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Where to start, so much has happened and there's so much to say... ok let's start from the beginning...
We're implementing S/4HANA, and since S/4HANA is the next generation ERP product from SAP, we're really focused on the _next generation_ aspect of implementing S/4HANA.
And instead of just sleep walking into S/4HANA, I mean instead of just doing an in place transition from ECC to S/4 we're using the opportunity to holistically look at our whole SAP setup, from the End User UX to the Monitoring and Operations Tools and, the complimentary SAP Products and everything in between.
I saw this blog Support for SAP S/4HANA Implementation from Scratch in Five Phases written by ute.rueckert-daschakowsky and from the title was really looking forward to read some interesting, relevant and useful material, but the anti-climax was, to benefit from that blog's reference material you have to be a SAP Learning Hub Customer which we're not.
In this series I am going to publish complimentary blogs to help other colleagues in the SAP Community with their S/4HANA implementation challenges and considerations.
In this first blog we're looking at the S/4HANA User Experience. But we're not going to think about S/4HANA UX in isolation we're going to think about the UX holistically for all of our SAP Applications and in harmony with our company's UX strategy.
S/4HANA UX
The S/4HANA UX strategy is very well documented, and SAP have provided many very high quality resources explaining and enabling the User Experience in S/4HANA including SAP Best Practices for UX in SAP S/4HANA and UI Technology Guide for SAP S/4HANA 1709
SAP Fiori is the default End User interface for S/4HANA, the SAP Gui still works, the NetWeaver Business Client works, but SAP Fiori is the defacto standard from SAP for S/4HANA User Experience.
This means as a Customer when we are planning our future S/4HANA vision, we need to provision SAP Fiori.
There are three basic ways to provision SAP Fiori for S/4HANA, these are:
SAP Fiori embedded on the S/4HANA system:
SAP Fiori Front-End-Server as a hub:
SAP Fiori Cloud:
{Source of the pictures: SAP Fiori Deployment Options and System Landscape Requirements}
We have spent quite some time on the question of how to deploy Fiori, Embedded, as a Hub or in the Cloud.
We looked at having Embedded Fiori on the S/4HANA system and concluded against that for a few reasons including:
. Looking to the future we foresee that we will have many Fiori enabled SAP Products and we'd like to have a User Experience where the Users have a Single Point of Entry for all Fiori applications across all SAP Products, only 1 Url and not having to keep Bookmarks or Favourites in the Web Browser for conveniently storing the Urls
. We have a long journey ahead with S/4HANA and the goal is to consolidate all ERP's in the company into the Single ERP S/4HANA. This means in some years, a huge number of people will be using the S/4HANA, and we didn't want to have the overhead of the Fiori workload on the S/4HANA
This lead us on the path to the Fiori Hub scenario.
But... the Fiori Hub at the moment also has it's cons, including, as of today, although many SAP Business Suite Products can be connected to the Fiori Hub and have their Front End Fiori Components on the Hub, even multiples of the SAP SAP Business Suite Products, eg multiple CRM's, there's a problem with S/4HANA.
As the situation stands today, if a company has more than one S/4HANA based system, eg, an S/4HANA and an MDG on S/4HANA, only one of these two S/4HANA systems can have its Fiori Front End Components on the Fiori Hub. As of today, it is technically not possible to have more than one S/4HANA system having Fiori Front End Components on a Fiori Hub.
And hence this is why in here SAP are recommending that for S/4HANA, the Embedded Fiori is used. This situation will be resolved in the future but it is not known when.
What's the alternative, Fiori in the Cloud, and actually Fiori in the Cloud is having the same problem, only one S/4HANA can have its Fiori Front End Components on the Fiori Cloud. As far as I understand, this is prioritised for being solved by SAP for the Fiori Cloud.
On top of this when we will run a Fiori Hub, we put ourselves at the mercy of the multi-dimensional upgrades problem which we have always suffered with the SAP Portal. That is, when you have multiple Backend SAP Systems connected to a Fiori, there is a risk, that upgrading a Backend SAP System could trigger that the SAP Fiori Front End Server needs an upgrade and this in turn could trigger that other connected dependent Backend SAP Systems will need an upgrade in some form or other.
On the other hand, the OSS Notes for the different Fiori releases have shown that even when a new version of the Fiori is released, in a lot of cases the previous versions SAP Fiori Backend Components will still work, this is visible in the following OSS Notes:
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2506466 (FES4.0)
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2310351 (FES3.0)
https://launchpad.support.sap.com/#/notes/2200415 (FES2.0)
What to do ?
Local Fiori on S/4HANA, I wouldn't recommend for the reasons above.
Fiori Hub, this is the most elegant, Single Point of Entry, but both On-Premise and On-Cloud it currently has limitations and it has to be your decision which way to go based upon the costs and benefits.
If your priority is the User Experience and the Single Url then the choice is clear.
And what about the future, that's the title of the Blog isn't it,
why the title, (The S/4HANA Generation - SAP UX Integration) Back to The Portal... ?
We're all familiar with the different demographics gnerations, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y & Millenials .
It's the same with web enabling SAP, there have been different generations of web enablement of the SAP products, and during my career I've seen the following different generations of Web Enabling the User Experience in SAP ERP,
SAP ITS Generation - Late 1990's - SAP R/3 and the SAP Internet Transaction Server
SAP Portal Generation - 2002 to around 2013 - SAP ECC & SAP Portal
SAP NWBC Generation - 2009 to date - SAP ECC & SAP NetWeaver Business Client
SAP Fiori Generation - 2013 to date - SAP S/4HANA & SAP Fiori
It was around 2013, that in my eyes at least, the SAP Portal story started to become confusing for Customers. SAP Portal had always had its place as the User Experience Integrator for SAP, but when Fiori and the NWBC came along, Customers rightly questioned the need for the investment in the SAP Portal when there is the NWBC, and especially why to have the Portal when it is possible to have a Fiori Hub ?
And hence why the blog, why the title, Back to the Portal ?
It's interesting, in 2013 just over 5 years ago, I posted this blog, SAP Portal Architecture – SAP Hana Cloud Portal as the Doorway to the Enterprise’s off-premise AND o... the blog discussed using the SAP Cloud Portal as the Single Point of Entry to Customer's SAP systems.
Let's fast forward to today, and the latest version of the SAP Guide, SAP Fiori Deployment Options and System Landscape Requirements is communicating in the Introduction that for the future it is SAP's recommendation to use the SAP Cloud Portal Service as the UX Integrator:
As the guide which was published in February 2018 states, it is SAP's strategy for the future, that SAP Cloud Platform Portal is aimed to act as a UX Integrator and to offer the single point of entry and with other features and benefits.
And now we see, with the SAP User Experience Integration, we are Back to the (Future) Portal.
The final recommendation from my side, whatever you are doing with S/4HANA and Fiori, whatever your long term plans are for SAP UX User Experience, start putting the SAP Cloud Portal into your SAP UX RoadMap because SAP have it in theirs.
SAP Cloud Platform Portal help.sap.com
We are now entering the SAP Cloud Platform Portal Generation.
p.s. some useful SAP Cloud Platform Portal links
https://eaexplorer.hana.ondemand.com/_item.html?id=10615#!/overview
https://help.hana.ondemand.com/cloud_portal/frameset.htm?2a31f7b3290e474b84c694ccd105350c.html
https://www.sap.com/products/hana-cloud-portal.html
https://cloudplatform.sap.com/dmp/capabilities/us/product/SAP-Cloud-Platform-Portal/0c501f05-f71e-49...
https://help.sap.com/viewer/p/Portal_Service
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