How many Landscapes/Regions/Systems/Environments needed for smooth deployment?

How many Landscapes/Regions/Systems/Environments needed for smooth deployment?

That was the agenda of our meeting, last Friday. Mostly this question always comes in big organization when big releases (with multiple projects) move into production. For small organization this is not a concern, but for the big companies this always a topic for discuss. For all seriousness, mostly all organization doesn’t pay lot of efforts on this very important, fundamental issue. Believe me, lot of company’s time and money can be save, if they figure out there right Landscape/Region/Systems/Environment needed for implementation.

Here, we have just one general Landscape/Region/Systems/Environment they are: T0, T1, T2, T3, TX and prod; these are alliance with SAP CML/BI Landscape with different clients (golden-100,200,300…). T0 is sandbox, T1 is for development for non SAP application and ET1 (100/300/500) for SAP. T2/ET2 (100/200) is for QA and T3/ET3 (100/300) for UAT. TX for pre prod. support and then prod. This is typical IT Landscape/Region/Systems/Environment, you will found in all big companies.

Problem:
So what is the problem with these conventional environments? Problem is when you are going for big releases, with multiple projects. Suppose you have very ugly data in T2 for SAP and you want to clean and refresh that region, then all projects (including SAP and non SAP) in that region became stand still. In these old-fashioned environments, this delay the projects schedule. Now think how big the problem will be when you have to refresh and clean data form all T0,T1,T2,T3,Tx and with different Releases and different projects, and SAP needed to transport all request. That consumes lots of time, money and efforts.

Solutions:
One solution is simple; give every project, own environments. Yes solution seem simple, it’s very expensive and very hard to maintain. It’s like impossible providing independent environments for all projects.

Second solution is, don’t give full independent environments, and instead give partial independent environment for all projects. For example, gives all projects their own partial independent environment, till QA, below UAT. In this way we can stop clogging the Environment/Landscape/System for different releases and projects and as well as refreshing and data cleaning of environment will be easier and clean.