White Paper SAP Sizing Solution Based on Users and Workloads – Part 2

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Introduction:

In the continuation of my previous article, White Paper SAP Sizing Solution Based on Users and Workloads – Part 1 | SAP Blogs

I wanted to describe the  concept of SAPS Sizing Methodology, Classification of SAP users and Normalized SD user.

This will enable  for any beginner  to understand and wishing to prepare the Sizing Report

SAPS Sizing Methodology

In this document, SAPS calculation is taken based on only the number of users and workload.

SAPS calculation is applicable for SAP Business Suite applications and SAP NetWeaver 7.0 and higher running on any database except the HANA database.

Also, this article applies to medium to large-sized companies i.e. up to 3000 users and database sizes up to 3TB.

Classification of SAP users:

Based on the working hours, SAP users are classified into Low, Medium, and High users.

Low users: 

Users that spend less than two hours working in SAP (Top Management levels such as Executives, CFO, CIO, Vice-President, General Managers, etc)

Medium users: 

Users that spend around four hours in SAP (Middle executives level such as Manager, Dy. Manager, Sr. Engineer, Sr. Account Officer, etc)

High users:         

Users that spend more than four hours in SAP (Clerk, Supervisors, Junior Engineer, Junior Accounts officer, etc)

Based on my experience in various Implementation and Upgrade projects, the SAPS value is not influenced by the above-mentioned type of users. Hence SAPS value does not vary between High, Medium, and Low users.

Therefore, there is no point to enter several low users or medium users.

Instead, always enter the total number of named users after obtaining LULA (License agreement with SAP Account Manager) in High users in each respective module

Normalized SD users:

Different modules have their own weightage. There are many various modules in SAP R/3 or ECC systems.

These are

PP          Production Planning

MM         Materials Management

SD          Sales and Distribution

FICO       Finance and Controlling

HCM       Human Capital Management

QM         Quality Management

Classify the users who are involved in business transactions in each module. For example, if the number of users involved in Production Planning (PP) is 10, convert the number of PP users to SD users. Thus one PP user is equivalent to a 1.3SD user because, in the PP module, the number of Line items created per one PP transaction is more than the number of line items created in one SD transaction. Therefore, for ten PP users, the number of SD users will be 1.3*10 = 13SD users.

Similarly, one Human resource (HR) user equals 0.4SD user because, in the HR module, there is less number of line items created per one HR transaction than in one SD transaction. One Plant Maintenance (PM) user is equivalent to a 1.1SD user.

Hardware vendors do a benchmark on their hardware for SAP as per their methodology to see how many SD users can be supported. The number of users in each module is converted into several Normalized SD users (NSD) and the SAPS value can be obtained.

SAP QuickSizer tool takes care of the conversion of the number of users involved in the PP module to SD users.

However, different hardware vendors have their own formula for conversion of a number of users in each module into a number of Normalized SD user.

The next article, i.e. in Part 3, describes the SAP QuickSizer tool: To Obtain SAPS for several named users and SAPS value based on Workloads.

Conclusion:

No need to define  low users or medium users.

Always define  High users in each respective module

The next article, “White Paper SAP Sizing Solution Based on Users and Workloads – Part 3”, describes SAPS procedure for the number of named users and SAPS value based on workloads.

Reference:

https://www.sap.com/about/benchmark/sizing.html

http://service.sap.com/quicksizer   – For Sizing exercises,  the QuickSizer tool from SAP MarketPlace

Thanks for reading!

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Prasad Rao