New SAP Standards for Solution Operations Drive Efficiency in Application Management

by SAP AG

SAP Helps Customers Harness IT Landscapes and Gear for Enterprise SOA

Further boosting the exceptional service, value and support it provides to customers, SAP AG today unveiled new standardized processes to help customers manage and operate their SAP solutions more efficiently, with low risk and at low cost. SAP standards for solution operations will help IT and business process experts harness their widespread IT landscapes and better implement their enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA) strategies. The new standards for solution operations are mapped out in the newest release of SAP(R) Solution Manager, SAP's application management solution, and are planned for global availability via www.sap.com/supportstandards concurrently to SAP's international customer conference SAPPHIRE(R) '07, being held in Atlanta, Georgia, April 22 - 25.

Companies expect high availability and continuity of their solutions, flexibility to quickly implement changes and low total cost of ownership (TCO). Additionally, they need to be able to manage out-tasking and outsourcing relationships across different time and geographical zones as well as control and monitor service level agreements (SLAs). To achieve this, IT governance is key. Companies need an IT strategy that focuses on the management of complexity, risks and costs as well as skills and resources. Standardized procedures that leverage the experience of the organization and the software supplier are a key prerequisite for the optimization of application management.

Operations Efficiency Through Standardization

With SAP standards for solution operations, SAP has indexed a total of sixteen standards for key operations processes within a company's business and IT units. These key standards and practices address the needs of business process experts-the stakeholders responsible for the design and execution of business processes-and of IT departments, encharged with ensuring that the services provided by the SAP solutions are available for business users.

Each standard contains best-practice procedures on how to run the individual tasks, explanations on which tools inside SAP Solution Manager should be used, available training and services that support the adoption of the standard.

"SAP standards for solution operations provide detailed information and guidance on implementing mission-critical operations," said Uwe Hommel, executive vice president, SAP Active Global Support. "These standards bundle our experience in 35 years of working with customers to determine the operations processes that work best for their SAP solutions. By making this knowledge available via SAP Solution Manager, we help our customers avoid errors, mitigate risks, increase the availability and performance of their SAP solutions. The new standards for solution operations will automate, smoothen and accelerate processes to help further reduce the costs of operations."

Enhanced Support

In addition to the standardized processes, close collaboration is necessary to facilitate communication between all involved company-internal and external stakeholders. SAP Solution Manager acts as a collaboration hub, providing functional support via role-specific work centers in which workflows, Web-based inboxes and launch pads are bundled.

In launching SAP standards for solution operations, SAP is also introducing SAP Solution Support Enablement, a preconfigured package based on the extensive experience of SAP's support organization. Designed to help customers further increase the stability of their solutions through standardized and integrated best-in-class support tools, the SAP Solution Support Enablement package provides additional life-cycle support to customers faced with upgrades of complex IT landscapes and system consolidation. The package combines in-depth diagnostic tools for client and server-side support of multi-technology environments and knowledge transfer with end-to-end solution support capabilities. Available globally today as a priced extension for SAP Solution Manager, SAP Solution Support Enablement also includes SAP Test Data Migration Server software, which enables the fast and efficient creation of easy-to-use test environments maximizing the effectiveness of testing within change cycles.

With SAP Solution Support Enablement, customers can benefit from an integrated approach that facilitates smooth operations processes and improves transparency for better IT decision making. This package relieves customers of the need for costly evaluations of multiple support tools and helps reduce time implementing these tools through pre-configuration and integration.