PowerConnect’s Latest Version
This article was authored by Brian Bates, Senior Director of GTM Strategy at RHONDOS.
PowerConnect for SAP Solutions is the most resilient data solution for security and observability initiatives within the SAP application space. Certified by SAP for over a decade, PowerConnect continues to be the foremost real-time, full-fidelity data platform, and the latest version expands even further on capabilities.
With so much buzz around S/4 HANA and migrations using SAP’s RISE and GROW offerings, customers of older NetWeaver applications might feel left out of the latest OpenTelemetry use cases. OpenTelemetry is an open-source and vendor-neutral collection of APIs, SDKs, and tools that instrument, generate, collect, and export telemetry data like logs, metrics, and traces.
The latest version of PowerConnect delivers game-changing enhancements that bring observability to ALL Cloud, ABAP, and Java systems, including lower NetWeaver versions supported by SAP. Previously, the support of OpenTelemetry was specific to NetWeaver 7.5+ and S/4 HANA versions. By integrating STAD performance data, this update uncovers powerful tracing analysis and insights for user-driven transaction execution. Extending these application performance monitoring (APM) tools to earlier SAP versions adds significant value, especially for organizations still transitioning to S/4 HANA.
Parts highlighted and boxed, essentially demonstrating the addition of the STAD performance data to open telemetry and the new information we are elucidating from it.
As organizations increasingly adopt OpenTelemetry as their standard for observability initiative, this update highlights PowerConnect’s commitment to customers on their individual adoption journeys. Customers should not be forced to invest in expensive ERP or cloud migration project simply to enable modern data analytics.
Two service clusters separated with red and blue circles, essentially separating these clusters aids users of the Dynatrace topology in analyzing service dependencies, which can reduce MTTR and ease root cause analysis utilizing open telemetry data.
PowerConnect has also enhanced its context propagation capabilities in this latest version, enabling seamless automatic correlation across key SAP datasets. While this feature is specific to later versions of S/4 HANA, it allows us to link high-velocity metrics and trace datasets with other critical performance information such as ABAP dumps, batch job failures, system logs, audit logs, and much more.
Splunk observability I have boxed the color variation in the service view inside of APM, the color variation between service connections in the service map enables easy identification of slow services (services with increased response times) easing in incident analysis driven by the integration of STAD data.
The enhanced context sharing between SAP datasets in the later S/4 HANA versions delivers superior monitoring through precise correlation, unlocking deeper business insights and driving value through MTTR reduction while simultaneously elevating compliance tracking through integrations with IT service platforms like ServiceNow.