What does a VMS benchmark consist of ?

With regard to costs, the benchmark consists of all expenses that are necessary to get the SAP functionality working at the user location. In order to describe the scope completely, it is necessary to view it from various perspectives:

Included in that are expenses for:

• Hardware (for example, database servers and application servers for production, quality assurance, and testing)
• Infrastructure (for example, backup and archiving systems)
• Software (for example, SAP and database licenses, backup software, system management software)
• Personnel (from operational personnel through support, at various levels, and on to application management and the help desk)

However, expenses can occur in the most varying forms:

• Own expenses in the form of purchases, rents, or leasing (for example for the servers or the software)
• Service lump sums or service payments (for example, on the part of the outsourcer, for the operation of the hardware, including operating system and database)
• Services provided by external parties (for example, for additional work by an outsourcer, or for daily payment rates for external SAP specialists for the application)
• Personnel costs for the company's own personnel

You can subdivide the expenses that you want to look at into a variety of groupings. The VMS Adaptive TCO Workbench, which we use to carry out the measurement, allows you to break your expenses down however you want, in a flexible way.

VMS AdaptiveTCO Workbench

In addition, you do not have to look at everything. What if parts of the things mentioned above do not belong to your area of responsibility ? Maybe you don’t want to look at specific areas ? Maybe the General Help Desk: no, but First Level Application Level Support: yes ? Just “grey out” what you don't need - you can do that with the TCO Workbench, and the VMS Benchmark generates a fair comparison by ignoring those topics in the comparison values.

In addition to costs, use and quality are measured:

The VMS DataCollector software is used to measure use. As part of that, multiple technical and application-related parameters are recorded:

• Systems used, hardware, and software
• The use of the systems by the user in a tight time grid (per hour) and over a representative time period (for example 4-6 weeks, or longer).
• The type and use (time relationships, process sequences, transaction-orientation, with the creation of documents, information-oriented through the use of reports, …)
• The technical effort required for use (CPU, memory, disk, …)
• The effort and expense within the system, and for interfaces (batch-input, RFC, ALE; IDOCs, mail, fax, …)
• The degree of customizing and the use of SAP standard or customer enhancements
• Qualitative factors such as response times, system downtimes, availability

In summary: The VMS Benchmark comprises everything that is relevant to create a comprehensive, precise picture of the use and of the effort and expenses involved in a company’s SAP operation.