- Today, customers have multiple application landscapes, which can be a mix of SAP and third party software, and they ask the questions:
- How can we support our business processes with different systems and vendors?
- How can I deploy software?
- How can I deal with dependencies between SAP and partner software?
SAP and partners need to have a collaborative support approach that improves transparency and allows customers to implement, deploy, configure, and manage the different software stacks. Customers want to ensure that the software they implement is working with the business processes and the rest of their landscape. They also need to have certain checkpoints along the software implementation. A customer will be only satisfied, if the implemented solution is reliable, transparent, supportable, and reduces the total cost of ownership.
We call this the sustainability of a solution, which is the base for growth!
SAP developed the end-to-end application lifecycle management that allows administrating different landscape stacks. Is this applicable to partners? Yes it is! All areas of application management can be managed through SAP Solution Manager. However, this requires an integration of software solution partners with the backbone of the SAP Active Global Support organization via SAP Solution Manager.
The integration of a partner solution with SAP Enterprise Support involves two phases:
- Phase 1: Basic End-to-End Supportability and SAP Certification Enterprise Support Integration
- Phase 2: Application Lifecycle Management for Partner Solutions
The integration of the partner support processes and the technical integration for collaborative incident management and root cause analysis is the heart of the basic end-to-end supportability and will be
certified with the SAP Certification Enterprise Support integration.
How does the basic end-to-end supportability work?
By implementing the partner edition of SAP Solution Manager, the software partner has a reliable interface between SAP and the respective partner software solutions. The SAP remote connectivity architecture allows the secure connection to the customer solution landscape in order to perform root cause analysis or to deliver optimization services. This ability is not only crucial for SAP, but also for the partners.
The customer, partner, and SAP address incidents in a collaborative way. The process flow for the resolution of incidents is defined through the contractual relationship between the customer, SAP, and the partner. This means there are clear responsibilities for SAP and partners, handling Level 1 (L1), Level 2 (L2) and/or Level 3 (L3) Support.
SAP Service Marketplace is the single point of access for customers to report incidents. At all time, the status of the incident is made automatically transparent to all parties. By using SAP Solution Manager Diagnostics, SAP and the partners have the ability to analyze systematically and across components the root cause and provide corrective action for any incident in timely manner.
How does a partner achieve this certification?
You’ll find the details on the certification process on the partner portal
http://partner.sap.com/es-integration.
Once the technical integration and business/functional integration steps for support processes are completed, the following integration components will be validated by the Partner Global Support organization for the certification:
- Implementation of SAP Solution Manager, configuration of the software solution partner scenario, and usage
- Setup of remote access between SAP and the partner for joint customers;
- Definition of support tasks (first-, second-, and third-level support), support processes, and escalation procedures according to SAP Enterprise Support standards;
- Alignment with service-level agreements
- Adoption of the SAP standards for incident management and root cause analysis, as well as the support standards;
The certification is valid for two years. After two years, recertification is required. There is no fee for the certification.I
f you have questions, make sure to attend PKOM ’10 and visit our booth “
Enterprise Support Integration”.
