The Success of the SAP ALM Roadshow in Helsinki 2024
The SAP ALM Roadshow 2024 in Helsinki has come to an end, leaving behind a trail of insights, connections, and inspiration for attendees. The Nordic spring welcomed us in a bit chilli Helsinki, where already for the third time we had the Finnish ALM focused event. It was again a 2-day event, where the first day was presented by different partners and the second day was fully hosted by SAP. This time we also had a change in venue, moving to downtown Helsinki to one of the events partner office lounge area. This made the event much more cosy and relaxing – what better way to listen to interesting presentations then from a comfy couch or rocking chair – we had it all, just take a coffee cup and enjoy.
The event was organized by the local SAP office, Finnish SAP user group FINUG, us from blue.works, Qalmari, BearingPoint and Vincit, who also gave us the venue to use.
The day started with a quick presentation from SAP by Olli-Pekka about their service offerings.
Tapani from BearingPoint continued by sharing the experiences they had made in a S/4 implementation project using Cloud ALM. The key takeaway here was, that Cloud ALM is a perfect tool for this! It just needs commitment from the team, good planning and then just following it through.
Next session was by Mikko from Vincit about integration development & APIs and how these play an integral part in modern landscapes. With a good API management, integrations can be much easier archived. Something to consider also in our own integration and API developments. And of course, Cloud ALM can be used to monitor these SAP integrations.
Next, it was my turn to explain how Cloud ALM for Operations can help to get insights in a hybrid SAP landscape. The future is cloud, but during the next years, landscapes get more complex because of it. We still have on-prem systems, there are different services already in cloud (SAC, Ariba, SF, IS etc) and we have private cloud systems (for example RISEwithSAP). All these systems are interconnected and this brings challenges how to monitor effectively all your different systems and processes. Cloud ALM is the solution for this problem, with its many usecases, it covers all the different points to get the needed transparency. From the direct feedback I got during the event, my session was well received and shows, that this topic is important to SAP customers.
After me, Ari and Niina from Qalmari continued to give their take for the ALM future. Ari gave his honest opinions about the differences between Solution Manager and Cloud ALM with recommendations when to transfer. Cloud ALM has matured very well over the last years, but if you are heavily using ChaRM and have a complex Change Management process, then its still better to wait for the next improvements. Niina continued to introduce their internal ALM transition roadmap and how they track it within Cloud ALM.
The day ended with a Q&A session where also SAP’ Benjamin Schneider joined us. There were multiple questions about Cloud ALM Operations, so looks like people are invested in this topic. The day concluded with some more time for networking.
Next day was hosted by Benjamin and he gave the SAP ALM Roadshow presentations about all the different Cloud ALM topics, including Implementation and Operations. It was great opportunity to get the latest news from SAP directly. In the next years, the Clean Core will become a big topic and SAP sees Cloud ALM here as a key driver. Also good to hear again that the multi tenancy will we available soon for cases where you need multiple Cloud ALM tenants.
They were two days filled with intriguing discussions and insightful questions from our customers, making it both interesting and enlightening. Although Cloud ALM is still evolving and new features are added, Operations is already now fully functional, all the needed features are there, waiting to be used. Something that also Marko from my team pointed out – Operations has been taking somewhat a back seat in comparison to other ALM topics, but with the Cloud ALM Operations being already fully usable, it is getting more traction and being the stepping stone for Cloud ALM.
