Press Release
VMS Study Demonstrates the Advantages of Virtualizing SAP System Environments
Heidelberg, 2008/10/01 – Changing from in-house to dynamic environment increases quality and cuts operating costs
VMS, the leading SAP Benchmarking firm, has released the results of a study entitled “Dynamic Services for SAP”. The study, which was commissioned by T-Systems, looks at a comparison of various SAP operating forms on the value creation of a virtualized SAP operation, which T-Systems offers under the name “Dynamic Services”. Using dynamic services, SAP systems no longer run on dedicated servers, but rather use flexible resources of a bundled server pool. In that way, customers can profit from a timely, flexible adaptation of their system landscape, within the context of changed business conditions.
“The study confirms our strategy of virtualizing our IT infrastructure, and offering it as freely-scalable services”, says Olaf Heyden, IT manager at T-Systems. He continues, “A cost savings of up to 33 percent in comparison with the classical outsourcing set-up speaks for itself. Our customers have also recognized that. Approximately 200 companies who run SAP use our dynamic services, and that trend is increasing”.
As the basis of the study, VMS carried out benchmarks of the SAP environment of 12 companies, with a total of 25 SAP system lines. Of those, four ran their system in the classical “in-house” manner, some used outsourcing in the form of a dedicated server environment, and some used outsourcing in the dynamic (virtualized) operating environment of T-systems. All the companies come from the upper and mid-sized base of companies in Germany, and represent various differing industries. In the study, the individual systems were thoroughly analyzed and compared with the collected data of over 1,600 SAP landscapes that have been measured by VMS, and the divergence between them and best practices was ascertained.
“The results of the study confirm our assumptions to a high degree”, said Ralph Treitz, the managing director at VMS. “The industrialization of the SAP-operation in the form of a virtualized environment is, both from an economic, as well as a technical point of view, the model of the future”.
The study confirms that virtualization provides better results with respect to the promised quality, performance, and price, compared with other operating forms. The advantages of dedicated outsourcing with respect to the classical in-house operation are expanded on and refined by an industrial operating model. The operation can be offered based on reduced expenses for IT. Virtualization continuously allows for more performance to be made available, so that the often observed oversizing of the hardware, which is seen in traditional outsourcing, can be avoided.
Porting to a virtualized environment on average saves approximately 10 percent of the costs compared to in-house operation, and compared to outsourcing in a dedicated environment. However, the range of the observed costs for the same performance is quite wide, so that in specific cases, savings potentials of up to 33 percent are possible, when a company moves to “dynamic services”.
“In order to realize the entire range of those advantages, it is important to apply the flexibility not only on the technical side”, said Treitz. “Only when the performance agreement allows a variable, on-time set-up of the SAP system, can the highest degree of optimization be achieved. And only in that way will dynamic solutions come from dynamic systems”.
Click here for downloading the study:
About VMS
VMS has been optimizing SAP landscapes since 2002. VMS scans SAP installations from the process-level to the transaction-level and, partnering with CIOs, and identifies strengths and weaknesses. In doing this, VMS works with an integrated concept that comprises the IT infrastructure and the IT and business processes. VMS’ methods are “minimally invasive”, because the work puts only a minimal strain on the client’s resources. VMS offers the collected experience and data from about 2,100 SAP systems that it has measured, and that enables VMS to provide action-oriented advice on optimization and cost management. The structure and dynamics of the IT environment are then reproduced in a final VMS Report, which is used as the navigation system of the SAP landscape.