We would like to deep dive into the Application Management Services (AMS) portion of the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) offering portfolio in this installment of the HEC Services blog. Application Management Services, or AMS, provides a holistic approach for managing application operations while providing agile adoption of innovative technologies & reducing time-to-value for HEC customers. In short, this is a way for customers to have SAP manage their entire solution in HEC creating a Software as a Service (SaaS) feel to the HEC experience.
You may recall from previous HEC blogs that as a general rule of thumb HEC subscription fees include up and to the database management in its monthly offering subscription fee (i.e. infrastructure, OS and HANA database management included). HEC without AMS offers the customer with a hosted solution that the customer needs to support from the application perspective. As a result, at go-live the customer needs to ramp-up the appropriate resources to support the application. This may be the requirement for some customers however others want an end to end solution.
With HEC AMS, the customer experiences a software delivery model in which the SAP AMS team ramps up its knowledge on the specifics of the customer’s implementation to take over the responsibilities of the end to end application. Starting with the review of design in customers Solution Manager and/or blueprint documents, technical specification documents, test plans, etc if Solution Manager isn’t implemented from documentation standpoint the AMS team secures the solution to be ready for support at maximum level of efficiency according to guaranteed support SLA’s. Tight integration with implementation and HEC operation teams will assure seamless execution of go live, mature phase and ongoing operations. With the AMS team on board the HEC customer has a well versed partner in day to day operations from both functional and technical aspects of the customer solution who is able to provide a support model that is unique to the customer.
In combination with the HEC Core offering this is a unique customer software consumption experience – software operated in the cloud and supported end to end with guaranteed SLA’s powered by SAP.
Why AMS?
If you wish to outsource part or all of your SAP Application solution support to enjoy stable operations and predictable TCO then AMS is the right fit for you. TCO is derived from the fact that SAP is able to take advantage of economies of scale and have resources allocated in a right sized fashion. Whereas you may pay support for 40 hours per week today when demand may not be there, with SAP AMS the resources are allocated based on hours worked.
What is the SAP Solution for AMS?
A set of services assembled from a service catalog that is tailored to the requirements of the customer and delivered out of remote delivery centers around the globe:
- Support of the customer’s key users based on industry standards, proven tools and first-hand SAP expertise.
- SLA based incident & problem management
- A Platform for Continuous improvement and innovation
- 24x7 SAP help desk & key user support,
- Around-the-clock monitoring, maintenance and safeguarding of your solution,
- Fixed monthly fee with no lock in periods
What are the benefits of AMS?
- Single Source, no overhead managing multiple vendors
- Pay as you go, with no lock in contracts
- Flatten & Optimize your Operational expenditures
- Water tight Service Level Agreements
- Access to the best SAP expertise
- No need to attract and retain human capital
- Reliability, Scalability and Strength that only SAP can provide
- Flexible & tailored for your business
SAP AMS is integrated into Service Marketplace and includes tight integration with SAP product support. For example, a support ticket that starts with AMS can be sent to the correct product queue seamlessly for software troubleshooting because the systems are integrated.
The Delivery Process
SAP Application Management works in compliance with ISAE 3402 which is documented in a Quality Assurance Report twice a year. In addition, AMS includes the following processes:
- Service Desk
- Incident Management
- Problem Management
- Change Management
- Service Request Fulfillment
- Event Management / Application Monitoring
- Service Level Management
- Perform Quality Assurance
- Transition (Customer Administration and Knowledge Ramp-Up)
SAP AMS follows a “follow the sun” integrated approach to provide 24/7 support depending on customer requirements for SLAs.
Next Steps – HEC AMS Assessment
The AMS assessment is typically integrated into the HEC assessment. SAP professionals will work with the customer to determine the HEC requirements, Onboarding and Migration and AMS requirements depending on the SAP solutions, technical landscape and support requirements.
