Your IT teams struggle daily with the complexity of your SAP landscapes. Whether you run your systems on-premise, in the cloud, or are moving to the cloud with SAP (SAP Cloud ERP/private), limited resources, the ever-present shortage of skilled workers, and strict compliance requirements complicate day-to-day business and make management a real challenge. The clock is ticking, support for ECC 6.0 will end in 2027, and the S/4HANA conversion is just around the corner.
At the same time, the advantages of the cloud, such as scalability and flexibility, are appealing, but the complexity and lack of cloud-experienced SAP professionals are growing rapidly.
Hybrid models that encompass different operating locations (cloud, on-premise, RISE) further increase the level of complexity, but at the same time often offer the best solution for meeting security requirements and modern demands such as scalability and high availability.
Imagine if you could overcome all these challenges and lead your SAP operations into an era of efficiency, security, and cost savings. That's where ALPACA comes in! ALPACA (Automating Landscapes Pro-Actively Cloud and Anywhere) offers you a solution tailored to these challenges.
What is ALPACA? The most transparent operating platform for SAP
ALPACA
is a powerful and fully customizable automation platform for the entire SAP stack. Its roots date back to 2007, when it was created as the “Proactive Management Suite” to automate SAP Basis processes and leverage infrastructure benefits such as snapshotting. Since 2018, ALPACA has also been widely available in the cloud (Google Cloud, Azure, AWS) and has continued to evolve. ALPACA is not a theoretical solution, but was developed from practice for practice – based on the real needs of SAP Basis administrators and consultants, and therefore very practice-oriented.
The intelligence behind SAP automation: core components and interaction
ALPACA essentially consists of two central server components: the Orchestrator and the Operator.
- The Orchestrator: This is your gateway to the cloud and on-premise environments. It abstracts hyperscaler access and provides the necessary tools to run SAP systems productively, including the deployment of VMs, operating systems, applications, and databases.
- The Operator: This is the heart of ALPACA. It contains the intelligence with a proprietary workflow engine in Java. Over the years, numerous workflows for all relevant SAP Basis tasks have been developed and encapsulated in modular packages. These include:
- SAP Lifecycle Management
- Monitoring & Reporting
- High Availability Cluster
- Backup & Restore
- System Copy, Clone, Refresh
- HANA HA over system replication
- Certificate management
- SAP FinOps
ALPACA can be conveniently accessed via a Java thick client or the new web GUI. For control purposes, ALPACA requires an agent on the systems to be managed (SAP components, databases, other services).
SAP Adaptive Design: Your key to efficiency and savings
A key feature of ALPACA is its strong support and continuation of adaptive design, an architectural concept developed by SAP. This concept enables dynamic administration of your SAP landscapes: Relevant components of an SAP instance – such as IP addresses, volumes, and operating system settings – are encapsulated and can thus “migrate” with the instance. This means that an instance can be started on another host by simply moving these configurations.
The advantages are immense:
- Reduced downtime during OS patching or hardware maintenance.
- Significant savings in cloud resources of up to 40%.
- Future-proof: After the end of SAP LaMa, ALPACA is the only provider on the market that continues to support this adaptive design.
What makes ALPACA unique? Your advantages at a glance
ALPACA positions itself as the central operations cockpit for all SAP operations, from deployment to management across different modules. Its unique features and capabilities make it the preferred choice for modern SAP landscapes:
- Comprehensive support for hybrid scenarios: ALPACA enables seamless integration and flexible migration of your SAP systems across cloud and on-premise environments. It ensures maximum flexibility and performance in complex hybrid infrastructures and enables near-complete cloud deployment.
- Modular structure like a Lego construction kit: You only license and combine the modules you really need.
- Platform agnostic: ALPACA supports Azure, AWS, GCP, and on-premise with the same functionality. It enables seamless transfers between cloud platforms, to the cloud, on-premise, and in hybrid scenarios.
- Unique support for SAP adaptive design.
Generic and open approach: Unlike black box solutions, ALPACA's workflows and scripts are open and the source code is available. This not only enables transparent traceability of all activities, but also allows for customization and significantly more efficient troubleshooting.Ready to regain control of your SAP operations and get complexity under control?
ALPACA offers you the most transparent and effective operating platform for SAP to run your SAP landscapes efficiently, securely, and cost-effectively—today and in the future.
Contact us today to learn more about ALPACA and schedule a free demo!