Yesterday, SAP publicly released the notes for their Cloud ALM Q4 2023 presentation for Operations, which reflects on SAP’s current Cloud ALM operations process, recent advancements, and roadmap for the past, present, and future.1
Achievements Made in Q4 2023
Below are some focus areas SAP had in Q4 2023 for Cloud ALM:
- Business Process Monitoring
- Integration and Exception Monitoring
- Real User Monitoring
- Synthetic User Monitoring
- Job & Automation Monitoring
- Configuration & Security Analysis
- Health Monitoring
- Business Service Management
- Landscape Management
- External API Management
With this surface-level knowledge in mind, let’s dive into the specifics.
Users can now create URLs for direct navigation to specific pages with custom settings in the Business Process Monitoring app from other applications or solutions. Additionally, the end-to-end Lead to Cash process in SAP Cloud for Customer includes new key performance indicators (KPIs), such as Leads Created, Opportunities Created, and Opportunities Not on Track.
As for Integration and Exception Monitoring, SAP now enables users to save commonly used search queries for future use. SAP has also created a “Group By” section, which allows users to further customize the “Attribute” parameter. To allow for an easier view of memory usage for data, SAP has broken down the view by messages and exceptions. Additionally, users can click “Details” to have an even more in-depth understanding of memory usage. Other changes to ensure a simplified view include monitoring access to SAP Cell and Gene Therapy Orchestration, SAP Predictive Replenishment, errors from SAP BTP CF custom-built java applications, and errors from SAP BTP Kyma custom-built java applications. Additionally, users can observe any programs on SAP BTP CF and Kyma Java through SAP Cloud ALM (speaking of which, this article discusses the newest advancements on Cloud ALM).
Moving on to Real User Monitoring, users can now share custom pages with other users. Additionally, SAP offers new product support, including SAP Ariba Category Management, SAP Batch Release Hub for Life Sciences, SAP BTP Kymaruntime (Java and node.js), SAP Broker Reconciliation for Commodity Derivatives, and Integration Hub for Life Sciences.
A recent achievement for Synthetic User Monitoring includes Performance Event Reactions for business services, including dynamic thresholds calculated based on historical metrics. Also, runner timeout now is configurable, offers custom settings for more detailed parameters, and provides enhanced connectivity checks for both Chrome and additional browsers. Finally, the system automatically scans any screenshots for malware and removes said screenshot if any malware is found.
Within Job & Automation Monitoring, SAP has provided users the capability to see memory consumption by service and system. Users can also add several conditions or delete several events. Additionally, Job & Automation Monitoring can now work with SAP Job Scheduling Service jobs in SAP BTP and Kyma runtime.
Configuration & Security Analysis also experienced a recent development: configuration stores with new columns and pre-validated data for compliance with SAP Security Recommendations.
With some significant new features, Health Monitoring can now self-monitor data collection health in Business Process Monitoring KPIs. Additionally, SAP has provided external links that provide information and analysis assistance, and it has added support for SAP BTP and Kyma runtime (Java and node.js).
Some Business Service Management improvements include enhanced event action variants for status events that allow reuse across several business services, and the ability for SAP Cloud ALM to forward cloud service availability notifications to SAP Focused Run.
Landscape Management has introduced Service Groups to organize Service Types for easier identification. The program has also improved endpoint creation for PULL monitoring, which automatically fills fields and allows users to paste service key values. Users also now need to specify the location of Managed Gateway for Spend & Network, and SAP has restricted the number of endpoints for SAP Cloud ALM and SAP Focused Run.
Finally, External API Management allows users to initiate debug sessions and view request payload options in the details area of a subscription.
Goals for Q1 2024
At the end of the presentation, we see some of SAP’s goals for Q1 2024 on their roadmap (page 59). For instance, SAP plans to further integrate SAP Cloud ALM with SAP Focused Run. In addition, SAP once again points to its current focus on AI, aiming to integrate the technology through Cloud ALM (learn more in this article). Another current goal SAP has is to further streamline and simplify the user interface while maintaining its configurability.
If you would like to view SAP’s full roadmap and a visual interpretation of the 2023 Q4 updates, feel free to view the presentation slides: https://support.sap.com/content/dam/support/en_us/library/ssp/alm/sap-cloud-alm/cloud-alm-operations-whats-new-q4-2023.pdf.
Additionally, you can listen to the webinar here: https://video.sap.com/media/t/1_1nhrswxf.
1 Operate Your SAP Solutions with the Power of SAP Cloud ALM: Features Delivered in Q4 2023. https://support.sap.com/content/dam/support/en_us/library/ssp/alm/sap-cloud-alm/cloud-alm-operations-whats-new-q4-2023.pdf
