{"id":1501,"date":"2019-03-18T13:24:54","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T12:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpethzprd.ethz.ch\/its\/?p=1501"},"modified":"2019-03-18T13:24:56","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T12:24:56","slug":"a-look-behind-the-it-scenes-at-refine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/its\/2019\/03\/18\/a-look-behind-the-it-scenes-at-refine\/","title":{"rendered":"A look behind the IT scenes at refine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

ETH Zurich’s new resources and financial\nplatform was successfully put into production on 9 January 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

refine<\/a> = renewing the RE<\/strong>sources and FIN<\/strong>ance platform of E<\/strong>TH Zurich<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This important step marks the achievement\nof the refine project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most important milestone. This success has, of course,\nbeen achieved thanks to effort of everyone involved. Congratulations to the\nmore than 100 people in many ETH organisational units and several external\nspecialists. For IT Services, it was the areas of basic technologies,\ndevelopment and porting of existing products, data migration and process\ndesign. This post will elaborate on the roll of IT Services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Interview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

ITS\nBlog: In recent years, refine has been described as «ETH’s most important\nnon-academic project». Why has it been touted so highly?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giorgio\nBroggi<\/strong>: refine deserves to be touted so highly as\nthe project enables ETH Zurich to manage its finances and resources in a more\nup-to-date manner. This, in turn, will allow the school’s core activities\n(research, teaching, knowledge transfer) to be supported much more effectively\n\u2013 and also more efficiently. It is therefore an «enabling project»,\nwhich is indeed located in the area of support processes, but it also has a\nsignificant impact on ETH’s main tasks. However, ambitious IT goals were also\nset within the scope of the project, and these were achieved in full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ITS\nBlog: ETH has been operating an SAP environment for almost 20 years: why did\nsuch an extensive project have to be implemented instead of continuous renewal\nin small steps?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giorgio\nBroggi<\/strong>: The SAP environment has undergone\ncontinuous development in terms of information technology: the system\nlandscape, which was shut down as of 31 December 2018, was already based on the\nnew SAP in-memory database technology S\/4 HANA and on current versions of the\napplication components. Two very different factors led to the big replacement\nstep. The most important of these is the replacement of the single-entry\nbookkeeping system. Put simply, this is guided by the «piggy bank»\nidea. Financial volumes are measured in terms of expenditures that are debited\nfrom the «piggy bank» (funds). The single-entry bookkeeping system is\nstill practised in many areas of public law. However, it makes it impossible to\nobtain a meaningful overview of incurred costs, especially in the case of\nprojects lasting several years or after long-term investments have been made.\nrefine introduces accrual-based accounting, a transparent cost view, the\npossibility of meaningful target\/actual comparisons and everything necessary in\nthe governance environment for the application of International Public Sector\nAccounting Standards (IPSAS). The second factor is SAP’s deployment of S\/4\nHANA, the third generation of the SAP software environment. The decision to\nbuild a completely new SAP landscape was practically pre-determined by these\nfactors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ITS\nBlog: Who supported the project professionally?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giorgio\nBroggi<\/strong>: refine was run under the aegis of Robert\nPerich, Vice-President for Finance and Controlling, and was headed by Markus\nKnaus, Head of the ETH Controlling Department, and Clemens Gubler from the\ncompany Novo. However, many contributions have also been made by employees from\nother organisational units. In the area of HR management, for example, many\nfar-reaching innovations were introduced and old customs stopped. This\nextremely complex work was carried out directly by the HR Department. And, of\ncourse, IT Services made a crucial contribution in every respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ITS\nBlog: In which project areas were ITS employees involved?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giorgio\nBroggi<\/strong>: Contributions were made mainly in the\nfollowing four areas: basic technologies, development and porting of existing\nproducts, data migration, process design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andr\u00e9\nHunziker<\/strong>: In the area of basic technologies, the\nmain task was to acquire expertise in the area of HANA-DB and, based on this,\nto plan and set up the (virtualised) server infrastructure for refine.\nInstalling the different types of required SAP systems (portal, gateway and S\/4\nHANA systems) in the sandbox, development, quality assurance and productive\nsystem versions, in addition to installing the communication connections\nbetween the systems, was of course very challenging and time-consuming. This\nwas followed by the setup of the correction and transport system and system\nmonitoring as well as the configuration and testing of the backups. Over the\ncourse of the project, the SAP software was upgraded several times. Supporting\nthe project team with technical problems and everything that is ultimately\nnecessary for the operation and maintenance of this infrastructure are ongoing\ntasks for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ITS\nBlog: Can the introduction of refine be regarded as a success?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giorgio\nBroggi<\/strong>: Yes, for sure. There were problems and\nminor hitches popping up everywhere, but these were realistically to be\nexpected in a project of this scale. The classic fly in the ointment was the\ninitial problem with time management (SPAZ): although SPAZ represents maybe 5%\nof the functional ETHIS offering, many users (especially in ITS, where SPAZ is\nobviously used to the full extent) got a negative first impression of the new\nETHIS. However, this has to be weighed up correctly. We can be proud of the\nachievement of ETH \u2013 and ITS \u2013 in realising this key milestone of the\nproject… now the work goes on: Before refine is completed in spring 2020,\nmany products still need to be ported and developed, and some «ETH\nspecialities» (perhaps also time management) need to be brought back to\nthe SAP standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Main stakeholders on the ITS side<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

ITS BD for basic technologies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n