Do you know your clean core index? The basis for a future-proof SAP landscape

Clean Core is on everyone's lips and is being aggressively marketed by SAP. But what is really new about it and how does it differ from previous standardisation goals? This blog post provides a compact insight into the topic of Clean Core, highlights its strategic positioning and the most important building blocks, and shows how adesso is proceeding to successfully establish the Clean Core approach in organisations.

Strategic flexibility and scaling require a clean core

The increasing importance of the clean core is based on the ongoing trend of cloudification, which is driven by the high market dynamics and technological change. This is clearly demonstrated by the GenAI hype:

• Business Change: Increasing momentum of market changes
• New Technology: Ongoing technological change and innovations
• IT Landscape Complexity: Flexible and scalable infrastructure as a competitive factor

A flexible and scalable infrastructure is needed to develop these new technologies economically. IT providers are therefore also using the cloud for their solution portfolio. This is also reflected in SAP's strategy: in the future, the product and service portfolio will be offered exclusively in the cloud with a wide range of expansion options on the Business Technology Platform (BTP).

Dimensions of the design of a clean core

For companies, this means cleaning up their on-premise SAP system landscape in order to remain competitive. SAP recommends considering Clean Core on the basis of various dimensions:

• 1. Processes: Alignment with innovative IT capacities in the sense of Fit2Standard
• 2. Extensibility: Strategic extensions only on stacks intended for this purpose
• 3. Data: Strict data governance to ensure a consistent data supply
• 4. Integration: Centralised API management instead of individual connections
• 5. Operations: Development of a lean, clean core governance based on SAP quality standards

SAP describes the context within the SAP BTP architecture in detail in its SAP blog post Intermediate Level Understanding of SAP BTP Architecture.

The advantages outweigh the disadvantages and reduce the total system costs

The advantages for companies are considerable:

• Empowering Innovation & Automation: Strategic use of new solutions such as AI
• Speed up Time-To-Value: Faster development of customisations and processes
• Enforcing Operative Stability by sustainable resource utilisation: Reduction of costs for upgrades and application management

Overall, this leads to a significant reduction in the ‘total system cost’ compared to conventional SAP on-premise landscapes. Benchmarks show a potential of up to 30 per cent.

Core elements of the successful clean core design

Clean Core goes beyond previous technical standardisation. Based on the strategic positioning mentioned above, four core building blocks can be defined for design and operationalisation:

1. Establishing lean, clean core governance

The basis for lean clean core governance is the formulation of a clean core strategy. Within this framework, the architectural principles, the embedding in the architecture committees, as well as guidelines and guardrails as a set of rules within the framework of the SAP Application Extension Methodology are to be defined.

2. Ensuring change management

To achieve a common understanding of the clean core architecture, it is crucial to involve all stakeholders. This requires a tailored communication programme in the IT organisation and upskilling of SAP architects and developers.

3. Transparency through definition and monitoring of the clean core metric

The basis is a comprehensive metric and monitoring system. The centrepiece is the clean core index, which ensures transparency regarding the clean core status and its sustainable compliance. A clean core dashboard is set up for monitoring purposes. To evaluate the business process dimension, it makes sense to have docking points to the important SAP tools (such as SAP-Signavio and SAP-LeanIX). The same applies to the technical dimensions of extensibility, integration and data through ATC checks and ICCM reports.

4. Transformation to a clean core landscape

To leverage the benefits, a transformation of the SAP landscape is recommended. This must be designed to be company-specific and can be achieved both through cleansing projects and through new template approaches with side-by-side extensions on the BTP.

Our approach at adesso

adesso has used its extensive expertise in SAP, BTP and cloud transformation projects to develop a flexible and adaptable approach to establishing the clean core in the SAP landscape. It comprises six consulting services that can be used to identify the challenges and adapt the design of the core building blocks to the size and complexity of the company.

Conclusion

Clean Core is a strategic necessity for a future-proof SAP landscape due to market dynamics and technological change. Companies benefit from the Clean Core strategy through process and system optimisations, accelerated software development, increased IT innovation capability and reduced operating costs. The decision for the appropriate implementation approach should be made on a company-specific basis. Adesso offers a flexible and customisable approach to ensure company-specific requirements lead to success.

Would you like to learn more about exciting topics from the world of adesso? Then take a look at our previous blog posts.