In today’s economy there is an endless variety of business scenarios, which create many different demands on the performance of standard software in general. In addition many companies today use cloud and mobile applications, thereby extending their IT landscapes beyond their firewalls to collaborate with subsidiaries, partners, suppliers and customers.
SAP not only supports its customers in these areas by broadening its portfolio to on-demand and on-device solutions; we also put a special focus on the integration of these new offerings into existing landscapes, and to overcome the challenges of orchestrating hybrid landscapes along end-to-end business processes
Performance and Scalability are essential characteristics of large-scale enterprise software. Performance can be considered both from a system point of view, and a user point of view. While system administrators are interested in achieving required system throughput with a limited IT budget, the end users are seeking reasonable response time when interacting with software systems. Acceptable response times are of course related to the content of business processing.
Performance refers to the total effectiveness of a computer system, including throughput, individual response time, and availability. Programming for good performance thus means making conservative use of critical resources, keeping response time at a minimum, taking into consideration aspects of network communication, as well as ensuring the scalability of the software.
Scalability, in most general terms, means the degree to which a scenario, component or system can be expanded (and reduced) in size, volume, or number of users served and continue to function properly and predictably. In other words scalability refers to the predictable resource consumption of a software application under different system load, while the response time remains in the reasonable range.
For more information on Performance & Scalability please check the Key Topic “Performance and Scalability”.
Sizing
With proven scalability of software applications, SAP’s sizing process enables the transformation of business requirements into hardware requirements. The size of the hardware and database is influenced by both business aspects and technological aspects. This means that the number of users using the various application components and the data load they put on the network must be taken into account.
Determining the resources required by an application is of paramount importance to our customers. Therefore, development must make sure that there is a proper sizing procedure for their application. For sizing, the key performance indicators are CPU, disk, memory and network bandwidth. SAP provides the right tools how these key performance indicators can be determined.
With the help of SAP Standard Application Benchmarks results, statements can be made as to CPU and memory consumption of particular software components.
For more information on Performance & Scalability please check the Key Topic “Right-sizing Your Hardware”.
SAP Standard Application Benchmarks
SAP Standard Application Benchmarks reflect standard business scenarios and are used to measure all performance relevant parameters. Every SAP Standard Application Benchmark consists of a number of script files that simulate typical and popular transactions and workflows in a specific business scenario. During the benchmark run, all areas of an SAP system are tested, for example, CPU, memory, the I/O system, network load, functional errors, and system availability. In detail, benchmark key figures include database request times, wait times, CPU utilization, average dialog response time by a given number of benchmark users and the achieved throughput.
All certified Standard Application Benchmark results are published at SAP.com. Further information, for example about the installation procedures, the certification process, workshop materials, and the SAP Benchmark Council minutes, is available at service.sap.com/benchmark (SMP login required).
For more information on Performance & Scalability please check on SAP.com “Standard Application Benchmarks ”.
Join us to find helpful blogs, discussions and resources!