
*In the beginning continuous delivery for SAP S/4HANA Cloud
has also been referred to as Continuous Feature Delivery (CFD)
SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers have received 2111.1 - the first update based on the current 2111 release. What are the benefits of updates? Which updates and releases are planned next year? How can you as a customer make use of features provided via updates?
This blogpost is the first out of a series that aims to inform about these questions and related news around the topic of continuous delivery. Let's start with the basic idea of updates!
Explaining why we introduced updates I would like to draw the attention to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud release strategy of continuous delivery:
Coming from a quarterly release cycle, SAP S/4HANA Cloud has started to reduce the number of releases and system upgrades per year, while introducing frequent updates between releases.
The now semi-annual releases include the usual system upgrades with more extensive developments. Updates in between releases deliver functionalities without disrupting the day-to-day business of end-users.
Since the entire scope of all updates is included to the following biannual release, customers can choose whether to put a feature into operation – or not. In this sense, features provided via updates can be considered as optional pre-deliveries of the following release.
continuous delivery for SAP S/4HANA Cloud
What's New - 2111.1
For 2111.1 one feature is hidden behind a toggle as all other features in this update do not cause any day-1 impact (see below for more details, how we ensure that updates do not cause any day-1 impact).
Current planning includes two SAP S/4HANA Cloud releases. The below visual gives an overview of releases and related updates.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud - Release and Update Plan - 2022
Release, Update, and Maintenance Calendar for SAP S/4HANA Cloud
With continuous delivery we follow the principle of regression-free deliveries. Reference for us is the so-called day-1 impact.
Changes with day-1 impact affect daily work, since they require downtimes, for example, or additional trainings for end users. To avoid this, any feature-development for an update delivery undergoes additional quality measures on top of the standard quality processes for releases.
A toggle introduced in an update has a limited lifetime. In the next release or the one following, the toggle will be deleted and the functionality will be active for all customers.
The below visual explains what we mean with day-1 impact and how this is managed via toggles in more detail.
Managing day-1 impact using toggles
For more information, please visit the following documentation:
Christian Geldmacher is member of the continuous delivery program in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud engineering team. He enables customers and partners to become accustomed to continuous deliveries and leads a multidisciplinary team that internally supports the engineering units on their way towards continuous delivery.
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