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Ying
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
11,131
SAP is transforming itself into a cloud powerhouse, having a range of cloud applications, working on integration of those cloud solutions onto a single cloud platform. What about the lifecycle events of its core offering, S/4HANA Cloud? How are patches and new innovations are delivered in cloud?

As described in the SAP Activate methodology's Release and Update Cycle of S/4HANA Cloud deliverable, there are three types of lifecycle event in S/4HANA Cloud: corrections, frequent feature updates, and release upgrades.

A detailed schedule is included in SAP Activate as an accelerator, where you can find the timing of collection of changes applied to the customer's systems. Green, gold and red colored bars represent corrections, features and upgrades respectively. The update and release upgrade numbers are indicated in the white boxes, where updates are numbered after each major release.


S/4 HANA Cloud Schedule


To view a list of corrections included in changes applied, go to the Patch Collection Information note in the useful link section of the schedule accelerator, and download the pdf document that contains a list of affected component ID and description of corrections.


Example of component ID and description of corrections


Coming from a quarterly release in the past, there are two major upgrades for 2022. Additional new features are introduced every month as an update, where there is not a release upgrade in that month. What's New Viewer is a great tool to explore and find out more details about new innovations that are in the updates and upgrades. Customer can easily filter by Line of Business (i.e. Manufacturing, etc), Solution Area (i.e. Quality management, etc), Category (i.e. CDS view, App, etc), Type (i.e. new or update) for one or a few collection of changes by the release number.


 


Example: A New CDS view of Quality Management for customer in Manufacturing


 

Unlike release upgrade, frequent updates are delivered without too much disruption from customer point of view, similar like corrections or patches. For release upgrade, regression test steps are grouped together in Activate methodology to provide more clear guidance for customer execution during the 2 weeks upgrade period.

 

Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast

As always, I would like to encourage you to subscribe to our new podcast “Inside SAP S/4HANA.” This podcast leverages the unique knowledge and expertise of SAP S/4HANA product experts, partners and customers to address your needs by sharing product insights and project best practice. There is no customer success without product success and project success; we help you get to the next level and make your SAP S/4HANA projects a success. Subscribe now and benefit from the shared knowledge.

openSAP Microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA

Just a couple of months ago, we launched openSAP microlearnings for SAP S/4HANA as an exciting new learning opportunity. What began with a small batch of 20 videos, has now become a channel with more than 50 microlearnings that have generated over 20,000 views since then. Today we cover multiple lines of business, like Finance and Manufacturing & Supply Chain, and key technology topics like Master Data Management, Extensibility, User Experience, and Upgrade Management. We are continuously adding new microlearnings to the SAP S/4HANA channel, so make sure you check them out.

Your Voice Matters!

If you want to learn more and actively engage with SAP subject matter experts on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, join our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community. This community brings together SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers, partners and SAP experts and has a clear mission: deliver an interactive community to engage with one another about best practices and product solutions. We invite you to explore the new SAP S/4HANA Cloud Community ‘one-stop shop’ as the central place for all resources, tools, content questions, answers and connect with experts to guide you through your SAP S/4HANA Cloud journey.

Click the Follow button on our SAP Activate Community page to get the latest updates or follow me personally via y4huang2003.

Check out the Q&A section of our community for some frequently asked questions, or raise your own.

Follow us via @Sisn and #SAPS4HANAValueSeries
6 Comments
Bobby_Byrne
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos
Nice...
joerg_stahr
Associate
Associate
0 Kudos
Hi,

 

so Is my understanding correct that there are only 2 major releases for S4 HANA per year?

 

Is there always a downtimes  (non availability of the system to customers) associated with the releases?
Ying
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos

Correct, for 2022, there were two major releases. There is a monthly release (ie. 2208.1 in Sept) of new features in the month where there is not a major release.

 

joerg_stahr
Associate
Associate
0 Kudos

Thank you.

Can you please be more precise?

Will there be a downtime = non-availability of the system during the continuous delivery / patching.

Ying
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos

Continuous Delivery is indicated as YYMM.n in the schedule and delivered the same way as patching. 

You can also find the downtime information in the schedule link in the blog. 

joerg_stahr
Associate
Associate
0 Kudos
Ok. So yes. the system will be down.