Learning on SAP upgrades

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This is what I was doing some months ago.
I was working on a proposal related to a SAP technical upgrade and depending of the person I talk to, a different tools are recommended to me. This is just an initial opinion, probably when I gain more visibility it will be different, but by the moment this was a fanny situation.
For the technical upgrade:
  • Panaya: this is a tool that takes care so much about the look and feel. It provides reports (that can be done during the evolution of the ABAP remediation) showing information about the % of programs, functions… that requires remediation. The people that used it commented that they are happy of doing it: the client see how much effort is needed to test 100% of the application and really understand that we are not over-budgeting the project. For the IT people it does not provide any value.
  • Smartshift: the same concept than Panaya, but in addition enables you to correct different programs, replace obsolete functions and they guarantee that the 99% of the ABAP remediation can be done in a month.
For the functional remediation:
  • EMC Intelligent Cloning for SAP: enables you to copy data from an environment to other. This is very useful to perform the functional tests with the right data, you save time and some dollars.
  • Accenture Clon-Test: it’s mainly the same concept.

8 thoughts on “Learning on SAP upgrades”

  1. Hi,
    Interesting article.
    We too would be starting an upgrade project and I too am going through analysing smartShift and Panaya for ABAP code remediation and Unicode conversion.
    I’m curious to know if you picked any of the two and if so what was your opinion and how it did it benefit the project.

    Your reply is highly appreciated.
    Thanks,
    Manoj Gandhi

    Reply

  2. Hello Manoj,

    Both tools are good and it depends on the situation you are you should pick one of them.

    For us the decision was Panaya because we do not want automatic ABAP corrections done by Smartshift. The reason is due to specific requirements from the team, and some specific schemas from HR.

    Smartshift fits in other situations, but no in our case. If you have so much customized code and you have so many modules to upgrade, you should be interested in Smartshift.

    Benefits? In both cases: save time, save money, have better control of the activities you do.

    My suggestion is to go for both tools and assess pros and constraints. You will find some surprises doing this exercise and will gain a lot of understanding.

    Reply

  3. Hi,

    Nice article, Thanks for comparing the 2 most obvious choice of tools in the SAP Upgrade area.

    Reporting is good in panaya where as Automation of the code seems to be key in smartShift, does panaya also provide any automation(?) and how much it is when compared to smartShift(99%) ?

    Because, i am sure manual upgrade again is error prone and i would like to see various options available.

    And if it is automated how much time it would really require? if it is not real quick as a month or so, then there is no use.

    Regards
    Ro.

    Reply

  4. Hello Ro,

    Panaya does not provide automation for the corrections, just point to the right you have to review and correct the code. It also provides you suggestions that are very close to the need.

    What Smartshift provides is unique in the market, at least I have not seen other company that offers the capabilities proposed by them; there is not a solution like Smartshift. Related to the time they spend, they require some weeks to provide that 99% of the upgrade, what is very good if you want to save time on your project.

    The approach implemented by Smartshift is composed by automated corrections and other manual reviews they do. They involve on the project the required people for each specific modules.

    Reply

  5. Just to clarify, Panaya does offer automated code corrections for the majority of the required code remediation and the results of the automated analysis are ready in just 24-48 hours.

    Panaya makes it simple to manage your own code and you also have a way to immediately test your code, by just rerunning the simulation of the impact analysis with the newly updated code. This way, the validation is also immediate and automated.

    More than 60% of an upgrade project’s efforts are spent in testing the system. Panaya’s Upgrade Automation offers 4 main benefits associated with testing: no initial testing, test scope reduction (focused testing based on risk), reduced testing cycles, and test automation capabilities to cut testing efforts by half, at least.

    Reply

  6. Hello Barry,

    thank you for the clarification on code automation, when I participated on the project it was not offered to us, and in fact we wanted to do it manually.

    I agree with you on the testing benefits, the definition of the testing scope was very well done and the number of hours saved on the revision of opened issues was very productive. All this was done with a very competitive price.

    Reply

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