Evaluating the SAP Operations Tools Landscape Monitoring 64553.pdf

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A M R R e s e a r c h R e p o r tD e c e m b e r 2 0 0 5

by Derek Prior

Companies can take advantage of a range of tools

that help lower the cost of maintenance as well as

improve overall service levels. However, most never

budget for these tools and are missing out on this

opportunity. To assist with evaluation and selection,

this Report applies the previously published AMR

Research enterprise application operations toolsframework to the market landscape for SAP.

Evaluating the SAPOperations Tools Landscape

To Take Pressure Off

Your Busy Basis Team



© Copyright 2005 by AMR Research, Inc.

AMR Research® is a registered trademark of AMR Research, Inc.

No portion of this report may be reproduced in whole or in part without the prior written permission of AMR Research. Any writtenmaterials are protected by United States copyright laws and international treaty provisions.

AMR Research offers no specific guarantee regarding the accuracy or completeness of the information presented, but the professional staffof AMR Research makes every reasonable effort to present the most reliable information available to it and to meet or exceed anyapplicable industry standards.

AMR Research is not a registered investment advisor, and it is not the intent of this document to recommend specific companies forinvestment, acquisition, or other financial considerations.



TheBottomLine

AMR Research Report | December 2005 1© 2005 AMR Research, Inc.

Evaluating the SAP Operations Tools Landscape To Take PressureOff Your Busy Basis Teamby Derek Prior

With SAP NetWeaver increasingly complex and resource-intensive to operate,

SAP and a range of independent software vendors have tools to automate

operational activities and lower costs.

With the expense of post go-live maintenance and support repre-

senting up to 80% of current operational budgets and up to 40%

of total lifecycle costs, companies must carefully manage their

enterprise applications throughout their long-term lifecycle in

order to squeeze costs and maximize business benefits. Major enterprise applications

vendors offer basic tools to help their customers manage system operations, but most

are incomplete and functionally weak. In an SAP environment, add the increasing

complexity of the NetWeaver applistructure platform and the changing nature of appli-

cations, and the challenge intensifies. Basis administration teams are already under

tremendous pressure to keep SAP systems running at lightning speed on top of staying

up to date with the latest business requirements.

A wide range of operations tools exists to help streamline the operation of live SAP sys-tems. Although many companies do not budget for them in advance of a live rollout,

the use of such tools can be critical to avoiding the unnecessary costs associated with

low IT service levels and escalating administration and infrastructure expenses. e

payback is clear: Greater automation of the underlying operations processes can typi-

cally translate to a reduction in overall labor cost or higher operations team efficiency.

is Report is a supplement to the AMR Research Report “Unbudgeted: Making the

Case for Enterprise Application Operations Tools,” May 2005, which defined an opera-

tions tools framework to support all enterprise application packages throughout their

lifecycle, detailing a three-phase approach and criteria for tool selection. is fol-

low-up Report focuses exclusively on SAP enterprise applications. We describe SAP’s

strategy for providing standard operations tools and apply the framework to the huge

partner ecosystem of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) for SAP, identifying the

leaders for each type. is information is intended to help SAP customers compile

their own checklists of operations tools for evaluating and purchasing in order to com-

plement those provided as standard by SAP.

Vendors featured in

this Report:

Approva

AutoTester

BMC Software

Computer Associates

EASY SOFTWARE

EPI-USE

Gamma Enterprise

Technologies

Honico Systems

HPIBM

IntelliCorp

Intelligroup

Macro 4

Mercury

Mobius

OpenText

PBS Software

Pecaso

REALTECH

Redwood Software

Revelation Software

Concepts

SAP

StreamServe

UC4 Software

Virsa Systems

Executive

Summary



AMR Research Report | December 20052 © 2005 AMR Research, Inc.

With no one-size-fits-all option, SAP customers arerequired to navigate a complex market of ISVs andlicensing alternatives

ere are two main types of enterprise application operations toolsets:

• New functionality toolset —Includes tools for supporting service desk interface,

change management, selective data copy, functional test, and stress test.

• Live operations toolset —Includes tools for supporting service desk interface,

user provisioning, job scheduling, output management, performance management,

Service-Level Agreement (SLA) reporting, database backup/recovery, database repli-

cation, and database archival.

For a full description and advice on when to consider each type of tool, please refer

to Table 1 (originally featured in the “Unbudgeted: Making the Case for Enterprise

Application Operations Tools”).




Source: AMR Research, 200

Table 1: Enterprise application operations tools

Tool Type Description Consider When You Need

New Functionality Toolset

Service Desk Interface Visibility of all enterprise application incidents,problems, and change requests within the

preferred service desk application.

Standard enterprise-wide processesfor managing incidents, problems, and

change requests. Standard troubletickets.

Change Management Management of all application changes: enhance-ment requests, approvals, SAP packs, testing, land-scape migration, and documentation.

Prevention of accidental changes.Rigorous software logistics processes.Auditable change management processoverall.

Selective Data Copy Ability to copy granular enterprise applicationconfiguration, master, and transaction dataacross the system landscape.

Reduction of large amounts of time byoperations staff copying excess data.Reduction in unnecessary disk storage.

Functional Test Management and documentation ofregression testing of all enterprise applicationfunctionality to verify repeatable results.

Reduction of large amounts of time spentby both development andoperations staff to prove satisfactory

application execution.

Stress Test Management and execution of enterprise appli-cation testing under conditions of high datavolumes to verify repeatable results.

To lower the risk of an enterprise applica-tion project to prove that it can handlehigh interactive and/or batch transactionvolumes.

Live Operations Toolset

Service Desk Interface As above. As above.

User Provisioning Automation of management of end-userprofiles to match roles and responsibilitiesenterprise-wide.

Auditable, secure, end-user profilemanagement. Reduction of operationsstaff overall workload.

Job Scheduling Automation of batch job scheduling across a

complex landscape of systems supporting anenterprise application.

Reduction of operations staff time

manually scheduling and checking execution of batch jobs.

Output Management Automation of the formatting, scheduling, anddistribution of high-quality printed reports,faxes, and e-mails to end users.

Reduction of operations staff timemanually scheduling and checking execution of output jobs.

Performance Management Monitoring of end-to-end application infra-structure stack performance and availability.Root-cause, trend, and historical performanceanalysis.

Maximum proactivity in application per-formance management. Reduction ofoperations staff time spent monitoring.

SLA Reporting SLA reporting against actual performance andavailability data for the enterprise application.

Ability to ensure that business service levels are attained. Professional SLA report-ing to business management.

Database Backup/Recovery Automation of routine enterprise applicationdatabase backup and recovery operations.

Ability to maintain reliable applicationdata. Ability to restore application data-base copy in the event of an applicationfailure.

Database Replication Automation of routine enterprise applicationdatabase replication to another data centerlocation in case of site disaster.

Mission-critical project. Ability to recoverapplication operation within a givendowntime after a site disaster.

Database Archival Automation of routine removal of historic datafrom the enterprise application database.

Ability to constrain application databasesteady state size. Reduction of operationsstaff administration overhead.




Using this framework as a base, AMR Research reviewed the tools available from SAP

(see Table 2). We also conducted a survey of the leading ISVs in the SAP ecosystem

offering additional operations tools. Table 3 lists the results of this survey, with 16

tools in 5 different tool types for the new functionality toolset, and 26 tools in 6 differ-

ent tool types for the live operations toolset.

Please note that because security management is very specialized, it lies outside the

scope of this framework. Also, the database backup/recovery and database replica-

tion tool types were excluded from this survey, as server and storage hardware vendors

already handle such tools within their hardware proposals for SAP projects.





Table 2: Standard operations tools supplied by SAP

Tool Type

Standard SAP

Product

Standard SAP

Product Description

Consider Extra Tools

When You Need…


Help Desk Interface—Visibility of all enter-prise applicationincidents, problems,and change requestswithin the preferredhelp desk application

Solution Manager:Service Desk Basic Help Desk functionality,with a strong emphasis on man-aging support message commu-nication with SAP Active GlobalSupport organization

Standard enterprise-wide pro-cesses for managing incidents,problems and change requests,standard trouble tickets

Solution Manager(4.0 future release):Service Desk—Solution ManagerDiagnostics

Help Desk functionality to per-form root-cause analysis of anSAP NetWeaver landscape forJava-based components

Change Management—

Management of allapplication changes:

enhancement requests,approvals, hot packs,testing, landscapemigration,documentation

Solution Manager(3.2): Change RequestManagement

Planning, tracking, and documen-tation of SAP application projectchanges across SAP software

components (for R/3 releases4.6C+)

Prevention of accidental changes,rigorous SAP software logisticsprocesses, auditable change man-

agement process overall, olderreleases of R/3

Web AS: TransportManagement System(TMS)

Scheduling and transporting cus-tomizing settings and programdevelopments across an SAPlandscape

More automation of TMS pro-cesses

Web AS (4.5): NoteAssistant

Implementing changes due toSAP corrections within SAP Notes

Selective Data Copy—

Ability to copy granularenterprise applicationconfiguration, master,

and transaction dataacross the systemlandscape

Web AS: TransportManagement System(TMS)

Full client copy level only. Reduction of large amounts oftime by operations staff copy-ing excess data, ability to copysubsets of data only, reduction in

disk storage

Functional Test—

Management and docu-mentation of regressiontesting of all enterpriseapplication functional-ity to verify repeatableresults

Web AS: TestWorkbench, extendedComputer-Aided Test Tool (eCATT)

Management and documenta-tion of manual and automatic testcases for SAP applications

Reduction of large amounts oftime spent by both developmentand operations staff to prove cor-rect functionality of SAPapplications

Stress Test—

Management andexecution of enterprise

application testingunder conditions ofhigh data volumes toverify repeatable resultsfor applicationperformance

To derisk an enterprise applica-tion project to prove that it canhandle high interactive and/or

batch transaction volumes withacceptable performance





Table 2: Standard operations tools supplied by SAP (continued)

Tool Type

Standard SAP

Product

Standard SAP

Product Description


When You Need…


Help Desk Interface—As above

User Provisioning—

Automation of man-agement of end-userprofiles, to match rolesand responsibilitiesenterprise-wide

NetWeaver: Integrateduser and accessmanagement, usingcommon user accesssystem

Consolidates user and authori-zation information across SAPlandscapes, LDAP servers, andthird-party applications

Auditable, secure, end-user pro-file management, reduction ofoperations staff overall workload,monitoring controls violations

Resold by SAP: VirsaSystems ComplianceCalibrator

Real-time risk assessment thatdefines conflicting authorizationsand controls to reduce risk offraud (add on mySAP ERP, etc.)

Job Scheduling—

Automation of batch job scheduling across acomplex landscape ofsystems supporting anenterprise application

Web AS: Redwood

Cronacle prod-uct OEM’d intoNetWeaver

Management and execution of

all NetWeaver batch job sched-ules through the embeddedCronacle product (supports ABAPand Java processes)

The need to standardize on an

enterprise-wide job schedulingtool

Output Management—

Automation of the for-matting scheduling anddistribution of high-quality printed reports,faxes, and e-mail to endusers

Web AS: OutputManagement

Handling of SAP printing formsand lists, basic administration ofoutput devices

Reduction of operations stafftime manually scheduling andchecking execution of output jobs

Web AS: Smart Forms Standard SAP tool for creatingand maintaining forms withinSAP applications (XML on HTMLWebforms from Web AS [6.10])

The need to standardize on anenterprise-wide output manage-ment tool

Performance

Management—

Monitoring of end-to-end application infra-structure stack perfor-mance and availabilityas well as root-cause,trend, and historicalperformance analysis

Web AS: ComputingCenter ManagementSystem (CCMS)

Very detailed monitoring, tuning,and reporting of all SAP ABAP-based components; detailedbenchmarks and application siz-ing tools

Maximum proactivity in applica-tion performance managementReduction of operations stafftime spent monitoring and trou-bleshooting

Web AS (6.40):Java Monitoringand Management,NetWeaverAdministrator

Monitoring of standard SAP Java-based components

NetWeaverAdministrator

Monitoring of standard SAP busi-ness processes across standard

SAP applications and systems






Tool Type

Standard SAP

Product

Standard SAP

Product Description


When You Need…


SLA Reporting—SLAreporting against actualperformance and avail-ability data for theenterprise application

Solution Manager:Service LevelReporting,EarlyWatch Alert

Basic functionality for definingand reporting against SLAs. Datacollected from EarlyWatch Alertmonitoring of SAP system land-scapes

More sophisticated SLA report-ing to business management,ability to do root-cause and his-torical analyses, standard enter-prise-wide reporting

Database Backup/

Recovery—Automationof routine enterpriseapplication databasebackup and recoveryoperations

Web AS: BRBACKUP Standard SAP backup and recov-ery tool for Oracle SAP databasesonly

Ability to restore database copyafter an application failure, sup-port for other databases, widerange of tools from hardwarestorage vendors

Database Replication—

Automation of routine

enterprise applicationdatabase replicationto another data centerlocation in case of sitedisaster

Mission-critical project, abilityto recover application operation

within a given downtime after asite disaster, tools from hardwarestorage vendors

Database Archival—

Automation of routineremoval of historic datafrom the enterpriseapplication database

Web AS: DataArchival, ArchiveLink,Archive InformationSystem, ArchiveDevelopment Kit

Detailed data archival storage andretrieval access for standard andcustom application data

Constraining database size,reduction of operations staffadministration overhead, supportof offline storage devices andcontent management systems





Table 3: Standard operations tools supplied by SAP

Tool Type Tool *

Global

Customers**

First

Customer

Installation

License

Parameters

Annual

Maintenance


Help Desk

Interface

Remedy Help Desk (BMC

Software

2000+ 1999 By named users and modules 15% (12*5)

HelpMan (Honico) | P 120(50) 1999 By base price plus named

users

15%

The Guard ! Service-Center

(REALTECH)

60 (60) 2003 By named users plus SAP

systems

15%

HP OpenView Service Desk

(HP OpenView

Not known 1999 By named users and modules 15% (9-5); 15% to

35% (depending on

service level)

Change

Management

NetProcess-LiveCapture

(IntelliCorp) | C

500 (20) 1998 By SAP production instance 17%

Hot Pac Analyzer for SAP

(Intelligroup)

50 2003 Sold as a service, for SAP

Support Pack impact analysis

Included in service

price

Optimizer for SAP

(Intelligroup)

250 2001 Sold as a service, for SAP

upgrade impact analysis

Included in service

price

Transport Manager

(REALTECH)

80 (80) 1997 Base price plus extra SAP

systems

15%

Rev-Trac (Revelation

Software Concepts) | P

36 (7) 1998 By landscapes and SAP SIDs 20% (24x7)

Selective Data

Copy

Data-Synch Manager for HR

(EPI-USE)

100 1999 By number of employees 15%

InfoShuttle (Gamma) | C Confidential 1999 By server 20%

Clone and Test for HCM and

Financials (Pecaso)

720 1997 By number of master records 17%

Functional

Test

AutoTester One Special

Edition for SAP (AutoTester)

2000 (200) 1990 By concurrent users 20%

Test Director, Quick Test

Professional, WinRunner

(Mercury) | P

1400 1997 By named users 20%

Stress

Test

AutoController (AutoTester) 100 1990 By concurrent users 20%

LoadRunner (Mercury) | P 1400 1997 By named users and

controllers

20%

* C denotes Certified for NetWeaver. P denotes Powered by NetWeaver.

** The number in brackets denotes the number of customers globally using the tool

for other mySAP applications.





Tool Type Tool*

Global

Customers**

First

Customer

Installation License Parameters

Annual

Maintenance


Help Desk As above

User

Provisioning

Bizrights Role Monitor

(Approva) | C

50 (10) 2003 Base price plus process add-

ons

18%

BMC Identity Management

(BMC Software) | C

48 (40) 2001 By named users 20% (24x7)

SAP Adapter for IBM Tivoli

Identity Manager (IBM Tivoli)

| C

Confidential Confidential By CPUs 20%

Access Enforcer (Virsa

Systems) | P

26 (10) 2005 By SAP instance 20% (8-5); 25%

(24x7)

Job

Scheduling

CONTROL-M for SAP (BMC

Software) | C

400 (50) 1999 By number of jobs plus

server class

20% (24x7)

Unicenter AutoSys Job

Management (CA)

250 Early 1990s Base price plus by SAP

instance

18%

Cronacle for SAP Solutions

(Redwood) | P

300 (225) 1998 By repository plus process

servers; OEM’d by SAP

20% from Redwood

BatchMan (Honico) | P 500 (100) 1995 By SAP instance 15%

UC4: Global for SAP (UC4

Software) | P

250 (200) 1997 By named users 20% (24x7)

Output

Management

HP Output Manager for SAP

(HP) | C

140 (70) 1994 By named users and modules 15% (9-5); 20%

(13*5); 25% (24x7)

Columbus OM (Macro 4) | C 100 2001 By named users 18% (9-5); 25%(24x7)

StreamServe BCP

(StreamServe) | C

300 1998 By document volume No extra charge to

license

Performance

Management

BMC Performance Manager

Suite (BMC Software) | P

600 1996 By named users plus CPU;

resold by SAP SI

20% (24x7)

BMC Performance

Manager—Trak (BMC

Software) | P

600 1996 By named users; resold by

SAP SI

20% (24x7)

BMC Performance

Manager—Manager (BMC

Software) | P


SAP SI

20% (24x7)

HP OpenView Smart Plug In

For SAP (HP OpenView) | C

1000 1993 By server type 15% (9-5); 15% to

35% (depending on

service level)

IBM Tivoli Monitoring: for

Applications; for Transaction

Performance (IBM Tivoli)


The Guard! Application

Manager (REALTECH)

220 (160) 1999 By concurrent users plus

server type plus number of

CPU’s

15%

Source: AMR Research, 2005 * C denotes Certified for NetWeaver. P denotes Powered by NetWeaver.

** The number in brackets denotes the number of customers globally using the tool

for other mySAP applications.





Tool Type Tool*

Global

Customers**

First

Customer

Installation License Parameters

Annual

Maintenance


SLA Reporting BMC Performance

Manager—S.L. Reporter

(BMC Software) | C


SAP SI

20% (24*7)

HP OpenView Service Desk,

Service Quality Manager

(HP OpenView)

1999 By named users and modules 15% (9*5); 15% to

35% (depending on

service level)

IBM Tivoli Monitoring

Service Level Advisor (IBM

Tivoli)


Database

Archiving

EASY for mySAP (EASY

SOFTWARE) | C

800 1996 By concurrent users plus mod-

ules; resold by SAP

18%

ViewDirect TCM for SAP

(Mobius) | P

50(5) 1999 By server type plus SAP inter-

face base price

18%

Livelink for SAP Solutions—

Data Archiving (OpenText)

1500 (372) 1993 By archive data volume, or by

equivalent named users; resold

by SAP Canada

20%; 23% (24x7)

Livelink for SAP Solutions—

Data Archive Plus

(OpenText) | P

207 (43) 2000 By named users; resold by SAP

Canada

20%; 23% (24x7)

IBM DB2 CommonStore for

mySAP (IBM Tivoli)


PBS Archive Add-Ons (PBS

Software) | P

750 (10) 1996 Modules, by database/client 17%

Source: AMR Research, 2005* C denotes Certified for NetWeaver. P denotes Powered by NetWeaver.

** The number in brackets denotes the number of customers globally using the tool for other mySAP applications.




What you get from SAP today

Compared to other business applications vendors, SAP provides many operations tools for

free as a standard of its application product, an entitlement of the SAP software license.

All mySAP applications and NetWeaver stack components run on the NetWeaver Web

Application Server (Web AS ), which contains the computer-center management system

(CCMS) facility for monitoring the health and performance of both the application

and Web AS . CCMS collects detailed application and system performance data each

hour for the application (ABAP or Java) running on that Web AS . CCMS also pro-

vides local statistical analysis for performance troubleshooting on the system.

SAP recently unveiled a brand new system management tool within the Web AS for

Java applications, the NetWeaver Administrator (NWA). is tool (part of NetWeaver

‘04 support package 12) provides centralized control and performance management for

part or all of a distributed landscape of NetWeaver -based SAP systems. NWA collects

local CCMS performance data from each system and existing landscape technical datafrom the Web AS System Landscape Directory. It is written in Java, offering an intui-

tive user interface for the system manager based on the latest Web Dynpro technology.

With this tool the system manager can start/stop components and entire instances,

perform log file analysis, trace troubleshooting functions, and conduct performance

analyses—all from one central location as the satellite support system for the SAP

operations team (see Figure 1).

NetWeaver

Components

ISV Operations Tools

Solutions Manager

NetWeaver Administrator

Web AS Central CCMS

• Detailed analysis/reporting• Proactive event handling

• Infrastructure integration

• Implementation tools• Support planning tools• Access SAP services

• Landscape monitoring• Landscape control• Centralized graphical display

SAP Operators

Central Console

SatelliteSupport System

mySAP

Application

Web AS

CCMSISV AgentsWeb AS

CCMSISV Agents

Figure 1: Application performance monitoring of distributed SAP components





Initial versions of the NWA focus on administration of SAP components that are based

on the NetWeaver Java stack, with support for the ABAP stack coming later. SAP

plans to extend NWA over time with a series of plug-ins to administer more NetWeaver

functions (e.g., the Adaptive Computing Infrastructure). As its name suggests, the

NWA will be built into the heart of the NetWeaver application platform as part of the

NetWeaver lifecycle management tools.

SAP Solution Manager is a support application that runs best on the satellite support

system. Solution Manager also acts as a customer repository for SAP implementation

tools and an entry point to the range of remote access support services provided by

SAP. Solution Manager provides basic help desk and SLA management functions. Also

shown in Figure 1 is the possibility of enhancing the analysis and reporting capabilities

of this satellite system through the addition of ISV SAP operations tools.

Sourcing additional SAP operations tools

SAP customers can buy three different types of operations tools:

• Standard operations tools from SAP—See text above and Table 2.

• OEM tools from SAP—In only the job scheduling tool type does SAP provide a

capability resulting from an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) agreement,

in this case with Redwood Software. This OEM agreement is the first of its kind to

build a third-party partner product into the heart of NetWeaver.

• ISV operations tools vendors—SAP has always maintained a strong ecosystem of

partners for software, hardware, and services. This category breaks down to three

different types of ISVs: – SAP pure-play vendors—ISVs that specialize principally in the SAP market place.

– Generic tool vendors—ISVs that offer products for a tool type that supports

SAP as well as other software products.

– Infrastructure management vendors—A smaller group of large vendors

offering a complete framework to monitor an infrastructure stack end-to-end,

from applications to hardware.

See Table 4 for an overview of the ISVs included in this Report, broken down by cat-

egory type.




Table 4: A classification of SAP operations tools vendors

Tool Type

SAP

Pure Play Vendor

Generic

Tool Vendor

Infrastructure

Management Vendor


Help Desk Honico, REALTECH BMC Software, HP OpenView

Change Management IntelliCorp, REALTECH,Revelation SoftwareConcepts

Intelligroup

Selective Data Copy EPI-USE, Gamma, Pecaso

Functional Test AutoTester, MercuryInteractive

Stress Test AutoTester, Mercury

Interactive


Help Desk As above As above As above

User Provisioning Approva, Virsa Systems BMC Software, IBM Tivoli

Job Scheduling Honico CA, Redwood Software, UC4Software

BMC Software

Output Management Macro 4, StreamServe HP OpenView

Performance Management REALTECH BMC Software, HPOpenView, IBM Tivoli

SLA Reporting REALTECH BMC Software, HPOpenView, IBM Tivoli

Database Archiving PBS Software Easy Software, MobiusManagement Systems,OpenText

IBM Tivoli





The importance of certification

Within the ISV community, two very important categories have emerged with respect

to SAP’s technology program:

• Certified for SAP NetWeaver —Denotes the software partner product uses an inter-

face technique formally approved and supported by SAP.

• Powered by SAP NetWeaver —Denotes the software partner product uses a certi-

fied interface technique, runs directly on the NetWeaver Web AS , and uses the SAP

Enterprise Portal (SAP EP) as a user interface by providing a standard iView .

ese categories are important, as they represent closer levels of partnership and com-

mitment between the ISV and SAP. To see the level of certification awarded to ISVs,

refer to column 2 in Table 3.




Market observations

Because of the sheer breadth of the ISV market, there are no clear leaders. It comprises

a complex mix of small pure-play vendors (e.g., Revelation Software Concepts for

change management tools) and well-established companies in the generic infrastructure

management market (e.g., BMC Software, HP OpenView , IBM Tivoli), which havefor a long time offered plug-in software extensions to include SAP applications within

their sphere of management. In between these extremes, generic tools vendors exist

(e.g., Mercury and OpenText ) that provide extensions to their products to include SAP

applications. ese large vendors are broadening their SAP-related product offering by

expanding into more tool types within the AMR Research enterprise application opera-

tions tools framework.

Customer uptake is still immature, which means that many SAP customers currently

run inefficient operations processes with completely overstretched Basis teams. ere

is a huge variation in the number of customers for these tools, with several of the larger

ISVs declining to reveal the number of live customer installations and date of first cus-

tomer installations for their tool. Some of them have been on the market much longer

than others and have amassed more customers. e largest number of installations is

Remedy Help Desk (BMC Software) with approximately 2,000 SAP customers, smallest

RevTrac (Revelation Software Concepts) with 36. Both numbers pale in comparison to

SAP’s 20,000 large and midsize enterprise customers. e problem is that many enter-

prises discover the real need for these types of operations tools late in their lifecycle.

Product licensing methods widely vary. A surprising number of the ISVs adopt some

form of user-based licensing metric, which is the method preferred by SAP. is is

surprising in view of the greater prevalence of CPU-based and server-based licensingfor general system software. See Table 3 for details of licensing models by ISV.

Annual maintenance models are more consistent with less variation in the amount

charged for annual maintenance: between 15% and 20% of purchase price for stan-

dard 9-to-5 hours of coverage. Several ISVs offer greater hours of coverage as an

option to customers where the tool is more critical to SAP system operation.

Product and vendor summaries

Please refer to Appendix A for a review of vendors and their products in this market. Appendix

B describes AMR Research’s methodology for defining the selection criteria for the vendors dis-

cussed in this Report.




Recommendations

• Utilize standard SAP tools as much as possible. Make sure that your SAP opera-

tions teams know how to exploit all of the standard operations tools provided by

SAP for free as part of your software license, like those within the Web Application

Server and Solution Manager. For mySAP customers, this also means understand-ing the newer capabilities of NetWeaver Administrator.

• Attack your biggest operations pain points f irst. SAP customers clearly do not

need to implement all operations tool types identified in this Report. Different

enterprises have different pain points. However, all enterprises need to have the

right help desk tools to enable their incident management and problem resolution

processes. Enterprises with larger, more mission-critical, or more customized SAP

projects are likely to encounter performance problems. To prevent SLA violations,

enterprises should evaluate the performance management, SLA reporting, data

archiving, and job scheduling tool types. Enterprises whose pain point is in the

complex area of handling changes to live SAP systems should evaluate the change

management and test and selective data copy tool types. After thorough research,

enterprises can then compile checklists of vendors to evaluate, using this Report as a

starting point.

• Don’t forget the payback. For most enterprises, all investments in operations tools

will need to demonstrate a real return on investment, which means calculating the

overall lifecycle Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reduction that will result from

investing in any project using SAP operations tools. This is rarely a problem in prac-

tice because most SAP operations tools provide greater automation of the underlying

operations processes. It usually translates into a reduction in overall labor cost of theoperations team or higher operations team efficiency. Many tools can also generate

real savings in the large amounts of infrastructure that SAP projects consume.

For a full overview of the enterprise applications operations tools framework and

a taxonomy of tools, refer again to “Unbudgeted: Making the Case for Additional

Enterprise Application Operations Tools.”




Appendix A: SAP operations tools vendors

Approva

e Approva Bizrights product suite provides user management controls for a range

of enterprise applications. e Bizrights Role Monitor analyzes user roles and pro-

files to look for SAP authorization conflicts, ensuring continuous audit compliance.

Additional Bizrights modules are available to manage other approval and audit pro-

cesses between business and IT.

Approva specializes in the enterprise controls market, with a strong focus on Sarbanes-

Oxley compliance management, especially for SAP. It is privately held; total revenue

figures were not available. Approva is headquartered at Reston, Virginia, with an office

also in India. e company uses a distributor in Europe and has partnerships withsome of the Big Four audit firms. Approva currently has approximately 50 SAP cus-

tomers worldwide.

AutoTester

AutoTester’s AutoTester One is the most popular functional test operations tool with

SAP customers worldwide. It provides test management and automated software test

functionality for R/3-type SAP applications using SAPGUI scripting, and can also be

used for master data input and user training for R/3. Its AutoController product pro-

vides stress testing capabilities for R/3.

AutoTester is a leader in the field of automated testing of the functionality and perfor-

mance of enterprise software, especially SAP. It has expanded its services from pure

product offerings to consulting. e company has approximately 2,000 global custom-

ers, with the majority based in the United States, in a broad range of industries that

uses one or more of its SAP-related products. AutoTester is based in Dallas, Texas, but

has an extensive network of distributors and partners around the world.

BMC Software

Like HP and IBM, BMC Software offers an extensive suite for generic infrastructure man-agement, including a wide range of SAP-related operations tools called BMC Performance

Manager . It provides detailed application performance management and SLA reporting for a

wide range of SAP applications via the BMC Performance Manager products Trak , Manager ,

and S.L. Reporter . BMC offers a popular job scheduling product called CONTROL-M for

SAP and BMC Identity Management Suite for user provisioning. It acquired the leading

help desk product Remedy , along with over 2,000 SAP customers that use the product, from

Peregrine Systems in 2002. e company has greatly extended Remedy to offer strong IT

service management capabilities rooted in IT Infrastructure Libraries (ITILs).

Appendices




A leader in the field of infrastructure management, BMC has extended much of its

BMC Performance Manager suite to include monitoring and managing of SAP appli-

cations. BMC has approximately 1,000 customers in more than 40 countries in all

industries using part of its SAP product portfolio. In fiscal 2005, the company’s total

revenue was nearly $1.5B. BMC’s global headquarters is in Houston, Texas.

Computer Associates (CA)

CA offers a number of SAP-related operations tools within its Unicenter operations

management product family, including Unicenter AutoSys Job Management for job

scheduling. It handles complex job dependencies and automated starting and rerouting

of incomplete jobs. CA also offers the Unicenter Management for SAP R/3 tool, which

provides performance management capabilities that are very R/3 -centric.

CA is a leader in the field of generic infrastructure management, which it extendedto include monitoring and managing of SAP applications. CA has around 5,000

customer sites worldwide running Unicenter AutoSys Job Management , 250 of which

are scheduling SAP applications and systems. In fiscal 2004, CA’s total revenue was

$3.276B. CA’s global headquarters is in Islandia, New York.

EASY SOFTWARE

EASY SOFTWARE’s EASY for mySAP product provides data and document archiving

functions for SAP as well as non-SAP business documents. ese functions are seg-

regated by product levels, with Level 1 offering operations tools using the standard

ArchiveLink interface.

EASY SOFTWARE is headquartered in Mulheim, Germany, and also has a presence

in the UK and the United States. Since 1996, the company has amassed some 800

SAP customers in various countries, but German-speaking areas remain its main mar-

ket. In fiscal 2004, EASY SOFTWARE’s total revenue was approximately Euro 20M.

EPI-USE

EPI-USE’s Data Sync Manager for HR provides SAP-selective data copy functions toenable test, training, and development systems to be kept up to date with the latest

transaction and master data from the production system. From this HR core, EPI-

USE has extended the product to the broader mySAP ERP application. Data Sync

Manager allows logically consistent subsets of data to be transferred from older R/3

releases to higher releases, protecting confidential employee information and saving

substantial system administrator time.




EPI-USE specializes in software tools and services for the SAP Human Capital

Management (HCM) market. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, it is also present in

South Africa and the UK. In total, EPI-USE has approximately 100 SAP customers

worldwide. It is a privately held company; total revenue figures were not available.

Gamma Enterprise Technologies

Gamma specializes in data management solutions for SAP. e InfoShuttle product

provides SAP-selective data copy functions to enable test, training, and development

systems to be kept up to date with the latest transaction and master data from the

production system. InfoShuttle permits logically consistent subsets of data from nearly

all R/3 modules to be transferred, with large savings in system administrator time and

disk storage. Custom data objects can be included.

Gamma has competed in the SAP data management market with its strong prod-

uct offering for SAP customers since 1999. It is headquartered in Woodland Hills,California. e company does not disclose its number of customers, but they are U.S.-

centric. Gamma’s total revenue figures were not available.

Honico Systems

Honico’s major product is its very popular BatchMan job scheduling tool, which can

handle a wide range of batch processing functions that can be scheduled by time

of day or event type. BatchMan provides a drag-and-drop Graphical User Interface

(GUI), detailed monitoring facilities and interfaces to external alarm handling sys-

tems. Honico also provides the ABAP-based HelpMan help desk tool. e company

also offers newer products for tracking and chargeback of SAP and non-SAP related IT

costs, plus a very interesting tool for tracking actual SAP license usage called Dynamic

License Control for SAP with AccountMan.

Honico Systems offers a range of specialized system management products and con-

sulting services. It is privately held, and in fiscal 2004 its total revenue was nearly Euro

4M. Honico is based in Hamburg, Germany, with customers in a broad range of

industries in France, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas as well as its heartland,

the German-speaking countries.




HP OpenView

In addition to its hardware and services for SAP projects, HP offers one of the broad-

est range of operations tools in the SAP ecosystem today. e OpenView software

product family for infrastructure management includes very detailed application perfor-

mance management and SLA reporting for a wide range of SAP applications with theOpenView Smart Plug-in for SAP . HP also provides Service Desk, a product within the

OpenView family for help desk operation and a separate output management product

suite for automated document delivery called Output Manager for SAP , which works

in conjunction with Output Server . HP offers a wide range of consulting services for

designing and building SAP infrastructure, including IT service and application man-

agement tools based on ITIL.

HP, a leader in the field of SAP infrastructure, has extended much of its OpenView

suite for generic infrastructure management to include monitoring and managing of

SAP applications. In fiscal 2004, HP’s total revenue was almost $80B (of which almost

$1B was for software). OpenView is the most popular performance monitoring tool

for SAP, with approximately 1,000 customers worldwide in all industries. HP’s global

headquarters is in Palo Alto, California, and the company is present in all major coun-

tries around the world.

IBM Tivoli

IBM also offers a broad range of SAP-related operations tools in addition to its hard-

ware and services for SAP projects. e Tivoli software product family for infrastruc-

ture management includes application management, transaction monitoring, and SLA

reporting for SAP applications. ese tools handle ABAP- and Java-based SAP prod-

ucts. Tivoli includes an SAP adapter for its Tivoli Identity Manager , which performs

user provisioning capabilities. e DB2 product family includes the CommonStore for

SAP product to handle database archiving functionality. Finally, IBM provides a very

useful suite of generic IT service management tools and best practices based on ITIL,

plus SAP infrastructure-related consulting services.

IBM is a leader in the field of SAP infrastructure, extending many parts of its Tivoli

suite for generic infrastructure management to include monitoring and managing of

SAP applications. In fiscal 2004, IBM’s total revenue was more than $96B (of which

about $15B was for software). IBM’s SAP customers are in all industries around the world, but it does not disclose how many of these customers have purchased its SAP-

related operations tools or the date of first customer installations. IBM’s global head-

quarters is in Armonk, New York, with offices in all major countries around the world.




IntelliCorp

Intellicorp’s NetProcess LiveCapture provides automatic capture and documentation of

SAP application configuration information. is information then provides the foun-

dation for change management of the live SAP application at the product configuration

level. Additional tools in the NetProcess suite perform configuration diagnosis for usein managing SAP Hot Packs, upgrades, and consolidations.

IntelliCorp’s core area of expertise is the development of tools to diagnose how applica-

tion functionality has been modeled, configured, and used in a customer’s live SAP

system. From this starting point, it has developed a suite of tools mainly for functional

implementation project teams, but has also expanded into system management tools.

e company is privately held, and total revenue figures were not available. IntelliCorp

is based in Santa Clara, California, and is also present in the UK.

Intelligroup

Intelligroup offers two tools in the SAP change management category, but all of its

tools are packaged and sold as complete services rather than stand-alone products as is

the case with all other vendors in this survey. e first is Uptimizer , which provides a

detailed analysis of the amount of effort needed to upgrade an individual SAP system,

including application configuration and custom ABAP program assessment. e second

is Hot Pac Analyzer, which does a detailed analysis of the amount of effort needed to

install a particular Support Pack from SAP on an individual SAP system. It identifies

potential conflicts between SAP OSS notes and repairs object conflicts. Upgrades and

Service Packs are two of the main drivers behind SAP change management requests.

In fiscal 2003, Intelligroup’s total revenue figures were $118M. e company is based

in Edison, New Jersey, and is also present in the UK, Denmark, India, and Japan.

Macro 4

e Macro 4 Columbus OM product provides output management capabilities that

include SAP business documents. Columbus OM manages the safe, timely arrival of

business documents at multiple points across a network, regardless of source, type, or

delivery channel. e product supports reprinting of missing pages, print job rerout-

ing, and document tracking from a single point of administration. Columbus OM also

prevents unauthorized document access.

Macro 4 is a leader in the generic output management market and is headquartered in

Crawley, UK. It is present in 7 other European countries plus the United States, and

has approximately 100 SAP customers worldwide. e company is privately held, with

total revenue in fiscal 2004 of £31M.




Mercury

Mercury’s Test Director , Quick Test Professional , and WinRunner perform functional

testing, and all have been used for a long time by SAP customers. LoadRunner is also

a popular product for stress testing of SAP systems. e company’s range of SAP tools

is growing and already includes change management. It is also aligning their products with ITIL service management processes, and at the same time it is broadening its core

products from testing to application management and IT governance. From an ESA

perspective, Mercury is an important technology partner of SAP.

Mercury is a leader in the field of automated testing of the functionality and perfor-

mance of enterprise software. It has expanded from pure product offerings to offer a

range of remote services, too.

In fiscal 2004, Mercury’s total revenue was $685M. It has 1,400 global customers in a

broad range of industries that uses one or more of its SAP-related products.

e great majority of these customers use the Mercury functional test and (to a lesser

extent) stress test operations tools. Mercury is based in Mountain View, California,

and has a major global presence which includes the UK, 12 other European countries,

South Africa, Israel, India, Japan, Singapore, Korea, China, Australia, and Canada.

Mobius Management Systems

e Mobius ViewDirect TCM for SAP product provides a broad range of document and

image and data management facilities, including archiving, viewing, and distribution.

Like many vendors of database archiving tools for SAP applications, Mobius offers dataarchival as a subset of a much broader solution for managing content. SAP customers

should decide whether they need the full solution or just the database archival subset.

Mobius competes in the enterprise content management market. In fiscal 2004,

Mobius’s total revenue was $88M. It is headquartered in Rye, New York, but is also pres-

ent in the UK, five other European countries, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and Canada.

OpenText

e OpenText Livelink for SAP Solutions – Data Archiving product provides a broad

range of document and image and data management facilities, including archiving,

viewing, and distribution. Like many vendors of database archiving tools for SAP

applications, OpenText offers data archival as a subset of a much broader applica-

tion for managing content. SAP customers should decide whether they need the full

application or just the database archival subset. e Livelink for SAP Solutions – Data

Archiving Plus product is a newer version and certified as Powered by SAP NetWeaver.

OpenText is a leader in the enterprise content management market, with a very strong

product offering for SAP customers by virtue of its acquisition of IXOS in 2004.




IXOS was based in Munich, and has had a relationship with SAP dating back to the

early 1990s that included co-development of its ArchiveLink interface. OpenText is

headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario. It has 1,500 customers in most SAP countries

and is the leading vendor for SAP database archival. OpenText SAP customers include

BMW, GM, Motts, Dow Corning, and Aventis. In fiscal 2004, OpenText’s total rev-

enue was $291M.

PBS Software

e PBS Software product PBS Archive focuses only on SAP database archiving, not

document archiving like its competitors. e software offers many modules to archive

and access R/3 module data. PBS Archive is ABAP-based and can be customized to

include customer-specific data tables.

PBS Software specializes in the SAP data archiving market, with a strong product

and services offering for SAP customers since 1996. e company is headquartered inBensheim, Germany. It has over 500 SAP customers in German-speaking countries,

including BMW and Deutsche Telekom, plus over 100 SAP customers in the United

States, including Procter & Gamble and Eastman Chemical. PBS Software is privately

held and, in fiscal 2004, its total revenue was nearly Euro 8M.

Pecaso

Pecaso’s Clone & Test for HCM and financials provides SAP selective-data copy func-

tions to enable test, training, and development systems to be kept up to date with the

latest transaction and master data from the production system. From an initial HR

focus, the product has been extended to include FI and CO application data from R/3.

e Clone & Test product allows logically consistent subsets of data to be transferred

between R/3 releases to higher releases, protecting confidential employee information

and saving substantial system administrator time.

Pecaso specializes in software tools and services for the SAP HCM market. It is

headquartered in Warwick, UK, with offices in six other European countries plus the

United States. In total, Pecaso has approximately 720 SAP customers worldwide. e

company is privately held, with total revenue in fiscal 2004 of Euro 46M.




REALTECH

REALTECH provides detailed application and system management for a wide

range of SAP applications via theGuard! suite of products for SAP applications.

ApplicationManager offers proactive performance monitoring and analysis of SAP. It

has been extended to include network infrastructure as well. ServiceCenter offers helpdesk functionality and TransportManager features change management capabilities.

REALTECH is a German application management software and services vendor that

works more closely with SAP than most vendors because it is also headquartered in

Walldorf, Germany. e company is present in three other European countries, plus

Argentina, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United States. In fiscal 2005,

REALTECH’s total revenue was more than Euro 40M. It has around 220 customers

worldwide in a wide range of industries using part of its SAP product portfolio.

Redwood Software

In March 2005, SAP made an OEM agreement with Redwood to embed its Cronacle

job scheduling product into the heart of the NetWeaver Web AS . is was because

Cronacle handles ABAP and Java processes equally well and already integrates closely

with several NetWeaver components. e software provides scheduling based on time

or events related to infrastructure or business, has built-in error recovery procedures,

and can handle ad hoc job entry. It can also be extended to handle job scheduling of

some non-SAP infrastructure, too.

Redwood Software specializes heavily in the job scheduling tools market, with a very

strong focus on SAP. Redwood is privately held and, in fiscal 2004, its total revenue was greater than Euro 20M. Redwood is headquartered in Houten, Netherlands, and

its customers are in a broad range of industries in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and

the United States.

Revelation Software Concepts

e Revelation Software Concepts flagship product, Rev-Trac, has been built into the

heart of R/3 within the ABAP environment. Rev-Trac provides sophisticated change

management capabilities with full approval processes (21 CFR Part 11 compliant) built

in. e product controls client/system copies, plus refreshes and restores. It avoidsunintended parallel development and handles upgrade landscapes, providing interfaces

to most major help desk products.

Revelation Software Concepts specializes heavily in the change management tools for

the SAP market. e company is privately held and revenue figures were not available.

It is based in Doncaster East, Australia, with customers in a broad range of industries

in Europe, the United States, and Africa. Some of its customers are large multination-

als, including Cadbury-Schweppes, Coca-Cola, and Shell.




SAP

SAP provides a broad range of standard operations tools for free as part of its software

licenses. ese tools, described and summarized in Table 2 of this Report, are built

into the NetWeaver Web AS and Solution Manager products. While these standard

tools work well, there is still a need for additional, complementary tools to automatethe administration of SAP applications. SAP’s standard operations tools can be used

to administer the R/3 and mySAP Business Suite of applications. ere are more than

1,500 total partners for hardware, software, and services in the SAP ecosystem.

SAP employs over 30,000 people worldwide, with headquarters in Walldorf, Germany.

SAP’s total revenue was Euro 7.5B in 2004. It currently has over 28,000 customers

worldwide, 80% of which are large or midsize enterprises with the vast majority run-

ning an ERP product (R/3, R/3 Enterprise , or mySAP ERP ).

StreamServe

e StreamServe Business Communication Platform (BCP) product provides output

management capabilities that include SAP business documents. StreamServe BCP pro-

vides multichannel distribution of business documents across a distributed network,

regardless of source, format, or delivery channel. e product offers complex spooling

capabilities and handles high throughput volumes.

StreamServe is a leader in the generic enterprise document presentment market,

which includes output management. e company is headquartered in Burlington,

Massachusetts, and is also present in 11 European countries. In total, StreamServe

has approximately 300 SAP customers worldwide. It is a privately held company, withtotal revenue in fiscal 2004 of approximately $55M.

UC4 Software

UC4:global for SAP provides job scheduling functionality for NetWeaver components,

R/3, and all mySAP Business Suite applications, plus some industry solutions. It

handles jobs, background processes, and reports, all via a drag-and-drop GUI. UC4:

global for SAP offers central control of Java as well as ABAP jobs. It can be extended to

handle job scheduling of a broad range of non-SAP software products as well.

UC4 Software specializes heavily in the job scheduling tools market, with a strong

focus on SAP. UC4 is privately held and, in fiscal 2004, its total revenue was $24M.

UC4 is headquartered in Wolfsgraben, Austria, with offices in Germany, UK,

Australia, and the United States. It currently has approximately 250 SAP customers in

a broad range of industries.




Virsa Systems

e Virsa Access Enforcer product suite provides user management controls for a range of

enterprise applications, including SAP. Access Enforcer analyses user roles and profiles in

real-time to look for SAP authorization conflicts in order to continuously ensure audit

compliance. e product provides automated segregation of duties analysis and super-user access control. An additional Virsa product, SAP Compliance Calibrator , provides

additional Sarbanes-Oxley compliance functionality, which is also resold by SAP.

Virsa heavily specializes in the enterprise controls market, with a strong focus on

Sarbanes-Oxley compliance management, especially for SAP. Virsa is privately held;

total revenue figures were not available. Virsa is headquartered in Fremont, California,

and is also present in the UK, Germany, and India. It currently has approximately 300

SAP customers worldwide.




Appendix B: Vendor landscape methodology

e vendors chosen for this SAP operations tools survey needed to provide the follow-

ing information in order to be included:

• Vendor and tool names

• NetWeaver certification level

• Number of customers globally using the tool with R/3 or mySAP ERP

• Date of first customer installation of tool

• Method of product licensing for tool

• Method of product maintenance pricing for tool, i.e., as a percentage of the software

purchase price

• Several customer references

Only established tools for which more than 25 live customers existed at the time of thesurvey were included.




Notes



Company List Approva www.approva.net

AutoTester www.autotester.com

BMC Software www.bmc.com

Computer Associates (CA) www.ca.com

EASY SOFTWARE www.easy.de

EPI-USE www.epiuse.com

Gamma Enterprise Technologies www.getgamma.com

Honico Systems www.honico.com

HP www.hp.com

IBM www.ibm.com

IntelliCorp www.intellicorp.com

Intelligroup www.intelligroup.com

Macro 4 www.macro4.com

Mercury www.mercury.com

Mobius Management Systems www.mobius.com

OpenText www.opentext.com

PBS Software www.pbs-software.com

Pecaso www.pecaso.com

REALTECH www.realtech.com

Redwood Software www.redwood.com

Revelation Software Concepts www.rev-trac.com

SAP www.sap.com

StreamServe www.streamserve.com

UC4 Software www.uc4.com

Virsa Systems www.virsasystems.com



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Acronyms and Abbreviations

GUI Graphic User Interface

HCM Human Capital Management

ISV Independent Software Vendor

ITIL IT Infrastructure Library

OEM Original Equipment Manufacturer

SLA Service-Level Agreement

TCO Total Cost of Ownership

Documents

Evaluating the SAP Operations Tools Landscape Monitoring 64553.pdf