SAP Active Global Support

SAP® Standards for

Solution Operations
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Contents
Executive Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Managing Solutions Centered on SAP Software. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

The Organizational Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Collaboration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Out-Tasking and Outsourcing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

SAP Standards for Solution Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

End User, Key User. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
–– Incident Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Business Process Champion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
–– Exception Handling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
–– Data Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Program Management Office. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
–– Change-Request Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
–– Upgrade. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
–– Enterprise SOA Readiness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Application Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
–– Root-Cause Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
–– Change-Control Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
–– Minimum Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
–– Remote Supportability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Business Process Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
–– Business Process and Interface Monitoring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
–– Data-Volume Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
–– Job-Scheduling Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
–– Transactional Consistency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
–– Custom Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
SAP Technical Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
–– System Administration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
–– System Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Recommendations for the Standards Adoption Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

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Role of SAP Solution Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
SAP Solution Manager as a Platform for Standards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Role-Based Work Centers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
–– Work Centers for End Users and Key Users. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
–– Work Centers for Business Process Champions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
–– Work Centers for the Program Management Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
–– Work Centers for Application Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
–– Work Centers for Business Process Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
–– Work Center for Custom Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
–– Work Centers for SAP Technical Operations and IT Infrastructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Implementing Standards with SAP Solution Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Integrating Partner Applications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

SAP Education and Certification for E2E Solution Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

E2E Solution Operations Curriculum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
–– Learning Curriculum in Detail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
E2E Solution Operations Certification. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Find Out More. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Appendix:E2E Solution Operations Certification: Role Certificates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Master Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
–– Program Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Associate Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
–– Application Management Expert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
–– Change-Control Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
–– Business Process Expert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
–– SAP Technical Administrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Professional Level. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
–– SAP Service Engineer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

4
Executive Overview
How does SAP provide the mission-critical support its customers Finally, solution stakeholders must be educated in the optimal
need to manage complex solutions centered on SAP® software – use of the procedures related to the E2E solution. SAP provides
especially at a time when more and more of these solutions a role-based education and certification program, available via
involve component out-tasking* and outsourcing? It offers a several venues.
comprehensive set of best practices that allow customers to
manage complexity as well as manage the risk, costs, skills, and The objective of this paper is to provide all those with a stake in
resources associated with complex processes. These best practices an SAP E2E solution a clear understanding of the options available
include an organizational model, a set of SAP standards for solution for optimizing and managing that solution. It also offers stake-
operations, the SAP Solution Manager application management holders a general understanding of how they can leverage the
solution, and implementation methodologies. The best practices potential of SAP standards for solution operations and thus leverage
are based on SAP’s more than 30 years of experience in supporting the experience of SAP and its customers. With this understanding,
customer solutions. stakeholders can easily drill down to further details on the
individual standards, which will be published in separate papers.
The first step toward efficient operation of end-to-end (E2E)
solutions is to define the roles of all who have a stake in the
solution’s success. Via collaboration and service-level agreements
(SLAs), SAP defines the processes necessary to manage mission-
critical support across all service, product, and technology providers.
This step sets up an organizational model that serves as a foundation
for efficient management of solutions centered on SAP software.
The model requires collaboration between corporate organiza-
tional units and lists special considerations for processes that may
be out-tasked or outsourced.

Standardized procedures are the key prerequisite for optimizing

E2E operations. It’s important to understand the core procedures
defined by SAP as well as the goals, scope, and benefits of the
standards that support these procedures.

Customers need tools to execute standardized procedures, and

SAP Solution Manager provides them. It supports the various
SAP standards for solution operations via individual work centers
that enable all teams involved in the solution to access the functions
they need to execute the tasks related to their roles.

* Out-tasking: Handing over a project task to an outside service provider while

maintaining ownership of the task and monitoring it through
appropriate service-level agreements.

5
Managing Solutions Centered on SAP Software
SAP customers expect that their SAP solutions can be managed you can assign these stakeholders different roles and group them
efficiently. They rely on a solution’s high availability and continuity – usually – in two organizational areas: business unit and IT.
and expect fast and successful realization of new requirements as (See Figure 1.) Although the names of the organizations may
well as control of the total cost of ownership (TCO). However, differ from company to company, their function is roughly the
these expectations can be difficult to meet, especially in the face same. They all run their activities in accordance with corporate
of current trends in the IT environment. For example, increased strategy, corporate policies (for example, corporate governance,
business flexibility, facilitated through new technologies and compliance, and security), and organizational goals.
service-oriented architecture, increases the complexity of individual
application management tasks. And the trend to out-task and On the business side, most stakeholders are end users. They rely
outsource requires close collaboration with service providers. on the implemented functionality to run their daily business.
That’s why efficient management of SAP solutions and efficient Some end users have special knowledge regarding the business
collaboration of all parties involved in the solutions is gaining in applications. These key users provide first-level support for their
importance. colleagues. Business process champions have the lead role
within the business units. They define how business processes
The Organizational Model are to be executed. A program management office communi-
The first step toward efficient E2E solution operations is special- cates these requirements to the IT organization, decides on the
ization. Dedicated stakeholders – such as various customer financing of development and operations, and ensures the
organization units, service providers, or SAP consultants – are requirements are implemented.
responsible for different objectives. Using an organizational model,
On the technical side, the customer’s IT organization has to
ensure that services provided by the E2E solution are available
Customer for the business units. The application management team is in
Corporate direct contact with the business units. It is responsible for imple-
Strategy and Corporate Policies
menting the business requirements and providing support for
end users. To do this, the team is supported by other organiza-
Business Unit tions within IT. The business process operations group covers
the monitoring, support, and integration of business applications
Business Process Program
End User,
Champion Management and the automation of jobs while the custom development
Key User
(global or regional) Office group adjusts the solution to meet customer-specific require-
ments with special internal developments. SAP technical oper-
IT ations personnel are responsible for the general administration
Application Management
of software systems as well as for detailed software diagnostics.
And the IT infrastructure organization provides the underly-
Business Process Custom SAP Technical ing IT infrastructure (such as network and databases). Further
Operations Development Operations
specialization is possible within these organizations as well. For
IT Infrastructure example, within SAP technical operations there may be individual
experts for different applications.

Figure 1: Organizational Model for Solution Operations

6
Collaboration
Processes for operating customer solutions cross organizational
boundaries – independent of any organizational specialization.
For example, if the business process operations group detects an
alert, the SAP technical operations or IT infrastructure teams
may be required to resolve it. A change in a business process may
involve the program management office, the business process
champion, application management, custom development, support experience. Second, the optimization strategy uses
business process operations, or SAP technical operations. The
program management office works in collaboration with the transparency of the customer solution and the status of the pro-
different business process champions to define specifications,
budget, and timelines for any change or development requests.
The requests are sent to either the application management
team owner (or unit) or to the business process operations unit.
A change request is managed throughout all phases of a project
life cycle, from development, testing, and cutover to production
and ongoing support. The application management unit involves
other operations units as needed.
Because multiple organizations are involved in E2E solution to define how it works with every other unit for each step in a
operations processes, collaboration has to be optimized between
and among all parties involved. This becomes even more important
when the involved parties belong to organizational areas that
have a different focus. For example, the key focus of the business
units is business processes while the key focus of IT is technical
components. Achieving optimal collaboration requires both a
common collaboration platform and a clear definition of the
end-to-end process. The definition ensures that stakeholders
know their tasks, know the service level they must provide, and
know what information they need to share with others. As the
trend toward out-tasking and outsourcing IT services continues
to increase, the ability to share information becomes increasingly
important.
The SAP service and support strategy helps customers optimize
their internal collaboration in two ways. First, the optimization
strategy defines a set of standards for solution operations.
These standards describe how to best use available tools and services
and how to collaborate among the different roles to optimize E2E
solution operations processes. This standard framework allows
customers to benefit from SAP’s more than 30 years of best-in-class
SAP Solution Manager as a collaboration platform, providing
cesses and enabling all required information to be made available
to all stakeholders. This helps reduce costs for information
gathering and ensures that participants are always working with
current information.
The program management office and the assigned business process
champions need 100% transparency and governance over all
projects and tasks. Thus project status reports as well as key issue
reporting are executed periodically. Each organizational unit has
process. In addition, each unit has to define the escalation path
to be used for each potential issue. Mapping business processes
with the components of the customer solution makes it easier to
align business units and IT.
7
Out-Tasking and Outsourcing
Efficient E2E solution operations can no longer be accomplished
with in-house resources alone. By implementing SAP applications,
customers ensure that core expertise is also present in SAP and
SAP partner development organizations. And standard application
packages make it easier to out-task or outsource process compo-
nents to manage costs, increase speed, and ensure the availability
of skilled resources. In out-tasking, a service is given away but
still owned and monitored through appropriate service-level
agreements. In outsourcing, the complete ownership of imple-
mentation and operation is handed over. Out-tasking is always
the collaboration model used for SAP and SAP partner application
and technology product units.
Another challenge presented by out-tasking and outsourcing is
that the IT service provider often uses different tools than the
customer. For example, the service provider may use a different
help desk. That’s why technical integration of the tools is required
to ensure efficient collaboration. SAP delivers integration packages
that are ready for outsourcing. For example, the service desk in
SAP Solution Manager provides an open, bidirectional interface
to the help desks of third-party providers.

To maximize the potential of out-tasking and outsourcing, an

organization must carefully weigh which tasks can be out-tasked
and which process components can be outsourced. This requires
a detailed risk analysis. Corresponding recommendations are
included in the SAP standards for solution operations. The
tasks that will be out-tasked or outsourced and the process inter-
faces between customer and service provider have to be defined
clearly in the service-level agreements. The SAP standards for
solution operations serve as a template for this. In addition, the
standards list key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be used
as measures for fulfilling the agreements.

8
SAP Standards for Solution Operations
The main goal of solution operations is to run and incrementally Each standard contains best-practice procedures on how to perform
improve the IT solution to ensure stable operation of the solution individual tasks, descriptions of which tools should be used,
landscape. This process involves managing availability, performance, information regarding the assignment of tasks to different roles,
process and data transparency, data consistency, IT process com­ available training offerings, and available services that support
pliance, and other tasks. In most cases, business processes are the adoption of the standard. Although multiple roles may be
supported not by a single application but by multiple integrated involved in a standard process, one of these roles is assigned owner­
business applications. These can include applications from SAP ship of the standard at the customer site. The assignment of
as well as applications from other vendors or those developed by owners may differ from customer to customer. The following
the customers themselves. Thus it is important that the solution table is an example of how roles or owners are assigned to
operations process cover all components required for running standards:
the business applications end to end – a process called E2E solution
Owner Key Standards and Practice
operations.
End user, key user Incident management
Business process champion Exception handling, data integrity
Standardized procedures are a key prerequisite for optimizing
Program management office Change-request management,
E2E solution operations. Standards help leverage the experiences Upgrade, enterprise SOA readiness
of the organization that defined the standard. When the solution Application management Root-cause analysis, change-control
is centered on SAP software, SAP provides the standardized proce- management, minimum documentation,
remote supportability
dures. This helps customers avoid errors, mitigate risks, increase Business process operations Business process and interface
the availability and performance of the solution, and streamline monitoring, data-volume management,
job-scheduling management,
and accelerate the process flow. In addition, standardized procedures transactional consistency
enable automation, thus reducing the cost of operations. They SAP technical operations System administration, system monitoring
also improve the ability to trace and audit processes. This is espe-
cially important in out-tasking and outsourcing activities, for
which companies require a clear definition of the services to be End User, Key User
provided as well as reports on whether or not the agreed service End users and key users play a crucial role in solution operations.
levels have been met. Both are the main receivers of the services provided through all
IT activities and the first line of troubleshooting and feedback to
Process standards provided by SAP help customers achieve these the entire IT operation. Consequently, incident management is
benefits. The standards are based on best practices that have evolved the primary standard for this role.
from the experiences of SAP teams while serving more than
36,000 customers. Available through the SAP Active Global Support
organization, the standards do not compete with existing and
well-accepted standards such as the IT Infrastructure Library. In
fact, they can enhance existing standards by explaining in detail
how application management processes work best for SAP
solutions.

9
Incident Management By following the incident management standard, customers can
Incidents that occur during the operation of mission-critical accelerate incident resolution. This helps increase the availability
applications can cause severe business loss unless they are properly of the IT solution and minimize negative business impact.
managed, their root cause identified, and the corrective action
taken. The incident management standard defines the process Business Process Champion
and tools needed to manage the collaboration required among As the business units and the IT organization work together to
involved parties to resolve incidents before they escalate. implement business processes, the business process champion is
called on to play another key role in the customer’s organization.
When a disruption occurs that prevents an end user from Located in the business unit, the champion is the expert on process
performing his or her tasks in the IT solution, that user has requirements, implementation, and continuous improvement.
to describe, categorize, and prioritize the incident. In SAP With his or her profound knowledge of the business processes,
applications, this can be done by creating a ticket directly in the the champion is often the only resource that can resolve excep-
application. Context data is automatically attached to the ticket, tions in business execution and resolve the potential data
which is sent to the service desk in SAP Solution Manager. Key inconsistencies these exceptions can cause.
users provide first-level support. They search for an existing
solution both in the customer solution database and in the data­ Exception Handling
base of the SAP Notes tool. When this first-level support cannot During operations, exceptions may arise from within business
resolve the incident, the ticket is forwarded to the customer’s applications. Effective and efficient handling of these exceptions
application management organization. is crucial to maintaining an optimized TCO and smooth business
execution. The exception-handling standard explains how to
Application management performs end-to-end root-cause define a model for action and defines procedures for managing
analysis to isolate the root cause of the problem. If necessary, exceptions and error situations that occur during daily business
other parts of the customer IT organization take over to resolve operations.
the incident. If the customer IT organization is not successful, it
forwards the ticket for in-depth analysis to SAP or to the provider The advent of more complex and diverse business scenarios that
of a third-party application that has caused the incident. At all cross application borders plus the immense volume of business
times, the status of the incident is transparent. transactions processed today necessitate an exception-handling
method that is scalable, open, central, and embedded in business
The service desk in SAP Solution Manager is the SAP tool used operations and support processes. The business process champion
to manage incidents efficiently across the customer business and the responsible business process operations team have to
units, customer IT, SAP IT, and independent software vendors define a model for action and what procedures to take. The
(ISVs) whose applications are integrated in the customer solution. proce­dures they describe spell out what proactive monitoring
Through its open bidirectional interface, the service desk can activities must be executed to detect business-critical exception
send and receive incidents to and from other ticket systems. This situations and what corrective actions are required in the given
may be required if a part of the customer’s IT has been outsourced context. They also describe who is responsible for certain activities
or out-tasked to service providers that use their own help desk. in the business process operations team or the business department.

10
The execution of these procedures can be supported by monitoring inconsistent data entry. In general, monitoring should cover the
and alerting tools. (These monitoring procedures are described interfaces, workflow queues, and background jobs. Finally, SAP
in the “Business Process and Interface Monitoring Standard” recommends that customers set up CIO-level reporting to cover
section.) any exceptions and inconsistencies. Experience shows that incon-
sistencies are bound to happen unless an appropriate form of
If customers deploy the exception-handling standard, which integration monitoring and IT reporting is set up properly.
includes proactive as well as reactive steps, they can achieve higher
availability for their IT solution. In addition, the streamlined Within the data-integrity standard, all levels of monitoring are
monitoring and response processes help reduce the complexity the core tasks of business process operations. Incomplete
of business operations and thus reduce TCO. processing of background jobs must be reported to the business
process champions, who must inform the business unit and
Data Integrity define contingency plans. Following the best practices of the
The underlying root cause for data inconsistencies in an data-integrity standard, customers can achieve higher availability
end-to-end solution landscape typically involves one of these and reliability of their SAP solution and reduce error-handling
three scenarios: costs.
• End users or key users are not aware of certain manual activities
they have to perform to ensure data consistency. For example, Program Management Office
they may not be aware that when they change master data The program management office is the central group in the
in one component, they should send this update to other customer business unit responsible for the overall planning,
components and applications in the network. implementation, and continuous improvement of the business
• An interface is not working properly for some reason. Typically, processes in the solution landscape. All requests for changes flow
this is recorded in an error log on one side of the interface and through this office and need to be integrated into a schedule of
may or may not trigger a workflow that pushes somebody to changes to the landscape. As a result, change-request management
resolve the issue. takes up the greater part of activities handled by the program
• Jobs are not running correctly or did not start at all. If these management office. This office is responsible for managing eve­ry­
jobs are, for example, for loading data into a data warehousing thing from day-to-day changes and adaptations to all release
solution, such as the SAP NetWeaver® Business Intelligence planning and major shifts in infrastructure technology. Moreover,
component (SAP NetWeaver BI), the business reports will not these activities must be aligned with all stakeholders.
be accurate and may lead to wrong business decisions.

The goal of the data-integrity standard is to avoid data

inconsistencies in end-to-end solution landscapes.

To achieve effective solution operations, it is vital that all the

potential root causes of inconsistency be 100% transparent. The
data-integrity standard covers areas ranging from application
design principles to monitoring and CIO-level reporting. When
developing application design principles, customers need to include
how the user is guided and whether checks exist to help avoid

11
Change-Request Management
Changes to the solution landscape must be managed carefully to
ensure they are not only transparent but are also executed without
disrupting ongoing business activity. The goal of the change-
request management standard is to implement efficient and
punctual changes to SAP applications with minimal risk, using
standardized methods and procedures.
The program management office is responsible for managing all
types of application change requests initiated by business process
champions, end users, or key users. These change requests origi-
nate from business process changes, implementation and upgrade
projects, periodic maintenance, and urgent corrections. They
can affect one application or several applications within an SAP
solution landscape. Therefore, dependencies between multiple
software applications have to be considered.
The change-request management standard provides transparency
of the SAP software to which it is being applied, transparency of
the change-customization process, the project history, and the
roles and departments involved. Both the business units and the
IT organization are involved in change-request management,
which is the main communication channel between the program
management office and the application management organization.
Technically, changes are transported through the whole solution
landscape so they can be audited. Thus change-request manage-
ment is closely related to the change-control management ually and tested on a functional basis. During preparation for
standard owned by the application management organization.
Here is a typical change-request scenario: An end user or key
user turns to the service desk to create a service message. This
service message triggers a corresponding change request. One
change request may affect multiple software components. After
the program management office approves the change request,
the application management organization performs related activities
to realize the change request and carry it through development,
testing, and rollout.
The change-request management standard helps customers
mini­mize the impact of change-related incidents on service qual-
ity. As a result, it improves their day-to-day operations.
12
Upgrade
From time to time, customers have to upgrade applications to
new release levels. However, upgrade projects can pose major
challenges related to project management, efficient testing,
minimiz­ation of downtime, adaptation of applications and modi-
fications, and knowledge transfer to end users. SAP provides
guidelines on how to perform upgrades for single-application com-
ponents. However, each upgrade must be an integral part of the
overall corporate IT strategy, covering the end-to-end landscape
of a solution centered on SAP software. This integration includes
hardware, operating systems, and database releases as well as file
system and storage subsystem versions. During each phase of the
upgrade, those involved must pay careful attention to business
continuity, change-management procedures, landscape adjustment,
and downtime. The upgrade standard guides customers and
technology partners through the upgrade project so they can
manage all these challenges.
The standard upgrade project consists of five phases. During the
project preparation phase, the upgrade project is defined and
the current customer solution is analyzed. In the upgrade blue-
print phase, the target solution requirements (the core “to be”
situation) is defined. In the upgrade realization phase, the
solution described in the blueprint phase is implemented in a
test environment. This creates a pilot software landscape in which
the business process and all interfaces can be mapped individ­
go-live, customers make final preparations for upgrading the
production solution. In this phase, the focus is on testing, train-
ing, risk minimization, and detailed planning of the technical
upgrade. The production cutover and support phase covers
the upgrade of the production solution, the startup of the appli-
cation in a new release, postprocessing activities, and resolution
of the typical problems that occur during initial operation.
Following the guidelines set out in the upgrade standard, customers
can accelerate their upgrade project. The standard helps them
avoid problems, increase the quality of project results, and keep
major cost drivers under control.
Enterprise SOA Readiness Application Management
More and more customers are moving to enterprise service-­ The key interface between business and IT is the application
oriented architecture (enterprise SOA) to position their company management organization. End users, key users, and the program
for innovation and improved productivity. By orchestrating management office rely on IT services for a wide variety of tasks –
existing services and combining them with additional application from solution landscape planning to implementation; from the
logic and suitable user interfaces, enterprise SOA can imple- handling to execution of change requests coming from the busi-
ment new business processes. The enterprise SOA readiness ness units; and from documentation standards, training, and
standard guides customers on a successful path to enterprise certification to management-level reporting.
SOA. It addresses both technical and organizational readiness.
Root-Cause Analysis
Technical readiness involves making current methods for im- Support of mission-critical applications depends strongly on the
plementing business process applications transparent, customizing ability of the SAP software ecosystem to provide corrective action
software landscapes, and reducing the number and severity of for any incident. When neither the customer help desk nor the
modifications, thus enabling technicians to drive necessary har­ IT organization is able to identify the root cause of an incident,
monization and consolidation. During this step into the world it helps to have all tools for performing the analysis available to
of enterprise SOA, centralized governance of the services is abso- SAP consultants and ISVs. The root-cause analysis standard
lutely required. In fact, explicit centralized governance of all defines how to perform root-cause analysis end to end across
enterprise SOA scenarios is a key prerequisite for achieving the separate components and technologies. The different support
advantages of enterprise SOA: flexibility, innovation, and TCO levels (customer, partner, ISVs, and SAP consultants) all use the
reduction via reusability of Web services. same standardized tools so that those at the next level of support
can review the results of previous findings and continue with a
Organizational readiness is equally important. Customers more in-depth investigation.
must be able to develop and support a service-oriented architecture.
That means employees in some roles, such as those who serve as When the help desk within the business unit cannot resolve an
business process champions, must build up new skills to establish incident, the application management organization performs
and cover new processes, ensuring that business and IT can grow end-to-end root-cause analysis to isolate the component respon-
together. s­ible for the error or performance problem. This cause could reside
in the client software; in the network, storage, or client database;
The process-oriented approach and the proven methods SAP or in SAP software – for example, in the SAP NetWeaver Portal
provides for E2E solution operations cover the areas of operations component, the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP
and technical risk management for running existing enterprise CRM) application, or the SAP ERP application. Once the cause is
SOA scenarios. The program management office owns the enter- isolated, technicians may have to take corrective action to resolve
prise SOA readiness standard, but other organizations are also the incident. SAP provides all the tools required to perform end-
involved in it. Customers benefit from the standard because the to-end root-cause analysis and makes them available to customer,
technical and organizational readiness it achieves helps reduce partners, ISVs, and SAP consultants. ISVs and SAP consultants
both application management and maintenance costs. can access these tools remotely – and safely – through a secure
connection to the customer.

13
SAP Solution Manager provides access to one standard tool for
each diagnostic task. All root-cause analysis procedures are
shipped preconfigured for all SAP solutions, and the underlying
diagnostics infrastructure is open for fast integration of any ISV
product. Certain key information is required to perform end-to-
end root-cause analysis. To gather this information, software
agents run continuously on satellite software systems, collecting
exceptions, configuration snapshots, service availability, and
workload statistics including operating system and database statistics.
The information is kept uniform across all software stacks and is
available from one central console in SAP Solution Manager.
Furthermore, the information is condensed, correlated, aggregated,
and made available for comprehensive IT reporting. Exceptions
are reflected in the unified statistics of high-severity log entries
and dumps. From there, it is possible to access component-specific
log and dump viewers. Technical configuration such as system
properties and snapshots of technical configuration are tracked
daily to detect inconsistencies among the development, quality
assurance, and production environments and to detect any recent
changes that may have been applied to the technical configuration
of the production landscape. The application management orga-
nization is the owner of the end-to-end root-cause analysis process.
If required, the other IT units – custom development, business
process operations, SAP technical operations, and IT infrastruc-
ture – perform detailed root-cause analysis of the component deployment needed to make the change.
responsible for the incident and then perform the corrective
actions.
The major benefit of the root-cause analysis standard is acceleration
of problem resolution, which leads to increased availability of the
IT solution. In addition, the standard eases problem resolution
within the IT organization. This results in reduced cost of
ownership.
14
Change-Control Management
It is essential that changes to the solution landscape are managed
carefully to ascertain transparency. The previously described
change-request management standard ensures that standardized
methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt han-
dling of all changes. To complement change-request management,
customers must also address the deployment and analysis of
changes to confirm the changes are executed without disrupting
business. This is the focus of the change-control management
standard. The standard covers two major areas of change control:
change deployment and change diagnostics.
Change-deployment functionality provides a holistic view of
an application change, ensuring that all components involved
are tested and released together, even if they are based on differ-
ent technologies. This view can be achieved by using one stan-
dard procedure and tool set for the technical distribution and
import of application changes along the software logistics route.
The change-deployment area controls changes as part of customer
projects. It also controls the download of software patches and
updates for all software components from SAP and from partners.
A test management team facilitates an integrated approach to
change that links the project structure to test plans, test packages,
and the test itself. In addition, this integration with the change-
request management standard aligns the exact content, test, and
Change diagnostics help customers identify, control, maintain,
and verify the versions of solution configurations and the values
of the parameters of solution landscape components. Accurate
information on configurations and their documentation is nec-
essary to support both auditing requirements and other solution
operations processes. To track changes, the configuration infor-
mation is recorded regularly inside the components and collected
centrally in the SAP Solution Manger database. The configuration
can be compared with a template or master configuration to
analyze changes. The reporting includes all current and historical
configuration data throughout the application life cycle.
Inte­grated with change-request management and change deploy-
ment, change diagnostics support the transition from project to
operations and manage code and configuration freeze phases.
The change-control management standard is owned by the management office contribute to and rely on the landscape and
application management organization, but it involves several
other solution roles as well. End users, process champions, and
the program management office use change-request management
as their primary means to initiate, approve, and monitor a change
within the solution landscape. As the primary receiver of change
requests, the application management team uses defined processes
and tools to manage the implementation of changes.
The minimum documentation standard is owned by the
application management organization. As with most of the other
standards, it involves the participation of several other stakeholder
roles. End users, business process champions, and the program
business process information. The minimum documentation
standard provides all involved parties with a common under-
standing. Thus the standard is a prerequisite for optimizing all
solution operations processes. In addition, the standard is an
important factor in business and IT alignment and provides the
transparency that can accelerate IT activities and improve their
results.

Change-control management benefits customers by increasing Remote Supportability

the quality and availability of their IT solution. It also helps them Typically, a customer’s IT organization cannot resolve all prob-
avoid costs for error handling. lems and execute all solution operations tasks by itself. Because
of missing resources or insufficient knowledge, the IT team occa-
Minimum Documentation sionally needs to engage outside experts. To ensure these experts
As solution landscapes are maintained and adapted to meet can provide efficient support, they must have access to the cus-
business demands, planning and reporting of the respective tomer IT solution landscape. The remote supportability
initiatives and projects become the basis for successful solution standard defines five basic requirements needed to optimize
operations. Monitoring and reporting are the focus of the the supportability of customer solutions.
minimum documentation standard.
The customer support infrastructure must give external experts
The key to successful landscape planning and operation is an remote access to the required tools and information at the cus-
accurate and complete description of the solution landscape, tomer site. This helps accelerate the delivery of support services
including all business processes. All reporting is based on this and reduces costs. Various tools are needed to complete the
fundamental information. This sets the stage for issue reporting. different tasks, and in distributed solutions, these tools may be
Issues can be classified as technical issues that capture problems located in different applications. So the software landscape must
with the technical infrastructure of the solution landscape and have a central access point where experts can acquire specific
top issues that address problems at the overall solution information on the solution and quickly access the tools they need.
management level.
The application or technology used to provide a service is irrele-
This information is valuable to the various customer departments vant; what matters is that the service is standardized. Only in
and can be used by SAP experts as an information base on which this way can services be offered efficiently. To secure the smooth
to establish a service plan – the master plan for delivering services operation of business processes across different applications and
to address challenges. All plans, services, issues, and landscape quickly discover the cause of interruptions, an efficient support
information are consolidated in the service and support report, infrastructure must cover not only single applications but the
the key instrument for maintaining a comprehensive view of the complete customer solution.
state of the solution landscape.

15
Finally, outside experts need a guarantee of safe access to ensure
that no incorrect changes are made and to reduce the risk of a
problem. This can be achieved by following the authorization
concepts of the individual applications. But many areas, such as
the operating system, make it difficult to give particular experts
the exact level of authorization they need. In this instance, it is
simpler and more efficient for the service and support infrastruc-
ture to impose only basic read-only access rights for critical areas
of live applications.
By fulfilling the requirements of the remote supportability stan-
dard, customers can engage SAP experts to accelerate problem
resolution and increased the availability of their solution. The
standard also helps improve the quality of delivered services and
the security of the IT solution.
Business Process Operations
The focus of business process operations is business-critical
processes. Seamless business operations require a reliable data
flow between business units. In mission-critical areas, it is important
to identify problems in the data flow as early as possible, since a
disruption of a business process may result in immediate financial
loss. The following standards cover the basics of business process
and interface monitoring, managing an ever-increasing amount
of business data, the dependencies of jobs and their correct exe-
cution, and the end-to-end transactional consistency of business
process execution.
Business Process and Interface Monitoring
The business process and interface monitoring standard
supports monitoring of mission-critical business processes, enabling
customers to identify problems before they become critical or
disruptive.
Business process monitoring covers monitoring activities,
alert and problem detection, notification of experts, error-handling
procedures, and end-to-end root-cause analysis (a separate standard).
Today’s software landscapes are often decentralized and consist
of various interfaces to different applications, many of them management. A data-volume reporting function lists the
16
legacy environments in which customers and vendors use differ-
ent technologies. All these interfaces need to be monitored for
processing errors, backlog situations, and performance.
The IT operations group has to ensure 100% data consistency.
With an increased complexity of system landscapes, there is an
increased risk of data inconsistencies. Specific data consistency
reports have to be executed on a regular basis to ensure early
detection of inconsistencies. And detailed error-handling
and recovery procedures need to be defined to ensure efficient
recovery when a disaster does occur.
The business process and interface monitoring standard enables
customers to safeguard the smooth and reliable flow of core
business processes. As a result, the standard also ensures business
continuity. By establishing one central, proactive, and process-
oriented strategy for business process monitoring, it reduces
the cost for solution operations by avoiding organizational
redundancies.
Data-Volume Management
As a result of the tendency to run highly interconnected software
systems (internal and external) and the need to have data instantly
accessible, data volumes are growing and growing. In general,
adding additional disks to storage area networks and storage sub­
sys­tems just worsens the situation over time. The data-volume
management standard defines how to manage data growth
by avoiding data creation and deleting and archiving data.
Data-volume scoping is the starting point of data-volume
management. A detailed look at a customer’s software systems
identifies major problem areas and indicates the most beneficial
measures to take (for instance, data deletion or data archiving)
when implementing a data-volume management strategy. The
objective of a data-volume management strategy is to avoid,
summarize, delete, and archive data, depending on what kind of
data it is. Business and external requirements for the data play a
role, for example, in legal compliance and information life-cycle
archiving activities already performed and identifies additional The job-scheduling management standard explains how to
reduction potential resulting from, say, a change in the business manage job planning, scheduling, and monitoring. The process
processes. Scheduling the reporting on a regular basis shows the starts with a request for a new job or a request to change the
growth of the database – down to a business-object level – and schedule of an existing job or job chain. This request needs to be
points out how the growth can be minimized. planned, scheduled, and integrated into the monitoring procedures
and alert mechanisms and checked to confirm it was fulfilled
Reaching a steady state – that is a balance between new data and successfully. The standard also recommends setting up a dedicated
archived data – is another objective of the standard. It is also a team for job-scheduling management as part of the business
requirement for customers running SAP software within given process operations or support organization. This team is respon­s­ible
service-level agreements over an extended period of time. for the central management of the job-scheduling function.

The business process operations group owns the data-volume Job-scheduling management is owned by the business process
management standard. If the process identifies data to be operations group, which executes the required tasks – generally
reorganized or archived, these tasks are performed by SAP in cooperation with the business process champion and the SAP
technical operations or IT infrastructure teams. technical operations team. The main benefits of job-scheduling
management are the automation and acceleration of business
The data-volume management standard increases the availability processes and prevention of process interruptions.
of the customer solution by enabling administrative tasks such as
software upgrade, database reorganization, and data backups or Transactional Consistency
recovery to be achieved in less time. In addition, it helps customers In the early days of IT, transactional consistency and correctness
reduce the amount of time needed to manage disk space and was assured by the fact that an application architecture had one
allows more efficient use of resources such as hard drives, memory, system, one disk subsystem, and one database. Commit cycles
and CPU. ensured the completeness of transactions at any time. In today’s
distributed software landscapes, transactional consistency can no
Job-Scheduling Management longer be assured. Different business process “leading” or front-end
Within a highly complex and distributed landscape, job-scheduling systems require data synchronization across applications; several
management is important for managing and processing data. databases, on disk and in memory, have consistent states within
Even in today’s more real-time data environment, there is a high themselves but not across the units; and on the subsystem level,
need to have jobs running in the background. Further, jobs are data is stored across several storage systems. To summarize today’s
linked together in huge job chains, usually containing many situation: within distributed software landscapes there is no
sequence dependencies. If one or several jobs abort and cancel, longer any end-to-end synchronization point that ensures data
the alert software has to inform the appropriate support level consistency and correctness.
or has to be in a position to start an automatic error-handling
procedure and restart the job(s). Another function of job-scheduling The goal of the transactional consistency standard is to keep
management is to make efficient use of available resources (such transactions consistent in distributed software landscapes. To ­
as CPU and memory) when coordinating the activities of concurrent help customers achieve transactional consistency, SAP software
online users with background jobs that use the same time window supports best practices for check routines as well as consistency
and software environment. This function must be managed to reports and procedures that set up synchronization of the trans-
avoid bottleneck situations or prevent delays in data processing. actional data end to end across the different business applications.

17
Depending on customer-specific parameters and requirements
(such as data volume, software system resources, 24x7 operations),
SAP’s given standards may need additional implementation sup-
port to ensure end-to-end transactional consistency and correct-
ness. For example, the IT operations team has to ensure the
­ongoing daily check procedures are in place as well as the recovery
mechanisms needed to rebuild after a failure situation.
By applying the transactional consistency standard, customers
lower the risk for data inconsistencies. Proactive error handling
and problem solving prevent business process disruptions, save
time for problem resolution, and thus reduce cost of ownership.
Custom Development
The primary role of the custom development team is to adapt
SAP standard applications and interfaces to specific business needs.
This involves a variety of development tasks covering application
customization, interface development, and custom code devel-
opment. Thus custom development is involved in many of the
SAP solution operations standards including change-request man­
ag­ement, change-control management, upgrades, enterprise
SOA readiness, and root-cause analysis. However, custom The system monitoring standard covers monitoring and
development does not own any of these standards.
SAP Technical Operations
The SAP technical operations organization groups all the activi-
ties needed to administer and monitor the IT landscape in order
to maintain and operate a successful IT infrastructure for the a regular basis. And to fulfill the demand of the business units
application landscape. The organization acts as system adminis-
trator. As such, it must apply all the standards outlined previously
while maintaining a strong focus on the overall software infra-
structure. Its primary focus is on system administration and
system monitoring.
18
System Administration
The system administration standard describes how all SAP
technology – including SAP NetWeaver BI, the SAP NetWeaver
Exchange Infrastructure (SAP NetWeaver XI) component, SAP
NetWeaver Portal, the SAP NetWeaver Mobile component, the
SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management component, SAP
CRM, the SAP Advanced Planning & Optimization component,
and Duet™ software – must be administered to run a customer
solution efficiently. The typical tasks of system administration
include starting and stopping processes, applying changes to
technical configurations, performing imports, applying patches
and support packages based on the change-control workflow,
creating or changing users based on a compliance workflow,
copying or installing software, running software diagnostics,
managing jobs, and performing backups and recovery. Adminis-
tration tasks are mainly executed locally but can be accessed and
triggered via a central administration system to allow unified
access to all SAP technologies. System administration is owned
and executed by the SAP technical operations group.
System Monitoring
reporting methods that give the status of IT solutions. The
business unit expects performance problems and errors to be
detected proactively and resolved before they affect business
continuity. To provide transparency to the business units, IT has
to report service levels, capacity trends, and solution quality on
within a limited IT budget, the IT team must industrialize and
automate monitoring and reporting.
While root-cause analysis (a separate standard) aims at problem
resolution, monitoring software detects incidents automatically.
When software agents report diagnostics data that exceed thresholds
defined in a central alert framework, the monitoring software
sends alerts to the responsible experts in IT so they can take the customer’s IT team cannot handle.
corrective action. If the required corrective action is not obvious,
end-to-end root-cause analysis must be performed. The monitoring
software has an open bidirectional interface through which it
can send alerts to or receive alerts from third-party monitoring
infrastructures. These monitoring infrastructures can be used by
organizations in which some IT tasks have been outsourced or
out-tasked.
Based on all data available in diagnostics, the monitoring standard
defines Web reports that focus on service levels, capacity trends,
or solution quality. The reports are generated automatically and
broadcast to defined recipients in the customer business or IT
organization.
Recommendations for the Standards Adoption
Sequence
The sequence for implementing SAP standards for solution
operations usually depends on the specific customer situation
and the major problem areas encountered by the IT team. How-
ever, some guiding principles can be defined. The following customer’s adoption list because they contribute significantly to
sequence recommendation is especially helpful for customers
who are planning an upgrade to SAP ERP. This upgrade is a mile-
stone for many existing customers, because SAP ERP introduces
new technologies that can be focused on building up mission-
critical support.
This is the recommended sequence of standards adoption:
1. Remote connectivity standard
This should be implemented at the start of a project, since it
enables SAP experts to be involved in resolving problems that
2. Upgrade standard
This standard is important because it provides a management
guide for customers planning an upgrade project. It offers an
immediate benefit to customers who follow it.
3. Root-cause analysis standard
This should be implemented by the start of the acceptance test
because from then on, a detailed root-cause analysis (conducted
on-site or remotely) of problems that occur in the SAP ERP
software environment may be needed for efficient support of
mission-critical processes.
4. Change-control management standard
This standard should be implemented before the go-live. It
establishes firm control over software logistics. Maintenance
optimization is an important element of the standard. Without
it, customers would not be able to download corrective software
from the SAP Service Marketplace extranet.
The standards owned by business process champions and the
business process operations organization should be next on the
the stability of the customer’s mission-critical processes. At this
point, the adoption sequence depends on the customer’s situation.
19
Role of SAP Solution Manager
Solution stakeholders need tools to perform the different tasks SAP Solution Manager thus provides both functional support for
required by the SAP standards for solution operations. With SAP individual roles and clearly defined interfaces between these
Solution Manager, SAP provides these tools on a central platform, roles. The individual roles represent the major departments and
along with integrated content and a gateway to SAP that enables organizations involved in the management of any E2E solution
efficient operation of E2E solutions centered on SAP software. centered on SAP software. The interfaces give customers a basis
Because it is such a central component, SAP Solution Manager for managing relationships. SAP Solution Manager supports
becomes the application management solution for several collaboration as well as escalations with service providers by
teams – their central working application. tracking the key information for every process instance and
activity, revealing:
SAP Solution Manager as a Platform for Standards • Which process steps were already executed by whom
SAP Solution Manager supports the SAP standards for solution • Who is responsible for the next step and what needs to be
operations by providing an overall platform that contains: done next
• Functionality for the standard processes and steps executed • Whether the service levels were met
by role owners
This functionality is embedded in role-specific work centers in Because SAP Solution Manager documents “the truth” of who
which workflows, Web-based in-boxes, launch pads, and more managed which aspect of a customer’s E2E solution at which
are bundled. point in time, it is vital for governing and controlling out-tasking
• Common data repository containing all status and and outsourcing relationships across different time and
compliance information ­geographical zones.
This repository provides the basis for reporting and governance
activities and can act as a data provider for compliance solutions With the release of SAP Solution Manager 4.0, the solution has
such as the SAP solutions for governance, risk, and compliance. matured into a platform for application management that con-
• Functionality to define and monitor service-level sists of a stable core and optional extensions. SAP recommends
agreements the core solution to its customers. To facilitate the integration
These agreements are made between the parties who are involved of SAP Solution Manager with the overall IT strategy of its cus-
in fully executing a standardized process. tomers, SAP is offering extensions for the solution that provide
• Functionality to manage issues and escalations additional value for specific customer groups. The first extension,
Issues sometimes occur between the different parties involved the SAP Solution Support Enablement package, is already available.
in the solution. This package contains a variety of best-of-breed support tools
• Comprehensive reporting functions preconfigured for use in complex SAP software–centered envi-
These are tailored to the needs of the different role owners as ronments. These tools range from reverse business engineering
well as to the company’s senior management (in SLA reporting, and test optimization tools to in-depth diagnostic tools for client-
for example). Coupled with the data repository and the SLAs, and server-side support. Extension packages are available at an
reporting functions in SAP Solution Manager provide the basis additional charge; the core SAP Solution Manager remains
for effective management of out-tasking and outsourcing available to all customers for no additional cost.
activity.

20
Role-Based Work Centers
SAP Solution Manager takes a work-center approach to executing
SAP standards for solution operations. It groups the information
and tasks of particular operations processes into work centers to
facilitate effective work execution and collaboration. This work-
center approach enables tailored and role-based user environments
for individual users and their specific tasks, while top-level navi-
gation provides access to the work centers. Each work center
consists of a navigation panel and a content panel. Via the navi-
gation panel of a work center, users can find the tasks they need
to perform. The function corresponding to that task is then Most work centers contain multiple functions and provide much
displayed in the content panel of the work center.
Top-level navigation (see Figure 2) occurs via a role-specific
navigation bar. The bar lists all the work centers that a user requires
for his or her job, based on the user’s roles and authorizations.
Some work centers, such as the service desk, are available to almost
all users. Others can only be accessed by a small number of users.
This work-center approach allows users to focus on their specific
tasks. Different organizational units can extend the list of functions
accessible in the various work centers.
If a user selects a specific work center in the top-level navigation
section (see Figure 3), that work center is displayed below the
navigation bar. The content panel provides all functions and
information available in the work center. This is where users
execute their solution operations tasks.
Figure 3: Top-Level Navigation – an Example
information. A “friendly” navigation panel (see Figure 4) allows
users to narrow the panel selection to specific objects of interest.
For example, users can select which tasks they want to execute
and which objects they want to handle. The corresponding list
aligns with user authorizations. In addition, each work center
provides easy access to general overview information such as the
user in-box or work lists.

Top-Level Navigation

WC1 WC2 WC3 WC4 WC5 …

Work Center 2

Navigation Panel Content Panel

Work-center Work-center
specific specific

Figure 2: Key Building Blocks of a Work Center Figure 4: Navigation Panel

21
The common tasks section of the navigation panel lists all the
tasks a user needs to perform within the work center. For example,
the tasks E2E workload analysis, E2E log and dump analysis, and
E2E data consistency analysis are typical tasks related to root-cause
analysis and performed by members of the application manage-
ment team. If the user selects one of these tasks, the corresponding
functionality becomes immediately available in the content panel
of the work center. The user does not need to access the function
via a navigation path that might be much more complex.
When a user selects a task to execute, this task typically calls up
a larger set of objects. However, in most cases the user wants to
handle only a small set of objects. The work center allows the
user to select common objects within the navigation panel that
focus precisely on the objects he or she finds relevant. These Common in-boxes, work lists, and status reporting improve col-
objects serve as filter objects for the functions and information
displayed in the content panel. Common objects are maintained
and used within SAP Solution Manager. They include, for example,
solutions, projects, and business processes.
Typically, customer solutions centered on SAP software consist
of multiple components. Many tasks in solution operations are
related exclusively to some of these components. Because users
need to focus on the components relevant for their work, SAP
Solution Manager lets them access a solution – a group of appli­
cations that are managed collectively. For example, all applica-
tions involved in a specific business process, all applications run
by the same subsidiary, or all applications administered by the
same system administrator. By using the solution as a filter object
in the navigation panel, users can narrow down the information
displayed in the content panel.
Users may be involved in multiple IT projects, sometimes in
parallel. These can include implementation projects, upgrade
projects, change projects, or projects for resolving issues. Via the
common-object projects in the navigation panel, users can call
out the data for the specific projects they are currently working
on.
22
Besides the common tasks and objects just explained, the navi-
gation panel provides general overview information. This enables
customers to get a quick look at information in their in-box and
on task lists, work lists, or open tickets. The information is displayed
in the content panel of the work center as well. So there is no
need for users to leave the work center to check for information
they might need as additional input for executing their tasks.
Why is SAP introducing work centers in SAP Solution Manager?
Work centers help ease navigation within SAP Solution Manager
by providing central role-based points of access. The tailored and
role-based user environment simplifies an employee’s job. Relevant
information is always available and even actively “pushed” out to
the user, improving the speed and quality of decisions and actions.
laboration. And because the work centers all have the same look
and feel with the same design elements and controls, training
needs are reduced and inexperienced users receive easy guidance.
In short, the work-center approach helps customers further reduce
their TCO.
All work centers are Web-based and fully preconfigured to
allow remote access in out-tasking and outsourcing situations.
First versions of some work centers are already available for SAP
Solution Manager 4.0, based on the current user interface (UI)
framework. In upcoming releases, SAP plans to base these work
centers on a new UI framework.
Work Centers for End Users and Key Users
For users who need to access SAP Solution Manager, the service
desk work center is the main point of contact. If an incident
occurs that cannot be resolved immediately by the end user or
key user, he or she creates an incident message in the service desk.
There are different options available for doing this. If the incident
occurs in an SAP application, the user can create the message
directly in the application. The message is then automatically
forwarded to SAP Solution Manager. It includes the descrip­tion
of the incident, context data, categorization, prioritization, and
possible attachments. For incidents that occur in non-SAP
applications, SAP Solution Manager provides a Web interface for
creating a message. This is accessible via a URL. In instances where
an incident is detected by someone who does not have immediate
access to a computer, a key user enters the message directly in
the service desk work center of SAP Solution Manager on behalf
of the end user who encountered the incident.
After the message has been entered, SAP Solution Manager auto-
matically triggers the application management team to provide
the required support. During message processing, end users and
key users can check the service desk to see the status of their
message and confirm when and how the problem was resolved.
Work Centers for Business Process Champions
Business process champions are the experts on core business meets the requirements defined in the blueprint. Business process
processes. They are involved in the definition of the processes as
well as in the process chains and workflow for exception- and
data-inconsistency handling. And they are the people who need
to be informed in case of alerts. All this information is set up in
SAP Solution Manager.
After business process monitoring procedures have been established,
SAP Solution Manager takes care of managing the corresponding
workflows and notifications. Business process champions require
that the status of business process execution be transparent. SAP
Solution Manager provides them with information regarding
current alerts related to business processes, notification of experts,
and reporting information such as service-level reports.
If the champions detect an incident in a business process, they start
the incident management process by creating a message in the
service desk of SAP Solution Manager. They may also be involved
in solving problems that are related to their area of expertise. In
these cases, the service desk in SAP Solution Manager triggers the
business process champions and provides the information they
need to resolve the incident. For problems of higher complexity,
issues can be created in SAP Solution Manager. Issue management
provides more functionality than standard incident management;
for example, it includes more context information and enables
appropriate users to assign tasks to employees who can handle
specific issues.
Change-request management is another process in which cham-
pions are involved. If a change has been requested for a business
process, the corresponding champion has to participate in the
approval process for the change request. This involvement is part
of the approval workflow in SAP Solution Manager.
In an upgrade project, business process champions contribute
mainly to the upgrade blueprint and the upgrade realization
phase. For the blueprint, they use their knowledge to specify
project results. This specification is documented within SAP
Solution Manager and serves as input for the solution configuration.
After the configuration has been drafted, SAP Solution Manager
manages the testing to determine whether the configuration
champions may participate in the testing as well. SAP Solution
Manager tells the testers which cases they have to test and collects
the results of the tests.
Work Centers for the Program Management Office
The program management office controls the collaboration
between business units and IT. This requires that the office know
about the status of all collaboration projects and the service levels
provided by the IT organization. To achieve this, SAP Solution
Manager has a broad range of reporting functionality. Employees
in the program management office provide access to all the infor-
mation relevant to their activities. This information includes the
status of all standards that are important to the business units.
Service-level reporting is especially relevant here, since the fulfill­
ment of service-level agreements has a major impact on the
financing of IT projects by the business units.
Another important task of the program management office is to
communicate change requests from business to IT. SAP Solution
Manager achieves this task via its change-request management
functionality. It collects all change requests coming from the
business units. These requests may be entered by end users, key
users, business process champions, or members of the program
management office themselves. An approval process decides
whether a request is rejected or forwarded to the IT organization
23
for implementation. To drive this workflow and achieve efficient This is required to identify the component that caused the prob-
change-request management, the process and its related activities lem, to provide directions for a more detailed root-cause analysis
must be transparent. SAP Solution Manager provides this process on that component, and to gather more information on the
transparency and makes all required information available and scope of the problem. Based on this information, the problem is
easy to evaluate. handed over to the team within the IT organization that can
analyze the component.
In addition to change-request management, SAP Solution Manager
provides incident management and issue management function- If the various support levels in the customer or partner support
ality that can be used if the program management office wants organization cannot resolve the problem, the application man-
to transfer tasks to other organizational units. For example, a agement team uses the service desk to send the support message,
service-desk message can be forwarded to a new processor or a task along with an information note, to SAP Active Global Support.
can be assigned to another employee. Other units can assign SAP Solution Manager 4.0 includes an open interface for exchanging
messages and tasks to the program management office this way messages with help desks from other providers. The open inter-
as well. face enables the exchange of support messages between the cus­
tomer and SAP partners that may already have a help desk that
Work Centers for Application Management is different from SAP Solution Manager. Messages are exchanged
On the IT side, the application management team is the counter- in SAP Solution Manager using Web services for simple, flexible,
part of the program management office. It receives most of the and platform-independent operation. This combined solution
requests from the business units and is responsible for managing offers functions that improve the quality of information, extend
their fulfillment. communication options, and facilitate message-processing
management.
For incident management, the service desk in SAP Solution
Manager is the main tool employed by the application management Since the beginning of 2007, the proven and robust support func-
team. It provides an overview of all messages and their status. tions offered by the service desk in SAP Solution Manager have
It also allows the application management team to analyze the been taken to a new level. The help desk now enables customers
messages and solve the problem. To support problem resolution, and partners to process support messages for non-SAP components
SAP Solution Manager provides a customer-specific solution in their solution landscape.
database. If the problem has not previously occurred and is not
documented in the solution database, SAP Solution Manager Change-request management, upgrade, and enterprise SOA
enables the message processor to search for SAP Notes in the readiness are other areas where the application management
SAP Service Marketplace – straight from the message itself. team is heavily involved. Via the change-request management
function provided by SAP Solution Manager, application
If there is no solution available within the solution database or in management receives all approved change requests from the
SAP Notes, the application management team starts the process program management office and has to execute them. The size
of root-cause analysis. This process is supported by the diagnostics of the project may vary, ranging from just a minor change to a
functions in SAP Solution Manager 4.0. At first, the application larger assignment such as an upgrade or an enterprise SOA project.
management team performs a root-cause analysis across the However, the main project management tasks are roughly the
different components and technologies of the customer solution. same. SAP Solution Manager supports these tasks throughout
the complete project life cycle. This support includes analysis

24
and documentation of the “as-is” situation, definition of the triggers business process operations. The experts can see – within
target-solution requirements, control of configuration and testing the service desk – all actions performed so far and their corre-
activities, management of knowledge transfer, and seamless sponding results. Then they can use appropriate tools to make a
transition of the changes into productive operations. detailed root-cause analysis. The tools are either included in SAP
Solution Manager or accessible via a link in the work center.
Change-control management is closely related to change-request
management. To deploy changes, the application management Besides reacting to incidents and problems, the business process
team has to approve the import of changes into the quality assur- operations team monitors business processes and interfaces
ance and production software and the download of SAP support proactively, troubleshooting upcoming problems before they are
packages. In addition, the team checks HotNews, a collection of visible to the business units. This is achieved via the business
high-priority SAP Notes available via SAP Service Marketplace, to process monitoring functions of SAP Solution Manager. To detect
see whether an item posted there is relevant for the customer. trends, the team relies on the SAP EarlyWatch® Alert service and
Changes are tracked via change diagnostics. All these actions are on the service-level reporting provided by SAP Solution Manager.
integrated in the change-request management function of SAP
Solution Manager. The business process operations team checks for inconsistencies
on a regular basis by running reports on the most critical business
In addition to its core functionality, SAP Solution Manager objects and monitoring the results. If this monitoring reveals an
provides the means for conducting a detailed, as-is analysis of inconsistency, the team performs a root-cause analysis. The anal-
the customer’s current software system using a reverse business ysis determines whether there is a real technical inconsistency,
engineering tool that is part of the SAP Solution Support not just a temporary one. Once the root cause has been identified,
Enablement package. it can be corrected. After this, incorrect data has to be corrected
as well.
Besides handling these processes, the application management
team coordinates all solution-related IT tasks in which they are Another process managed by the business process operations
actively involved. To do so, it has to constantly watch the status team is job scheduling. This includes multiple tasks such as
of all solution operations processes. This status monitoring checking and approving incoming job requests, documenting
process is supported by SAP Solution Manager as well, through background jobs or complete job chains, testing jobs, scheduling
information provided via documentation and reporting. The jobs in the productive environment, monitoring jobs, and per-
information is also related to the minimum documentation forming root-cause analysis once an error situation is detected.
standard owned by application management. Via SAP Solution Job scheduling and monitoring tasks can be shared with the SAP
Manager, all solution stakeholders can access the information technology operations team.
they need for their jobs.
For data-volume management, the business process operations
Work Centers for Business Process Operations team has to monitor data growth; identify and recommend
IT business process experts belong to the business process opera- corresponding reduction possibilities; and implement, operate,
tions team. They have to ensure that business processes run and continuously optimize the data-volume management strategy.
reliably within the E2E solution. That means providing support
when process expertise is required for detailed root-cause analysis.
In these instances, the service desk in SAP Solution Manager

25
Work Center for Custom Development Work Centers for SAP Technical Operations and
The custom development team is responsible for fulfilling the IT Infrastructure
changes requested by the program management office. Before SAP technical operations and IT infrastructure teams take care
custom development begins, details of the changes must be of technical solution operations. SAP technical operations covers
specified in the blueprint phase by the application management the SAP applications, and IT infrastructure covers the non-SAP
team in cooperation with business process champions, the technologies, such as databases and network infrastructure. Both
program management office, and business process operations. teams have to perform some administrative and monitoring
The specification is available within SAP Solution Manager. tasks regularly. SAP Solution Manager supports this activity by
providing a list of these regular tasks, links to the tools required
To realize a change, the custom development team adjusts the to execute them, and a task log book.
configuration of the applications involved and, if required,
modifies existing software code or develops new software code. Besides the regular administrative tasks, there are some tasks
SAP Solution Manager provides access to the configuration settings that only occur occasionally. These tasks may result from the
and the development area on the applications that comprise the job-scheduling management process or the data-volume man-
solution. For example, a custom development optimization agement process. The execution of these tasks is triggered by
package in SAP Solution Support Enablement helps the develop- corresponding messages in the service desk.
ment team analyze the use of customer-specific developments
as well as optimize rollouts and upgrades to them. In addition, If root-cause analysis identifies a technical issue as the root cause
SAP Solution Manager makes the changes and corresponding of a problem, SAP technical operations or IT infrastructure
documentation accessible for later reference or auditing. teams receive a notification in the service desk in SAP Solution
Manager. From there, they access the tools required for detailed
The custom development team is also responsible for test pre­p- analysis and, consequently, problem resolution. Another task
aration. Members of the team prepare test cases that describe related to the incident-management process is granting SAP
how to test the changes. The test cases are linked to the change Active Global Support remote access to the landscape. If the SAP
documentation in SAP Solution Manager and are assigned to technical operations group receives a corresponding request
testers via a test management function, also supported by SAP from the application management team via the service desk, it
Solution Manager. Automation of testing is effected using creates a user for remote access and then communicates the
extended computer-aided test tool (eCATT) technology or the logon information to SAP in the secure area of the service desk
SAP Solution Manager adapter for the SAP Quality Center appli- in SAP Solution Manager.
cation by HP, in combination with the quality center application
itself. Custom development is involved in test execution as well.
If a problem is detected during testing, a message is created in the
service desk. The message serves both for managing and tracing
problem resolution.

26
The SAP technical operations team is also responsible for software
logistics. Software logistics involves importing software and con-
figuration changes into the quality assurance system and finally
into the production system. The SAP extended change and trans-
port system is used to synchronize parallel software transports
even for non-SAP solutions. After the imported change has been
approved, SAP Solution Manager uses the change-request manage-
ment function to notify SAP technical operations to transport
the changes between the software systems that comprise the be completed during a standards implementation project and
solution landscape. This same process applies to support packages
provided by SAP for software maintenance. Support packages
and support package stacks are available via the maintenance
optimizer in SAP Solution Manager.
Implementing Standards with SAP Solution Manager
Once a customer has decided to become compliant with SAP
standards for solution operations, SAP Solution Manager plays
various important roles in the adoption process. First, it serves projects. This level of service is usually tied to a premium
as the project environment. Adopting a solution operations
standard at the customer site is typically a project that involves
members from different teams within the customer’s organiza-
tion. SAP Solution Manager supports implementation projects
in the following ways:
• Knowledge management functions
The software enables the project team to store all files that
document the decisions taken by the team during the adoption
process.
• Interface to the SAP enterprise modeling application
by IDS Scheer range from day-to-day compliance monitoring to a complete
The application allows customers to use a graphical environ-
ment for the detailed modeling of standard support processes –
an option used primarily by large organizations.
• A full test suite
Available in the test workbench of SAP Solution Manager, this
software enables technicians to test tool-related process steps.
• Collaboration Projects (cProjects) application
Embedded in SAP Solution Manager, the cProjects application
provides all the functions required to steer projects to a
successful completion.
Second, SAP Solution Manager acts as the central knowledge
provider. Implementing standards successfully requires man-
agement of the project teams (and their various roles) as well as
management of the functions these teams must perform. SAP
Solution Manager can support these management tasks by
providing:
• A standards road map to govern project methodology
This road map lays out the sequences in which tasks need to
indicates which content and accelerators are used in the
individual phases of the project.
• Services that support customers during the standards
adoption process
SAP provides various services that assist customers adopting
solution operations standards. These services range from
assessments of the customer’s current processes to quality
gates hosted by SAP. Upon request, SAP can manage complete
maintenance engagement, such as the SAP MaxAttention™
support option. Because SAP Solution Manager functions as
the sole service delivery platform for all on-site and remote
services provided by SAP Active Global Support, it stores and
tracks all service data, feedback, and follow-up activities.
Third, SAP Solution Manager provides a standards compliance
dashboard featuring various reporting functions that enable
customers to monitor their organization’s compliance with the
SAP standards for solution operations. These reporting functions
C-level dashboard based on KPIs preconfigured by SAP Active
Global Support – KPIs that can be extended and adapted.
27
Integrating Partner Applications SAP Solution Manager serves as the hub for managing customer
Partners play a key role in SAP’s strategy for delivering value to relationships and collaborating with SAP. In particular, it enables
customers. Software and ISV partners provide complete, techni- key functions for partner and ISV software. These functions include
cally verified turnkey software solutions that extend and add incident management and root-cause analysis, access to the SAP
value to SAP solutions. These applications may be based on support knowledge base, and delivery of patches and downloads
SAP’s standard, release-stable interfaces or on the SAP NetWeaver (software life-cycle management). The solution even enables
technology platform. Customers expect the partner software customers to order days of consulting time as on-demand services.
products integrated with SAP applications or the SAP NetWeaver All these functions are accomplished through the partner’s SAP
technology platform to be managed and supported with the same Solution Manager software and the integration of partners into
efficiency and reliability they experience every day for SAP solu- the SAP service backbone and standardized support processes.
tions. To enable this, it is important to integrate partners into This enables the partner products integrated into the customer
the SAP service backbone and standardized support processes. solution to offer the same quality and operate in the same way
customers expect from SAP applications.

28
SAP Education and Certification
for E2E Solution Operations
The E2E solution operations curriculum gives the teams involved E2E Solution Operations Curriculum
in managing SAP solutions the fundamental skills they need to The E2E curriculum helps customers educate specialized
follow and execute SAP standards. And it offers direct role- and teams and stakeholders so they can execute their assigned tasks
task-oriented knowledge transfer from SAP’s experts and specialists. efficiently. Participants become familiar with the SAP standards,
which describe how to best use available tools and services and
Optimal operation of SAP solutions depends on the quality of how to collaborate with other stakeholders. The E2E solution
the frontline employees in the customer’s or service provider’s operations curriculum is structured along different knowledge
organization. A certification program is the ideal way to assess levels as follows:
and verify individual skills. It enables the customer and the • E2E solution operations overview
managed service provider to prove that their solution operations • E2E technical core competence
experts are qualified, proficient, and capable of managing an • E2E technical expert competence
E2E solution centered on SAP software. The E2E solution operations • Management competence
­certification from SAP targets different roles and different levels
of competency. The overall curriculum is shown in Figure 5.

Customer’s Business Unit Customer’s It

Program
Business
Management Application Management SAP Technical Operations
Process Operations
Office

E2E Solution Operation: Overview of E-Learning Curriculum

Management Technical Core Competence

Competence
E2E
E2E
Business
E2E Root- Change-
Process SAP Systems Administration
Cause Analysis Control
Technical Integration &
Management
Quality Automation
Management Technical Expert Competence
SAP NetWeaver® Change Business SAP NetWeaver
Security
Portal Diagnostics Request Process Portal Administration
Management Performance
SAP NetWeaver XI SAP NetWeaver XI
Diagnostics Job Scheduling Administration
Chance
Technical SAP NetWeaver BI Diagnostics Data Volume SAP NetWeaver BI
Upgrade Diagnostics Management Administration
Management
SAP NetWeaver Test Integration SAP NetWeaver
Application Server Management Management Application Server
Diagnostics Administration

Figure 5: Curriculum Offered to Those Involved in E2E Solutions Centered on SAP® Software

29
Learning Curriculum in Detail
E2E solution operations overview courses provide the “big
picture” of E2E solution operations and are aimed at all solution
teams and stakeholders. The courses cover the standards for solution
operations and describe SAP Solution Manager as a platform for
E2E operations. They also explain basic tasks, including how to
use SAP Solution Manager as a collaboration platform and how
to scope out and document a solution according to the standards
provided.
E2E technical core competence courses explain the basic tasks
involved in solution operations. The courses consist of several
­system demos and exercises that focus on regular tasks. Target
groups for these courses include application management teams,
SAP technical operations experts, and members of business pro-
cess operations and custom development teams. Technical core
competence is addressed via the following courses:
• E2E100: E2E root-cause analysis (5 days) application, and SAP CRM.
This course covers the tools and approaches used for analyzing
the root cause of incidents and for isolating the component E2E technical expert competence courses and workshops
causing the incident in a heterogeneous IT landscape. Prerequi-
sites for the course include an overview of SAP technology as
well as a basic understanding of SAP Solution Manager and E2E
solution support.
• E2E200: E2E change-control management (5 days) for a specific customer and use that customer’s software system
This course details the tools and approaches used for control-
ling changes and describes how to diagnose and track changes
in a heterogeneous IT landscape. Attendees learn about the
concept of One Transport Order (based on the SAP extended
change and transport system), which enables technicians to
combine and synchronize objects from several implementation
languages.
• E2E300: E2E business process integration and automation
(5 days)
This course covers the concept of E2E integration and automa-
tion, detailing the tools and methodologies involved. Aimed
at the business operations team, it explains how to establish
provided procedures, how to access SAP tools, and how to use
them to overcome specific integration and automation challenges.
30
For SAP technical operations teams, SAP offers a portfolio of
courses. The SAP system administration courses are structured
according to the roles used in various areas of SAP administration
and technology. Some roles are specific to certain components,
and some roles cross component boundaries. The cross-component
roles contain tasks that are required for a certain component but
are also relevant for other components. For example, change and
transport system administration is required for solutions based
on SAP R/3® software as well as for those built on SAP CRM.
Transport landscapes need to be set up for the various compo-
nents, and the procedure for doing this is the same for all appli-
cations. Another example of cross-component roles occurs in
database administration, which is necessary in each component
of each database used. The component-specific roles cover tasks
that belong to a particular SAP software component. They include
administration of SAP NetWeaver Portal, SAP NetWeaver XI, SAP
NetWeaver BI, the SAP Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM)
­provide in-depth explanations of basic and specialized tasks for
solution operation. They consist of several system demos as well
as exercises based on both regular and specialized tasks. The
workshops are service oriented. They are performed individually
for the exercises. Target groups for these offerings belong to
center-of-expertise groups specialized in critical technical
components (such as SAP NetWeaver Portal, SAP NetWeaver XI,
SAP NetWeaver BI, and database).
To promote E2E technical expert competencies, technical • Technical upgrade management (2 days)
experts can also take advantage of SAP Empowering workshops, In this course, participants study the standards for successful
which deliver state-of the-art knowledge to experts. These upgrade projects. They discover the major technical risks and
workshops address issues that are specific to end-to-end solution challenges within an upgrade project and learn about the con-
support. Designed to be flexible, they can be delivered as standard cept of safeguarding for upgrade. They also review the method-
classroom training at an SAP site or at the customer’s site, for ology used in each of the individual service offerings as well as the
teams or individuals. Or they can be provided via e-learning benefits gained from using that service.
sessions using a role-based approach. SAP’s goal is to provide the
expertise its customers need to optimize operations and continually E2E Solution Operations Certification
optimize SAP solutions. The E2E solution operations certification from SAP enables
­customer teams, partners, or managed service providers to
E2E management competence courses explain how to ­document proficiency. Certified candidates have proven their
manage SAP standards for solution operations, including how competency by passing demanding, task- and process-oriented
to develop a road map for implementation that incorporates examinations. This certification is the only authorized SAP
people, processes, and platform. The courses also describe the ­accreditation available covering E2E solution operations.
critical success factors for E2E solution operations and the poten­
tial tasks involved in outsourcing or out-tasking. Target groups For partners and managed service providers, an SAP certificate
for these management courses are IT leads, program managers, demonstrates the return on their investment in training. Certified
and business process champions. Management competence is candidates manage their workforce more efficiently while allowing
addressed via the following courses: their people to develop more effectively. The certificate also
• Technical implementation management (2 days) ­enhances employee loyalty and job performance. For customers
In this course, attendees learn about SAP’s standards for successful out-tasking or outsourcing parts of their operations, the certifi-
technical implementation projects. They also discover the cation provides standards of expertise and differentiates the part-
major technical risks and challenges involved in implementing ners or managed service providers in the market. The certificate
SAP standards for solution operations and study the concept confirms that its holder has the up-to-date knowledge needed to
of safeguarding for solution operations readiness. And they effectively manage solutions centered on SAP software and thus
review the methodology used in each of the individual service is able to ensure mission-critical support of E2E solutions.
offerings as well as the benefits gained from using that service.
• Technical quality management (2 days)
Participants in this course learn about SAP’s standards for
success­fully managing and operating a solution, especially a
mission-critical solution. They discover the major risks and
challenges within outsourcing and out-tasking and study the
concept of mission-critical support. They also review the
methodology used in each of the individual service offerings as
well as the benefits (such as reduced TCO) gained from using
that service.

31
In the E2E solution operations certification, the following roles Each role can have specializations and different levels of certifica-
are certified: tion. The certifications based on technical core competence
• Business process champion courses are on the associate level. Those based on technical
• Program manager expert competence courses are on the professional level. And
• Application management expert certifications based on management competence courses are
• Business process expert on the master level. Figure 6 shows the certifications for the
• SAP technical administrator four roles which, at a minimum, should be defined within your
• Custom development consultant organization for effective end-to-end solution operations.

Custumer’s Custumers’s IT
Business Unit

Role

Business
Program Manager Application Management Expert SAP Technical Administrator
Process Expert

Certificates
Master Associate

E2E Root- E2E E2E Business

Technical Quality
Change-Control Process Integration, SAP System Administration
Management Cause Analysis
Management Automation

Professional

SAP system administration

Technical Upgrade SAP service engineer for a specific methodology such as for a specific component such
Management SAP NetWeaver® Portal diagnostics, change-request management, as SAP NetWeaver Portal, SAP
business process performance NetWeaver XI. SAP NetWeaver BI,
SAP NetWeaver AS

Figure 6: Role-Based Certification for E2E Solution Operations

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Find Out More
To learn how SAP standards for solution operations can
help your organization optimize E2E solutions based on
SAP software – and get details on the certification courses
that support this optimization process – visit us online at
www.sap.com/solutionoperations.

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Appendix:
E2E Solution Operations Certification: Role Certificates
Master Level Associate Level
Program Manager Application Management Expert
This certificate confirms a candidate’s knowledge in the areas of Application management experts can receive certifications in
technical quality management and technical upgrade manage- two areas:
ment. It verifies that the candidate has a basic understanding • Root-cause analysis
within this profile and can implement this knowledge practically • Change-control management
in real-time projects. The courses for certification preparation
are technical quality management and technical upgrade Root-Cause Analysis
management. This certificate proves that the candidate has a basic understand-
ing within this profile and can implement this knowledge practi-
The certification test consists of questions from the following cally in E2E solution operations. The course for certification
areas: preparation is E2E100: E2E root-cause analysis. The certification
test consists of questions from the following areas:
1. Technical quality management
• Basis development language 1. Introduction to end-to-end root-cause analysis
• Technical risk management with SAP® software • Why end-to-end root-cause analysis
• Cross-component diagnostics versus component diagnostics
2. Implementation or upgrade project • Root-cause analysis versus solution monitoring
• Key questions • SAP Solution Manager as a key enabler of end-to-end
• Key phases root-cause analysis
• Key focus areas • Savings through E2E diagnostics in SAP Solution Manager
• Key risks and challenges • Incident management and preclarification

3. Technical risk management 2. End-to-end change diagnostics

• Evaluation and assessment • How to collect end-to-end version information from the
• Feasibility and technical check customer’s software landscape
• Optimization • How to detect changes to production
• Support • Architecture of the One Transport Order concept

4. Collaboration with SAP 3. End-to-end workload analysis

• SAP Solution Manager application management solution • How to detect a general performance bottleneck on the server side
• Other tools and services • Comparison of the ABAP™ programming language and Java
workload analysis
• Overview of ABAP workload analysis
– ABAP process overview
– ABAP performance statistics
– ABAP memory analysis

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• Overview of Java workload analysis
– Java thread-dump analysis
– Workload analysis with CA Wily Introscope
– Java memory analysis
• Overview of operating system (OS) and database analysis
• File system browser and OS command console
• Display of CPU and I/O consumption in SAP Solution Manager
• Introduction to database monitors, analysis of I/O consumption
from database monitors
4. End-to-end trace
• Recording and analyzing an end-to-end trace
• Architecture of end-to-end trace: client to network to server to
database to disk
• Comparison of ABAP and Java traces
• Java tracing with CA Wily Introscope transaction trace
• ABAP tracing with SQL trace (ST05) and application trace (ST12)
• BMC Appsight as an SAP standard for client-side root-cause
analysis
– Understanding the end-user experience by watching the 2. Change diagnostics
client movie
– Comparing client configuration (for example, DLLs, registry)
– Analyzing inbound and outbound traffic (HTTP, DCOM, TCP)
– Analyzing performance metrics from clients
– Performing root-cause analysis down to coding level using
Appsight code
5. End-to-end exception analysis
• Accessing logs and dumps for ABAP and non-ABAP environ-
ments with end-to-end exception analysis
• Comparing ABAP and Java log and dump analysis
• Reviewing ABAP syslog and application log
• Reviewing Java log viewer and Java thread-dump analysis
6. Proving solution quality with SAP EarlyWatch® Alert
• Architecture of the SAP EarlyWatch Alert service for ABAP
and Java
• Key performance indicators of a stable SAP solution
• SAP EarlyWatch Alert reports
Change-Control Management
This certificate proves that the candidate has a basic understand-
ing within this profile and can implement this knowledge practi-
cally in E2E solution operations. The course for certification
preparation is E2E200: E2E change control management. The
­certification test consists of questions from the following areas:
1. E2E change-control management introduction
• Solution quality management
• SAP Solution Manager as change-control platform
• System landscape definition (schematic layout, connections,
and dependencies)
• Configuration of change reporting via the Java 2 Platform,
Enterprise Edition, ABAP, and other methods
• Availability reporting in service-level reporting
• Change and transport system (CTS) statistics
3. Change deployment
• SAP NetWeaver® technology platform development environ-
ments for ABAP, the SAP NetWeaver Portal component, and
the SAP NetWeaver Exchange Infrastructure (SAP NetWeaver
XI) component
• Transport strategies (via ABAP, Java, and other methods)
• One Transport Order (CTS+)
4. Change-request management
• The big picture
• End-user’s perspective of change-request management
• Introduction of change-request management as a tool in
SAP Solution Manager
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5. Maintenance of SAP software 3. Interface management
• HotNews and TopNotes in SAP Solution Manager • Remote function call: Tools for monitoring and error analysis
(available via the SAP Service Marketplace extranet) • Application link enabling: Tools for monitoring and error
• Support package stacks and side-effects analysis
• Support package content analysis • Workflow: Tools for monitoring and error analysis
• Maintenance optimizer in SAP Solution Manager • SAP NetWeaver XI: Architecture and runtime workbench
• Automated monitoring with SAP Solution Manager
6. Test management
• Concept of test strategies and organization (for example, the 4. Job-scheduling management
test workbench in SAP Solution Manager) • Road map for a program-scheduling management concept
• Concept of building test data (via a test data migration server • Job-schedule analysis with SM37
or system copy) • Job-schedule analysis with /SSA/BTC
• Concept of test automation (via extended automated test • Comparison of SM36 and the SAP Central Process Scheduling
technology) application by Redwood
• Basic functionality of SAP Central Process Scheduling
Business Process Expert
The certification for business process experts affirms their 5. Business process performance optimization
knowledge in the area of E2E business process integration and • Application tuning areas
automation. This certificate proves that the candidate has a basic • Common tools for performance analysis
understanding within this profile and can implement this • Road map for typical performance analysis
knowl­edge practically in E2E solution operations. The course for • Case study focused on a number-range performance problem
certification preparation is E2E300: business process integration
and automation. The certification test consists of questions from 6. Data-volume management
the following areas: • Data-volume management
• Data-volume scoping
1. Introduction to business process integration and • Data-volume strategy
automation • Data-volume reporting
• Overall end-to-end solution support
• Skills, processes, and tools in the E2E solution support integra- 7. Data consistency
tion and automation standard aligned with SAP IT service and • Causes for inconsistencies
application management areas • Prevention of inconsistencies
• Monitoring of inconsistencies
2. Business process monitoring • Business continuity in case of inconsistency
• Business process monitoring in SAP Solution Manager • Correction of inconsistencies
• Prerequisites for business process monitoring
• Business process monitoring setup procedure
• Functional details for background job monitoring
• How to handle business process monitoring

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SAP Technical Administrator
The SAP system administration certifications are structured
according to the roles used in the areas of system administration
and system monitoring. Some roles are specific to certain com-
ponents, and others cross component boundaries. These certifi-
cates prove that the candidate has a basic understanding within
this profile and can implement this knowledge practically in SAP
technical operations. Details of the courses and certification
portfolio are documented in www.service.sap.com/education →
SAP Global Certification Program → SAP Consultant Certification →
SAP NetWeaver. (Note: This link accesses the SAP Service Marketplace
extranet, which requires customer login.)

Professional Level
SAP Service Engineer
These certifications indicate expert competence in the areas of
application management as well as in the business process inte-
gration and automation of solutions centered on SAP software.
They are structured according to specific expert roles that are
used sporadically.

For application management, technical expert competency

testing covers the following specializations:
• Root-cause analysis of components (for example, SAP
NetWeaver Portal, SAP NetWeaver XI, the SAP NetWeaver
Business Intelligence component, the SAP NetWeaver
Application Server component, and database)
• Change-request management
• Change diagnostics
• Test management

For business process integration and automation, technical

expert competency testing covers the following specializations:
• Business process performance optimization
• Business process monitoring
• Volume testing
• Data-volume management
• Job automation

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Disclaimer: This document is not subject to your license agree-
ment or any other agreement with SAP. This document contains
intended strategies, developments, and functionalities of the SAP
product and services and is not intended to be binding upon SAP
to any particular course of business, product strategy, and/or
development. Please note that this document is subject to change
and may be changed by SAP at any time without notice.

SAP assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in this

document.

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