ORLANDO, Fla., May 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SAP AG today announced growing market adoption for the company's new support services offering, SAP(R) Enterprise Support, which has signed nearly 200 customers since its launch in February 2008. SAP Enterprise Support meets the evolving needs of customers by supporting a company's mission-critical business processes and heterogeneous software environment. The ongoing growth of SAP's robust product offerings and mass adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA) have challenged traditional support models. No longer are bug fixes and maintenance sufficient. SAP Enterprise Support provides companies with a holistic offering that helps to reduce the risk and maximize the value that customers receive from their IT investments. The announcement was made at the co-located events SAPPHIRE(R) 2008 Orlando, SAP's international customer conference, and the ASUG (America's SAP Users' Group) Annual Conference, both being held in Orlando, Florida, May 4-7.

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"Companies are adopting service-oriented architectures to run ERP and business software applications designed to enable greater business process flexibility," said Matt Healey, senior research analyst, IDC. "The convergence of SOA and flexible business process management calls for a higher level of support than has been typical in the past. Today, solution support must ensure coverage of mission-critical business process and a heterogeneous software environment. SAP Enterprise Support can fulfill these increased needs."

Evolving IT Landscapes Require Holistic Support Model

IT departments are under increased pressure to better meet and support the needs of the business. In particular, IT organizations are faced with the key challenge of minimizing system downtime and maintaining a stable core while implementing and managing differentiating composite applications, involving both SAP and non-SAP solutions. IT organizations that can efficiently manage a flexible infrastructure are better positioned to be a strategic partner to the business.

SAP Enterprise Support was launched earlier this year to address the needs of these evolving landscapes. It delivers support beyond a single element of the landscape in order to help customers operate all solutions vital to their business. SAP Enterprise Support addresses continuous innovation and investment protection so that customers can successfully deliver mission-critical business processes. The offering provides standardized and integrated solution lifecycle management and facilitates the implementation and adoption of enhancement packages, support packages and technical upgrade capabilities. In this way, it makes ongoing maintenance and upgrading much easier. An integrated quality process across all technology stacks and code bases helps to ensure support for the entire SAP platform and beyond.

"With SAP Enterprise Support and its holistic application and lifecycle management, we had the right support solution from the beginning," said S.R. Reddy, assistant vice president of IT, UTI Asset Management Company Limited. "This helped us to build up our software landscape based on best practices and defined standards to achieve successful solution operations at lower costs. The close collaboration with SAP makes it valuable for us."

SAP Enterprise Support Enabled by End-to-End Solution Operations

By facilitating end-to-end solution operations, SAP Enterprise Support also manages the business process flexibility resulting from a service-oriented IT strategy. The industry-leading standards, tools and processes that comprise end-to-end solution operations give customers the ability to manage change and integration across their entire business network -- all by addressing challenges with clearly defined interfaces to both service providers and standardized and integrated support processes. With end-to-end solution operations support, which can include non-SAP products, customers benefit from increased business process availability, performance, data consistency and transparency.

SAP Enterprise Support is delivered via specific components that are designed to address the increased needs of multifaceted systems -- from design of support to ongoing support and upgradability.

-- Mission-Critical Support -- Keeps core mission-critical applications running with continuous quality checks for technical risk analyses and continuous improvement, 24X7 access to SAP support advisory center with direct communications, leading-edge service-level agreements, and on-demand support integration to facilitate consistent collaboration among customers, partners and SAP. -- Global Support Backbone -- Utilizing the enterprise edition of the SAP(R) Solution Manager application management solution, customers have all methodology processes and tools for quality management and integration validation. SAP Solution Manager facilitates support for distributed systems with functionality covering all key aspects of solution deployment, operation and continued improvement. As a centralized, robust solution, SAP Solution Manager combines tools, content and direct access to SAP and partners to increase the reliability of solutions and lower total cost of ownership. -- Run SAP Methodology -- SAP's proven best-in-class operations methodology, Run SAP, is built upon SAP standards for solution operations, which help IT and business process experts harness their IT landscapes and better implement their SOA strategies. The new standards for solution operations are mapped out in the newest release of SAP Solution Manager. Via best practices, Run SAP structures and guides the implementation of these standards through a proven project management methodology.

"SAP Enterprise Support is a continuing demonstration of SAP's commitment to ensure success for each and every customer," said Uwe Hommel, executive vice president, SAP Active Global Support, SAP AG. "To achieve optimal business value out of an IT infrastructure, it is essential to be able to efficiently and thoroughly address the full end-to-end solution landscape. With SAP Enterprise Support, customers can rest assured they will receive expert support from solution build to implementation and ongoing operations -- for SAP and non-SAP solutions. As momentum in enterprise SOA continues to grow, SAP Enterprise Support is the best offering for customers looking to accelerate innovation with IT and enable differentiation to drive value to the business while reducing risk."

Run SAP Methodology Optimizes End-to-End Solutions Operations

To deliver on the promise of SOA, companies need to closely manage business processes and their integration along with software and system components. Run SAP is an operations methodology that was designed to complement SAP Enterprise Support. It enables companies to optimize the implementation and ongoing management of end-to-end solutions. SAP Services and SAP-certified partners offer a broad service portfolio to implement holistic end-to-end operations following the Run SAP methodology. The methodology helps customers past the go-live phase and focuses on application management, business process operations and administration. Its preconfigured operations approach bridges the gap between technical and functional components of an implementation and guides customers through solution assessment and scoping, defining operations, set-up of operations, handover to production, and operations and optimization of the system. Customers and partners can also enable their workforce with a specific education curriculum and certifications.

About SAP(R) Enterprise Support

SAP Enterprise Support is SAP's new holistic support offering for SAP customers. Available at 22 percent of license fees, SAP Enterprise Support joins SAP(R) MaxAttention(TM), and SAP(R) Safeguarding in the company's array of support offerings. For more information please visit http://www.sap.com/services/index.epx.

SAPPHIRE(R) 2008 Orlando and SAPPHIRE(R) 2008 Berlin

More than 15,000 customers, partners and technical experts are convening at SAPPHIRE 2008 to discover how SAP and its thriving partner ecosystem are delivering IT solutions that create value beyond the four walls of the enterprise, to create "business beyond boundaries." SAP's premier educational and networking event, SAPPHIRE is the one occasion where senior executives, business managers, and decision-makers can come together every year to explore how innovative business solutions foster long-term, profitable growth. SAPPHIRE(R) 2008 is being held in Orlando, Florida, May 4-7, and in Berlin, Germany, May 19-21, 2008. For more information, please visit http://www.sap.com/sapphire.

Based on the success of last year's events, SAP and the Americas' SAP Users' Group (ASUG) are co-locating their premier events in Orlando, where the 2008 ASUG Annual Conference takes place May 4-7.

About SAP

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software(*), offering applications and services that enable companies of all sizes and in more than 25 industries to become best-run businesses. With more than 47,800 customers (excludes customers from the acquisition of Business Objects) in over 120 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE, under the symbol "SAP." (For more information, visit http://www.sap.com/)

(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise resource planning and related applications.

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