending on product and usage type and integration of the system into Landscape
Simplified adjustment of configuration after Upgrade, Copy or Cloning
Mass configuration changes and checks in hosting environments, also as hotfix
Automation of configuration for SAP internal production and system provisioning
Strategic goals SAP wants to achieve with CTC:
TCO reduction by simplified, unified and highly automated technical configuration during the lifetime of a system (landscape)
Lower Support Costs through reduced number of incidents caused by "wrong configuration"
Enable volume readiness by simplified and mass enabled configuration
Mandatory software capabilities to address goals, use cases, and target market:
Initial Setup/Update/Copy of an Business ByDesign System without manual configuration steps below 8h
A scalable and simple Designtime which allows rollout and handover of content development to the component owner
Automation (as much as possible) of pre and post configuration tasks for End 2 End lifecycle
Providing API to be integrated into other Lifecycle Management and ITSAM Tools and components
CTC Template Wizard can be started from Configuration Wizard of the SAP Netweaver Administrator. The Configuration Wizard makes technical settings which are required for the technical processing of a system or a technical scenario, e.g. connectivity, service users, usage-type initialization.
Layers of Configuration
CTC-Wizard for BUSINESS SUITE CONNECTIVITY
Business Suite Connectivity is a joint project between the SAP Business Suite (BS) organization (ERP, CRM, SRM etc.) and the group CONF within NetWeaver Lifecycle Management (NW LM SL CONF). After having demonstrated to lower TCO in ByDesign and NetWeaver dramatically by using the CTC technique the NW LM CONF is now targeting the areas of Business Suite to make the contribution in TCO topic.
The system landscapes of BS are highly complex. The effort of configuring different systems for making some special scenarios functioning is tremendous high. It requires a lot of experiences and is time consuming. Some scenarios in areas like ERP, CRM, NW and Solution are Manager for Business Suite 2008 identified and automated the configuration steps. Coming away from initial setup the CTC configuration wizards should also function in existing (productive) system landscape at customer side for BS 2008. This demand requires a lot of efforts in building wizards to be more stable, robust, easy usable, consistent, reliable and repeatable.
Example: ERP -> CRM connectivity
Although the first seven wizards have been shipped out with NW701 SP3 and two wizards with NW711 SP2 (mentioned below), more important it is intended that configuration wizards will be integrated and shipped out with Solution Manager (SolMan). For this propose a new wizard has been developed for SolMan with provided system data stored in SolMan. The easier starting point for running these configuration wizards will be in the SolMan, so that customer will automatically get the data of system to be configured.
The plan of the first phase is to demonstrate the power of CTC configuration wizards in lowering TCO in BS area, set standardized procedures in system configuration and gather more experiences with our new concept and more complex system landscapes. Our focus is primary in technical configuration (system connectivity) rather than business configuration.
NW701 SP3 Delivery of 7 templates:
CRM – ERP
SRM – ERP
Central Technical Configuration (CTC) - Part 2BI – ABAP
Adobe ABAP Print Forms
WebDynpro ABAP ALV List Printing with Adobe
CTC Runtime - Solution Manager Integration
NW 711 SP1 Delivery of 2 templates:
PI – ABAP
CTC Runtime - Solution Manager Integration