阿里云上到底能运行SAP哪些产品?
本文主要内容大部分来源于SAP已经发布的note:
2552731 – SAP Applications on Alibaba Cloud: Supported Products and IaaS VM Types。
到2018/01/19为止这个note只有英文版(另一个日文版是机器翻译的)。将来原始的note可能会被SAP负责这个note的同事继续更新，届时本文内容可能会同原始的2note有所差异。
阿里云上提供的基础设施服务(Infrastructure Service)可以用于部署SAP产品。当然并不是所有的SAP产品都能运行在阿里云上。下面列出各个维度的限制条件。
支持的操作系统:
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP2 (SLES12)或更高版本。
**Linux平台上支持的关系型数据库管理系统: **SAP HANA
具体的硬件要求在这个链接里有描述。
或参考这张图:
阿里云支持的SAP产品线
1. 运行在ABAP应用服务器(Netweaver 7.0X)上的应用。
对SAP Kernel的要求:
(1) SAP Kernel 7.21 EXT (Patch Level 至少 #919)
(2) SAP Kernel 7.22 EXT (Patch Level 至少 #415)
(3) 或者比上述版本号更高
Jerry 注:
我们知道ABAP语言底层是基于C/C++实现的，包括其关键字(比如最简单的关键字WRITE的C++实现有2千多行)和虚拟机(ABAP Runtime)。SAP内部的一群计算机科学家们发明了ABAP这门伟大的语言，由它实现的各种SAP应用帮助了全球超过180个国家和地区的客户们更好地运行其业务。
通过Google我们能搜索到一些关于这些SAP计算机科学家们的介绍，比如这个链接:
再回到这个note, EXT意为Extended Kernel, 区别于标准(Standard)Kernel。
Standard Kernel和EXT Kernel最大的区别不在于这些C/C++实现的源代码, 而在于生成SAP Kernel的Make服务器的操作系统版本以及C/C++编译器的版本有所区别。
如果您对这个话题感兴趣，可以阅读SAP Community上这个讨论:
what is the difference between normal Kernel 7.20 and the Kernel 7.20 EXT
2. 运行在ABAP/Java应用服务器(Netweaver 7.1及更高版本)上的应用。
对SAP Kernel的要求:
(1) SAP Kernel 7.21 EXT (Patch Level 至少 #919)
(2) SAP Kernel 7.22 EXT (Patch Level 至少 #415)
(3) 或者比上述版本号更高
3. 运行在ABAP/Java应用服务器(Netweaver 7.4及更高版本)上的应用。
对SAP Kernel的要求:
(1) SAP Kernel 7.45 (Patch Level 至少 #612)
(2) SAP Kernel 7.49 (Patch Level 至少 #316)
(3) SAP Kernel 7.53 (Patch Level 至少 #24)
(4) 或者比上述版本号更高
Linux上支持运行SAP产品的阿里云虚拟机种类
Jerry注1:
表格里第三列SAPS列出了一系列数字。什么是SAPS? SAP Application Performance Standard(SAPS)是一种性能评测标准，描述了SAP产品在某种特定的系统配置下的性能表现。
SAP最先在SD(Sales and Distribution)的性能评测中引入SAPS的概念。在SD的SAPS测试里，100 SAPS意味着2000个订单行项目能够在1小时之内，跑完一个典型的业务流程，包括:
* 创建订单
* 为该订单创建Delivery Note
* 显示订单
* 修改Delivery日期
* Post goods issue
* 创建发票
更多SAPS细节，请阅读SAP官方帮助:
1. SAP Standard Application Benchmarks
2. SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark Results
* two tier result
* three tier result
Jerry注2：
注1里能看到SD的SAPS测试是对于2 tier和3tier两种架构分开进行的。2 tier意即数据库服务器和运行SAP产品的应用服务器是部署在一台物理服务器上，可以统一看成服务层。另外一层即客户端层(展现层), 这样就构成了所谓的2 tier(两层架构)。
显然，如果将数据库服务器和应用服务器分开部署，也就形成了三层架构。在阿里云上进行的SAPS评测是基于两层架构进行的。
如果您对具体部署细节感兴趣，建议阅读阿里官方文档：SAP HANA 部署指南
要获取更多Jerry的原创技术文章，请关注我的微信公众号”汪子熙”。 http://bit.ly/2o45NaO #SAP #SAPCloud #AI
Schoolhouse Electric Stays Loyal to Local Suppliers While Increasing Growth With SAP Business ByDesign
Schoolhouse Electric, Portland-based maker and retailer of handmade, iconic lighting, furniture, and domestic home goods, was founded on family values and quality.
To reinforce that sense of family and community, owner and founder Brian Faherty joins his team of employees each day in the Portland, Oregon, warehouse, which happens to be where his wife also works. He’s the inspiration behind the products, which are vintage with a minimalistic utilitarian and even retro aesthetic.
Handmade is Best-Made
Chris Tufts, vice president of operations and finance at Schoolhouse Electric, recently joined me on the phone to discuss how Schoolhouse is adapting digitally while also maintaining its artisan craft. As we talked, I could hear the bustling of creation and laughter in the background. His desk borders the lighting assembly center at the flagship store in Portland.
In the past, it was difficult to compete with the Amazon and Google retailers of the world that can ship a product to customers in as little as two days. Most products sold by Schoolhouse are assembled by hand (even hand-sewn pillows and cushions), a process that takes time and precision.
In addition, 80 percent of product parts are purchased from U.S.-based mom and pop suppliers, some of which provide custom-made parts for Schoolhouse.
“Ordering from mom and pop vendors is a challenge when it comes to scaling up, but it’s a great asset to the product that we can offer and the quality that’s included,” Tufts said.
Today’s customers expect fast delivery and reasonable prices, so to scale growth and cut lead time, Schoolhouse decided on SAP Business ByDesign, a full cloud ERP suite, to manage its business and provide near real-time visibility into supply, inventory, and customer trends.
Before implementing and going live with SAP Business ByDesign, Schoolhouse Electric staff performed a manual, quarterly inventory assessment on 2 million pieces of inventory. The process required the warehouse to close for a full weekend each quarter.
“It was a mess unquestionably. The results of the inventories might have been more harm than good depending on who you had counting different things and whether they could tell one washer from another. It was pretty messy,” said Tufts. “With SAP, we have a regular ongoing constant cycle counting. We know exactly what inventory accuracy is by floor, by product segment, and we can track that to a high degree of detail. We know where and how much of each part we have.”
In addition to keeping parts on hand, Schoolhouse discontinued ordering obsolete parts.
“Without SAP, it was hard to visualize all of the material needed to make a product that has a five- to 10-part assembly process. By tracking our builds and materials in SAP Business ByDesign, we now have quick answers, and we’re able to quantify the impact and strategize how many of each product we can make in a certain timeframe. Today we are at 98 percent product availability, an increase from 70 percent in early 2016,” said Tufts.
Growth with Industrial Roots
Schoolhouse Electric plans to open a third store in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a former industry hub of the U.S. The city is a perfect complement to the Schoolhouse style. It’s a new hub for technology leaders like Uber and Google, the cost of living is reasonable, and there are many universities in the area.
Tufts closed our conversation mentioning that without the cloud ERP solution, Schoolhouse Electric wouldn’t exist in the market. The third store in Pittsburgh would not be a reality: “Without SAP, we wouldn’t be the size that we are. We wouldn’t be growing 25 percent year-over-year because we simply wouldn’t have had the competitive lead times, and we wouldn’t have been able to fulfill customers’ products as we committed. Our business benefits are stronger than enabling growth. It would really not be happening had we not gotten into a cloud ERP system.”
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Learn how SAP Business ByDesign can help your
small to midsize business here.
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To implement SAP Business ByDesign successfully, Schoolhouse Electric partnered with Navigator Business Solutions. Learn more here.
Follow me on Twitter: @CMDonato.
This story originally appeared on the SAP Community. http://bit.ly/2BwPScw #SAP #SAPCloud #AI
What does machine learning bring to traditional BI?
New trends in predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are calling into question many traditional processes — and that includes the provision of business intelligence inside organizations.
Please join me and SAP Analytics Evangelist Andy Bitterer to discuss the trends, the biggest challenges, and potential use cases of these technologies on February 7, 2018, at 8am Pacific Time (5pm CET) as part of an #askSAP Live Chat on Facebook. Please bring your questions!
Here are just some of the areas we’ll be exploring:
* Why, after being the “next big thing” in analytics for at least two decades, Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning are now such hot industry trends.
* How machine learning is enabling “self-driving” processes that automate the kinds of complex repetitive decision-making that up until now only humans could do.
* The biggest new opportunities for these technologies in today’s organizations.
* How companies can get started with machine learning.
In particular, we’ll be talking about what machine learning can bring to traditional analytics, including:
* More intelligent data preparation. Over 90% of average business intelligence projects involve gathering, cleaning, and joining data from different sources. Algorithms can help automate some of this work, especially for more casual business users.
* Natural-language interfaces. BI interfaces that correctly interpret user questions in everyday language via voice or chat, such as “what’s the revenue per customer this month compared to last month?” and are able to provide data in sentence form, such as “deal value is 20% lower than average for the enterprise segment”.
* Automatic outlier detection. Algorithms can spot exceptions and unusual events automatically, such as: “days sales outstanding is the western region is currently 90% higher than the average over the last six months”. This helps enable the long-term dream of true exception-driven management.
* Intelligent segmentation. Statistical techniques can automatically create groups and segments that make sense based on the data, rather than arbitrarily-defined thresholds. For example, by automatically segmenting crime data into age-ranges that match real-world trends, such as 0-14, 14-23, 23-35 etc. rather than 0-10, 20-30, etc.
* Causality and significance detection. We can use algorithms to determine the key influencers on profitability, or to check whether an uptick in sales is a real inflection point rather than just random variation.
* Advanced data sharing. Just as Amazon recommends book purchases based on what we’ve read in the past, algorithms can help identify reports and data that we might be interested in — “people like you also liked this dashboard”.
The more interactive the session, the better. We look forward to hearing and answering your real questions (rather than having to guess what you might be interested in!) — and please tell us if you can make it by clicking “going” or “interested” on this page! http://bit.ly/2BB7OCC #SAP #SAPCloud #AI