External Support for SAP - Open Discussion

[Former Member]

Hi All,

Lately I have discovered that there are some companys in the market that offer to change the official Maintenance Support from SAP to an external support for the SAP products (ERP, BW ..) Even they offer the same service for the database managers (Oracle, DB2 ...). Honestly I've never heard about it till now.

We can say that is like "Detach" SAP from SAP so at the moment that you go to this way you don't have maintenance support from SAP anymore and you will deal your maintenance with the other company. They should solve all your issue instead of SAP or Oracle, IBM ..

From the finance point of view you can save money with this approach because this companies offers prices obviously lower than the official vendors,

But to be honest I don't care about the finance component, I'm more courious about how to work with this model from the SAP System Administrator point of view.

Please feel free to share all the thoughts and, of course, your experiences in this kinf of models. As you can see I have not mentioned the names of these companies to avoid any commercial discussion by both sides so please try to focus in technical discussions.

Kind Regards

Jose

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Jose,

My thoughts...

There is undoubtedly some differences in the offerings of each of these external maintenance providers however I think the key to understanding the impact of moving to such a model lies with the common denominator; that is, all of these external support providers are not SAP.

By this I am not trying state the obvious but highlight the fact that many ongoing and future requirements demand SAP’s involvement should the customer wish to remain ‘SAP standard’.
For example, customers using an external provider will not be able to access the following:

- SAP Notes

- SAP Support Packs

- SAP Enhancement Packs

- version updates / new releases

It is highly likely that the external providers will have their own versions of the above, but they will not be SAP standard and it will make life very difficult/costly should the customer ever wish to move away from that provider.  It is also worthwhile pointing out that any non-SAP database will not be as anywhere near as extensive as the SAP Note database (fortunately or not, depending on your point of view).

From a day-to-day system admin perspective, the impact will depend on the offerings of the external provider.  Will hey have an EarlyWatch Alert equivalent and how does that work?  What are the backend connectivity requirements? Etc. The actual day-to-day operations, however, should remain unchanged.

Of course, for customers wishing to keep their systems as-is without a strategy to chase future technologies, I can see the use of an external provider as a worthwhile option.

Cheers,

Gregg

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Many Thanks for your feedback.

Someone has any experience with this model?

[former_member197428 · Accepted solution]

Hi Gregg,

The small   IT ERP service providers   will provide these services.  Since SAP partnership requires huge and continuous  investments, small companies may not able to invest.

In this scenario Customer will procure SAP with required software like 

SAP Notes

- SAP Support Packs

- SAP Enhancement Packs

- version updates / new releases

and service providers  would provide consulting, implementation, support and training services to the  customer.  They also have very  good practices  skilled resources and integration capability to provide the required services.

Most of the companies have very good onsite-offshore models to deliver cost effective solutions.

-Krishna

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

These companies can only make sure that the customer system system keeps going. They fix problems if they arise. They generally don`t provide any service that can help to improve performance, security or reduce costs. When engaged in these discussion with a customer, it is important to stress the features offered by Enterprise support and make sure the customer uses them. The services offered by ES cannot be matched by the offering of third party maintenance provider as far as I am aware