Applications on Demand case studies: SAP

Small enterprise - publishing company

• Challenge: A medium-sized publisher had been running their SAP systems in-house for about 4 years. The CIO was having an issue with his Basis support team of 4 people. His lead Basis person had just announced that he was leaving the firm and the CIO feared that another Basis person would be leaving the firm within a year. Naturally, the CIO was concerned about supporting an SAP system 24x7 with such a small team.

• Solution: IBM proposed an SAP OnSite hosting model to support the SAP Basis and database layers via remote management. This support model helped the client lower his support costs by 15% and provided for a consistent 24x7 monitoring of the system.

• Results: The CIO was able to redeploy one Basis person to work closely with the business community on functional issues. The second Basis person, who was originally a DBA, was re-assigned to a new technical project. The remaining 2 Basis employees left the company as they had planned. The CIO lowered his costs, provides 24x7 support, reassigned resources to more critical tasks, and eliminate the need to recruit and promote SAP Basis personnel.

Small enterprise - oil refiner

• Challenge: A small oil refiner had begun the implementation of SAP to replace legacy systems. To begin, the CIO performed an audit of his current IT processing capabilities. He determined the company didn't have adequate data center capabilities to meet SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) compliance requirements. The CIO was also concerned about implementing state-of-the-art security and monitoring systems for his small SAP implementation.
• Solution: The customer chose to host with IBM using the Applications on Demand^TM Full Service option.
• Result: The CIO was able to focus his team's attention on the functional aspects of SAP, save costs and leverage IBM's state-of-the-art hosting environment.

Large enterprise #1

• Challenge: Large Enterprise with SAP installed for over 5 years on a global scale.  They had SAP R/3 and BW deployed and were in need of a systems upgrade and technology refresh of their systems architecture. Additionally, they were interested in implementing CRM and Enterprise Portals, but lacked the internal expertise to manage these applications. Another concern was their aging internal data center which posed increasing audit concerns as a result of SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) compliance requirements.
• Solution:    IBM provided a transition and upgrade of the SAP R/3 and BW environments (provided by Applications on Demand Professional Services), as well as a new installation of CRM and EP into an IBM Full-Service hosting model.  The cost of the hardware was amortized over the life of the contract and the solution was deployed in a SAS 70 Type II data center. 
• Result: The client now has immediate access to highly skilled SAP specialists who are proficient in the latest release of the SAP Business Suite of software. IBM was also able to provide a low-cost, yet effective Disaster Recovery solution, which is something the client was lacking previously. 

Large enterprise #2

• Challenge: The company had SAP R/3 installed for almost three years including all the core modules within the ERP software, as well as Ariba.  They had recently upgraded to the most current version of R/3 and everything was working.  Based on their current IT strategy to maintain best-of-breed technology, they were looking to deploy a new data warehouse solution for analytical reporting and were leaning towards SAP’s BW.  Their Ariba system was a legacy application that they had no plans to change.  Despite these new IT initiatives, they were in a budget crisis and needed to cut costs and reduce IT staff.  They had evaluated several hosting providers before selecting IBM.
• Solution: The customer was able to keep their best-of-breed approach for their selected software applications by taking advantage of IBM's expertise in managing these core applications. IBM included a transition of the existing SAP R/3 and Ariba systems to an IBM Full-Service delivery model. A new installation of SAP BW was deployed in the same IBM-managed data center as R/3 and Ariba. 

• Result:  The client was able to reduce cost and maintain their approach for best-of-breed technology.