Quite often I’m asked to explain how customers should enter the wonderful world of SAP Application Lifecycle Management and IT Service Management with SAP Solution Manager…but not in SAP-language and –terms. Well I could try the ice hockey terms but when is offside or icing called? Then what about in terms of golf? What is bogey, when can you see an albatross and who uses chin putter? Too complex and strange terms for me… I’ll do this with pizza-terms, yummy!
Everything starts from the correct dough. You need the right ingredients for the dough and take your time with it to make it just perfect for your pizza. In other terms dough is the technical foundation of your SAP SolMan and ingredients include diagnostics agents, connections, plug-ins, background jobs, technical users, authorizations, SAP notes etc. All this must be in added into your pizza dough before you can continue. Let your dough rise or in other words see that your SAP systems are providing all the necessary data to the SolMan monitoring and reports like EWA.
So dough is very important, and there are no shortcuts for it. Then is the tomato sauce and I don’t mean ketchup. You should make your own tomato sauce with your own spices, home grown tomatoes, herbs and olive oil to get the best result that separates your pizza from every other pizza. In other terms the sauce is your solution documentation, landscape, interfaces, business processes, configuration documents etc. When the sauce is done professionally you cannot go wrong with your toppings.
Now our SolMan-pizza is waiting for toppings and here things might get tricky if you try to add all the toppings at single drop or you don’t have a clue what toppings you like or need and what toppings are available. Toppings could also be called SolMan functionalities and tools. Luckily there are pizza-professionals who have boldly tried those toppings and know which toppings goes together in harmony and which ones need a little bit adjustment so that it really hits your gustatory papillae.
If you like spicy Italian salami, which can also be called SolMan Change Management, you need a really good sauce and then some extra fine cheese that could also be called Test Management. Some fresh herbs like basil also known as Project Management gives a nice touch and really puts this pizza together. I like also artichoke, also called Automated Testing, in my spicy pizzas to give it a nice balance and perfect finish.
One of my favorites is the Quattro Formaggi, 4 cheese pizza. Make a really nice sauce first then start adding those savory cheeses on top. First you could put some ricotta, also named as Alert Inbox, and then some mozzarella, also known as Incident Management. With these two you are already on your way for a perfect pizza but you can still add more. Let’s put some Gorgonzola ie. Root Cause Analysis and shred some Parmesan, IT reporting, all over your pizza.
So there is a lot of different kinds of pizza-toppings that you can use and almost everyone knows how to make pizza but you can always tell when your pizza has been made by professionals with years of experience, tradition and from the best ingredients available.
Bon Appetito!
