Evolution Of Classic Operations Control Center Towards Autonomous Operations Control Center

Previous articles have described the Operations Control Center (OCC) as an integral part of SAP’s best practice operational model for IT organizations. Today more than ever before, the OCC as embedded in SAP’s Customer Center of Expertise (CCOE) best practice and master class, is a pillar of SAP’s Clean Core recommendation, and serves as the customers’ organizational unit integral to collaborating with their operations partners (i.e. SAP Enterprise Cloud Services in SAP RISE).

Additional references of more advanced topics and applications relevant in and for the Operations Control Center have been outlined in part 1 (Robotic Process Automation), part 2 (Conversational Artificial Intelligence), part 3 (Intelligent Operations Analytics), part 4 (Simplified Process Monitoring), and part 5 (Intelligent Usage of Data and Information) of previous article series.

The evolution of this essential concept and practice is the OCC’s capabilities to support SAP’s path towards Autonomous Enterprise, embracing Autonomous Operations or Autonomous Application Lifecycle Management (ALM). Technically, this is based on the SAP Integrated Toolchain or Agent-led Toolchain or equivalent software products and tools. This article summarizes a few important dimensions and capabilities of this evolution towards the Autonomous Operations Control Center.

Organizational Embedding of Modern Operations Control Center‎s

In context of an Operations Control Center, IT organizations collect data and provide information (Detection, Observability) and act on this information (Correction, Improvement) – to govern and manage the system and solution landscape of the enterprise architecture. This includes not only IT infrastructure, systems, components – what the OCC refers to as system landscape – but encompasses business scenarios, processes, components – what the OCC refers to as solution landscape.

Relevance in SAP Customer Center of Expertise

The Operations Control Center is one of the centerpieces of the Customer Center of Expertise. The Customer Center of Expertise (CCOE) is SAP's best practice organizational operating model. More specifically, the Customer COEs act as collaboration hubs across IT and lines of business, with a mission to provide transparency and efficiency of implementation, innovation, operation, and quality of business processes and systems related to SAP software solutions and services. The CCOE is organized around two control centers, the OCC (Run Operations) and the ALM team or teams (Build Operations).

In doing so, the CCOE enables IT service and cost excellence by improving customer satisfaction and reducing the total cost of ownership and acts as an enabler for continuous innovation. Especially interesting in modern IT organizations is the CCOE's as well as for Run Operation the OCC's governance between itself and external stakeholders such as service providers and operations partners.

Relevance in SAP RISE

The Operations Control Center serves as the customer entity which establishes and executes communication and collaboration with operations partners, among them SAP ECS/CAS in a RISE context.

As mentioned in the last paragraph, the OCC acts as the interface between SAP and the customer's organization, organizationally, procedurally, and technically. The latter is facilitated by SAP’s Agent-led, integrated toolchain, which serves as technical interface between the Customer OCC and ITSM processes in general and SAP in its roles as product support, service delivery, and service provider.

SAP Cloud ALM for service is the component within the Agent-led, integrated toolchain which serves as the technical component facilitating this ITSM integration with SAP. Several use cases are supported for collaborative Event Management, Incident Management, Root Cause Analysis, and Service Management.

Relevance in SAP Clean Core

The Operations Control Center supports customers’ Clean Core compliance. SAP Clean Core is a strategic framework and set of guiding principles designed to help organizations keep their SAP-centric system and solution landscape agile, cost-effective, and innovation-ready. At its essence, Clean Core means minimizing invasive customizations within the core by extending functionality through compliant, decoupled mechanisms instead.

The 5th dimensions of Clean Core, Operations, is realized as Operations Control Center. Any dimension is considered “clean” when best practices, methodologies, and tools are effectively applied, and for the technical implementation SAP recommends again the Agent-led, integrated toolchain.

Process Capabilities of Modern Operations Control Center‎s

The Operations Control Center needs to understand how its users and its customers, the business end-users, are feeling about the system and solution landscape. Following best practice, it is responsible at least for the following IT processes:

Event Management: identify issues and address immediately (Detect-to-Correct – Fix Pace),
Continuous Improvement: assess and progress provided solutions and improved services (Assess to Deploy – Enhancement Pace).

As we have seen, the Operations Control Center relies on a toolchain for documentation, transformation, monitoring, alerting, analysis, reporting, visualization and automation, including but not limited to the SAP Agent-led, integrated toolchain products below.

The Operation Control Center utilizes SAP LeanIX, Signavio, and Cloud ALM and/or equivalent software to establish monitoring and event management as well as analytics and continuous improvement. Moreover, information visualization and process automation software is essential in the Operate phase.

Automation and AI in Modern Operations Control Centers

Autonomous Event Management

Classic Detect to Correct procedures and their past evolutions have been described in previous articles (see section Further Reading). Modern Event Management uses SAP and non-SAP tooling to automate detection as well as correction, adding machine learning, generative AI, and agentic AI wherever applicable and beneficial. SAP’s main product for this capability is SAP Cloud ALM for Operations (including its inbound and outbound interfaces). The benefits are obvious and have been elaborated in previous articles, in a nutshell they include establishing observability across a changing system and solution landscape, resolving issues efficiently and repetitively, and providing the groundwork for continuous improvement.

Modern Detect to Correct procedures evolve by utilizing AI Agents and Assistants overtaking previous manual steps.

In the above example, the alert creation (which was always automated), the impact analysis, the operating procedure (including root cause analysis and approved resolution steps) are all automated and executed by AI Agents or OCC Operobots. The human OCC Operators are governing, approving, and acting as human in the loop.

Autonomous Continuous Improvement

Classic Continuous Improvement procedures and their past evolutions have been described in previous articles (see section Further Reading). Modern Continuous Improvement uses SAP and non-SAP tooling to automate assessment and identification of improvement candidates, as well as the recommendation of how to realize these potentials, adding generative AI and and agentic AI wherever applicable and beneficial. SAP’s main product for this capability is SAP Cloud ALM for Service (including its inbound and outbound interfaces).

Modern Continuous Improvement procedures evolve by utilizing AI Agents and Assistants as well, which as in the case or Event Management, complement or replace previous manual steps.

In the above example, the improvement candidate identification (which was always supported by semi-automation in a well-run OCC), benefit and priority analysis, as well as decision making and even implementation tasks of the selected candidate are all automated by utilizing corresponding AI Agents. The human OCC Operators – together with the Continuous Improvement leads and Enterprise Architects – are governing, approving, and acting as human in the loop.

Technical Foundation for Autonomous Operations Control Center

In an SAP-centric Operations Control Center, SAP Cloud ALM and/or equivalent software will support AI-supported operations. With Joule support, SAP Cloud ALM already started its journey towards autonomous operations and announced to continuously improve its agentic capabilities moving forward.

Agents and Assistants for Detect to Correct

An AI/Agent-supported Event Management could look like the below.

In this example, AI assistants and agents streamline workflows, (semi-)automate analyses and resolutions, and deliver connected intelligence across the Detect-to-Correct process across SAP and non-SAP system and solution landscapes. Conversational UIs in state-of-the-art Run Operations software provide access to contextual insights and task guidance directly where OCC operators do their jobs.

In SAP Cloud ALM for example, Joule will present relevant information about an issue (detected as event or events). The detection, the analysis, and resolution tasks Operators did manually based on Guided Procedures are now semi- or even fully automatable.

In SAP Cloud ALM, Joule with SAP Cloud ALM is already available for eligible SAP Cloud ALM customers. This initial release delivers a conversational AI assistant embedded within SAP Cloud ALM, helping users navigate the application and find the information they need — faster and more intuitively (ALM Alert Resolution Agent and ALM Dashboard Generation Agent).

Agents and Assistants for Identify to Improve

An AI/Agent-supported Continuous Improvement could look like the below.

In this example, AI assistants and agents prepare decisions, streamline initiatives and projects, and deliver connected intelligence across the Identify-to-Improve process across SAP and non-SAP system and solution landscapes.

Take SAP Cloud ALM example, Joule will support Issues and Action Management by summarizing information on issues, filtering the summary and exporting it to various outputs (to possibly be consumed by other task automation agents). Moreover, SAP Cloud ALM's AI Assistance for Innovation Adoption creates Continuous Improvement recommendations together with issues and recommended actions for the lines of business (LOB) and the simplification items for the organization's enterprise architects. If the implementation of the improvement candidate requires a project, SAP Cloud ALM for Implementation offers Joule support for project management, team management, change management, including test management.

In SAP Cloud ALM, the initial release already delivers Agents creating recommendations as well as managing issues and actions (Evolution Readiness Agent and Issue and Actions).

As a result, Joule lowers risk and cost by keeping the lights on, i.e. by reducing operational friction and improving cross-team collaboration, so core business processes run more effectively. Operators gain improved navigation as well as measurable insight, enabling a path towards agentic OCC scenarios with confidence. In addition, Joule increases the return on investment by supporting the continuous identification and selection of innovation items.

Evolution of Classic Operations Control Center towards Autonomous Operations Control Center