However, by properly defining delivery service level agreements and change management procedures through the integration of management and operational tools, you can optimize your remote SAP services mechanism to change overall productivity dramatically. In fact, many tools (both SAP and non-SAP) can assist in optimizing your operational services.

In this article, I will discuss several tools that help your organization drive SAP initiatives via an offsite delivery model. These tools include the central system administration (CSA) and central system monitoring in SAP Solution Manager as well as non-SAP work productivity tools, such as VersionOne and Microsoft Project. Because these tools provide operational administration framework and standards, using them can provide insight and reporting into the activities that your SAP offsite delivery mechanism is performing.

Yosh Eisbart of NIMBL Consulting

Solution Manager's Central System Administration Overview

In short, CSA is a central repository for all SAP NetWeaver administration activities CSA is accessed via the Solution Overview within your given SAP Solution Landscape. To get to CSA, you first must use the transaction SOLUTION_MANAGER (or DSWP) and then select (double click) the landscape you would like to work with. You next select the Solution Monitoring tab then System Monitoring/Administration tab. The icon with a notepad and a plus sign represents a system with open tasks to be completed. In Figure 1 below, you are able to see one of the specific CSA tasks "Jobs: Checking Background Jobs" that is predelivered with out-of-the-box SAP tasks. As you can see, within this task lies a whole host of both execution and reporting capabilities. This example below is merely one task in a multitude of both standard SAP delivered and potential custom created possibilities.

Figure 1: A simple CSA example... Job Scheduling (SM37)

CSA documents all the tasks that your SAP NetWeaver team should be performing on a regular basis, such as checking background jobs, short dumps, or client-specific tasks such as custom interface execution. CSA allows you to see if the activities have been performed and when they were executed (date/time). In addition, you can add administrator notes that allow your SAP NetWeaver administrators to document their activities and findings.

If you are using an offsite delivery mechanism to support your SAP NetWeaver platform, you must implement CSA. While not an SAP mandated requirement, it is definitely good SAP operational practice. Leveraging CSA as a "best practice" provides you both visibility into your offsite delivery team's activities as well as ensuring that greater accountability is expected. These clearly expectations as defined as Service Level Agreements and measureable metrics help provide the proper framework and working relationship with your offsite delivery provider. By defining and agreeing upon SLA's, cost and consequences are defined for the benefit of both customer and vendor. Table 1 shows the main benefits of using CSA.

Table 1: Benefits of using CSA for offsite delivery

Solution Manager's Central System Monitoring Overview

Figure 2 shows another SAP Solution Manager tool that allows your organization to better understand the health of your systems is central system monitoring (CSM). Use transaction RZ20 to access CSM or you can use SAP NetWeaver Administrator, if configured.

Figure 2: CSM View

CSM provides operational system information that is crucial to the effectiveness of your overall SAP environment. Real-world examples include:

• Use CSM to proactively monitor when a user account is locked. Notify end users before they contact you.

• Monitor the available disk space on the file system, specifically the disk available for database growth

• Using the latest Computing Center Management System (CCMS) agents available, you can monitor Web services and Web applications. The Java landscape is no longer a black box.

By using central system monitoring, you can control all the monitoring, corresponding configuration, and setup via a central location.

CSM is a holistic CCMS, which means that instead of performing CCMS activities on each of your organization's respective environments (by landscape or by product), CSM acts as the central hub with visibility to all CCMS activities. CSM provides your SAP NetWeaver team valuable connectivity, availability (are all the systems up and running?), and quality (are users able to access these systems?) metrics.

Based on how you configure CSM, you can use a number of alerting mechanisms for proactive information gathering and resolution. The standard SAP system offers many alert monitoring sets. The three types of agents CSM uses are:

• CCMS4X: Agent used for the ABAP system
• CCMSR: Agent used for Java or Java+ABAP systems
• CCMSPING: Agent used for availability monitoring

Based on the alert settings configured, your organization can see vital statistics on your landscape. Examples include security oversight, disk space, and J2EE components.

Security

With CSM, you can use the CCMS agents to monitor cross-application system logs focused on security events. If a user account gets locked, the system writes an entry to the system log (transaction SM21). If you use a monitoring agent for the system log, it picks up all activity in real time, which can trigger an email alert. The recipient of the alert could be whomever your organization deems necessary - for example, a security administration distribution list could be alerted for immediately resolve the problem. This is a proactive tool to monitor potential system attacks if several user accounts get locked at the same time.

Disk Space

Disk space is valuable, especially concerning the space allocated to SAP system transaction logs. In fact, overloaded transaction log can prove to be critical. If a transaction log logical disk fills up, transactions within the SAP system come to a grinding halt and slow down your business.

By proactively configuring trigger alerts focused on monitoring disk space, the system can send out automated alerts to the proper SAP NetWeaver Basis administration team members (or distribution list). These alerts act as a mechanism merely to identify issues. It is the responsibility of your appropriate SAP operational team members to follow through with task resolution.

CCMS Agents

Several standard CCMS agents are available with the standard CSM. Whether employing real-time or batch interface programs, it is important to know if the sending and receiving systems are both available. Many organizations have sophisticated customer and vendor Web-based applications that are critical to running their business. Failure to have any part of the interface work properly could affect the business. CCMS agents provide insight into where issues exist, so you can redesign the interface to eliminate future issues.

Manpower Delivery Activity

To ensure that your offsite delivery mechanism is performing to its highest potential, an organization should employ a method to manage and track service delivery and manpower effort. (This philosophy holds true regardless of whether an organization is working with an offsite model or handling all the work effort internally.) This manpower activity effort is enhanced greatly with work management tools. Formal tools to document, track, and assign responsibility are crucial to the successful delivery of SAP implementation and operational deliverables. Specific examples include leveraging Microsoft Project for capturing deliverable timelines; utilizing Solution Manager to capture deliverable status updates; and working with manpower resource balancing tools such as Version One to maintain reasonable and manageable work efforts.

Table 2 lists several leading tools which have proven to be very effective when managing SAP offsite efforts.

Table 2:  Tools to help manage your work effort

Yosh Eisbart is an SAP veteran with more than 15 years of experience. He has been involved in global SAP implementations since the days of SAP R/2. Yosh has been instrumental in the architecture, design, rollout, and support of global delivery centers and centers of excellence (COE). Furthermore, Yosh has also played the role of integration manager driving COE activity and production support optimization. For more information around this subject - please contact Yosh via email at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or look for his book "Outsourcing SAP Operations" (SAP Press).

About NIMBL: NIMBL is a specialized SAP consulting boutique. Our senior level SAP consultants provide expert level SAP technical and functional services aimed at maximizing our clients SAP investment. Whether infrastructure (Netweaver, Solution Manager, optimization, etc.), custom development (ABAP, PI/XI, J2EE/Portal, etc.), senior level SAP project management, or simply strategic SAP resourcing - NIMBL is a proven partner capable of making your initiative run more smoothly and more cost effective. For more information - please visit Nimbl at www.benimbl.com.