Month: June 2018

SAP versus Third-Party Support: The “Real” Total Cost of Ownership

June 28, 2018 | Karen Blazek | Director, Product Marketing

According to SAP, a customer must retain SAP-provided support to achieve the lowest long-term total cost of ownership (TCO). However, in our experience, the assumptions SAP uses to make this case don’t stand up to serious scrutiny.

Reducing Your SAP Total Cost of Ownership

SAP’s argument predicates on myths that third-party support customers:

  • Will face high on-premise reimplementation costs upon return to SAP in 1.5 – 3 years
  • Are subject to pay back maintenance fees
  • Can’t adapt applications to business changes without access to SAP patches and upgrades
  • Face higher reimplementation costs due to over-customization of the SAP environment

The truth is that Spinnaker Support’s SAP customers average 4.3 years with third-party support, and when they’ve returned to SAP, they paid no reimplementation costs or maintenance back fees. SAP ignores these facts to calculate a comparative TCO analysis, and you should challenge their assertions. SAP customers should see the full picture.

Calculating ERP Total Cost of Ownership

Let’s take a closer look at what customers need to measure when considering their ERP TCO. More easily measured are the direct costs which may include the planning and selection process, initial license fee, platform and infrastructure cost, project implementation cost, cutover and post-go-live support, upgrade costs, and continuous annual support costs. Difficult to classify and calculate accurately, but very highly important to consider when making purchasing decisions are indirect costs such as implementing future enhancements, operating costs (human labor/energy), change management (process changes/training), and security/ disaster recovery strategy.

For example, any type of computer software will include a variety of direct and indirect costs that affect the total cost of ownership. The hardware, operating system, supporting software, installation, training, repairs, maintenance, upgrades, and technical support associated with the ERP software package are all a part of the purchase price.

Another great example is on-premise applications purchases that involve large upfront capital costs with incremental increases as companies add users and modules. Added to the upfront costs are annual support fees, which are typically 20-25% of the total value of the software. As the number and cost of user licenses and modules increase and are steadily increased by the software vendors, so does the total cost of ownerships. With the substantial annual support costs, companies may pay double their software spend every four to five years.

It is vitally important to take all costs, both direct and indirect, into account when justifying a new ERP system or a migration to cloud services, and balance them against your ROI. If, for example, your landscape is highly customized, an on-premise solution may be more cost-effective than migrating to a cloud solution. However, it’s the long-term cost associated with annual support that is often not accounted for up front.

SAP Support TCO:  Vendor vs Spinnaker Support

Spinnaker Support will always offer a lower ongoing support TCO than SAP-provided support. As depicted in the chart below, Spinnaker Support customers, most of whom stay an average of 4 – 5 years, save an average of 62% in support costs. Cutting SAP support fees by more than half has a direct impact on TCO. In addition, Spinnaker Support customers have access to a dedicated team of engineers who deliver tailored fixes, rather than one-size-fits-all patches. This ensures high-level performance through changes in business conditions and surrounding technology environment, indirectly influencing TCO.

Spinnaker Support’s ‘Truth about Third-Party Support TCO’ has been proven by both dramatic cost savings and by our customer references who are 98.7% satisfied. We offer the lowest cost of ownership through more personalized, responsive support, enhanced security protection, support for integration points and customizations, and full-service technical advisory teams to enable customers to plan out and progress their future roadmap.

Conclusion

The future is bright for SAP customers, with major product and technology advancements on the horizon. Follow the lead of hundreds of SAP customers and investigate an alternate path to arrive at your future SAP landscape. If you are in discussions with SAP regarding canceling your support, we can help you counter their misleading claims and inaccurate representation of their support TCO. Don’t get talked into trading away your future lisence credits for lower on-premise support costs or for cloud subscription futures. Save your bargaining chips for when you are ready to re-engage with SAP for cloud migration.

Learn more about the myths surrounding dropping SAP-provided support – don’t get locked into another year of overpriced and underdelivered SAP-provided support.

7 Valuable Tips For Upgrading Your Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is nearing the end of its extended service period. If you are still using 2008 or 2008 R2, it’s time to get off now. Or maybe you have 2012 or 2014, but want to take advantage of the most up to date processes and security features. It can be a daunting task to think about upgrading your SQL servers. There are so many pieces to juggle. If you’ve been putting it off, I don’t blame you. But with the speed of innovation, it’s important to stay up to date and ahead of trends. So today we’re talking about some things to keep in mind when you upgrade your SQL Server.

Check Compatibility – If you are currently running SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012 (11.x), SQL Server 2014 (12.x), or SQL Server 2016 (13.x) then you can upgrade directly to SQL Server 2017, assuming the same platform specifications. If you have 2005, then you will need to migrate first. Read more about migration here.

Use Microsoft Data Migration Assistant – It’s important to read about which features will change from your current version to understand potential issues from depreciated or new features. This tool replaces the Upgrade Advisor from previous versions. It analyzes your environments for potential compatibility issues and allows you to resolve them before the upgrades. We recommend running the tool and correcting any issues before proceeding with upgrading. The more kinks you can work out ahead of time, the smoother your upgrade will go.

If you’re ready to upgrade, and you’ve determined compatibility, then it’s time for a plan. To make the process smoother and more efficient, try strategizing like you would any other IT project.

Don’t Rush – Plan a generous timeline so that you can adequately prepare your various instances appropriately. It takes time to assess your database system, devise and implement a plan, and identify and resolve issues along the way. If you try to rush, you could end up losing time with lengthy rollbacks or other frustrating setbacks.

Assess Your Environment – Take an inventory of your SQL instances to prepare for the upgrade. Make notes of what types of instances you have and where they are housed. Your Analysis Services will have different needs than your Database Engine. Gather the appropriate documentation for your particular services before you get started. Identify where your mission-critical workloads are and where your development and testing environments are.

Gather Validation Data – You want to be sure your data if migrated accurately. Prepare a selection of data and report samples to use for post upgrade validation. If you can, collect performance measurements as well.

Make A Plan – Write out a plan that you will follow throughout the process. This will keep you on track and make sure nothing is missed. There are methods of upgrade, and you will want to assess each instance to determine how it should be treated.

  • In-Place Upgrades are good for development and testing environments without high availability. This process creates a new version directly on top of your existing version. The binary data and metadata is compatible, so your data doesn’t have to be migrated or repopulated, it’s automatically there. This process is faster and easier, but it has some drawbacks. The database will have some downtime, and you really don’t want to have to rollback if you can help it. We don’t recommend in-place for mission-critical workloads.
  • Side-by-Side Upgrades take a bit more of your time, but allow for testing and validation at every step, with easy rollbacks if a problem is detected. For this process, a new instance is created separate from the original instance. This can be done on the same hardware, or on a different machine. You will need to manually transfer the data and objects to your new version, so it can be more time consuming, but the continuity and peace of mind are worth it. We recommend side-by-side for most production databases since it minimizes risk and downtime.
  • Assess your instances from your inventory list and determine which upgrade method to use for each. Write out the strategy and order of upgrade so that you are organized and don’t miss stuff.

Try Not to Stress – This isn’t like upgrading your windows version. There are a lot of complexities in the SQL Servers, and you will probably hit some bumps in the road. If you take it step by step with an appropriate time horizon, you don’t need to stress about it. Finish your checklist, and celebrate.

2018 Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey Results

June 19, 2018 | Karen Blazek | Director, Product Marketing

Spinnaker Support recently completed our 2018 annual customer satisfaction survey, covering the 2017 fiscal year. We couldn’t be prouder to announce a record 98.7% overall customer satisfaction score. We sincerely appreciate the more than 500 customer responses. We have continued to steadily increase our satisfaction rating by delivering industry-best Oracle and SAP support – as determined by our loyal customer base.

High Marks Across the Board from our Customer Satisfaction Survey Results

  • Quality of Service Provided – 98.6%
  • Issue Response Time – 98.9%
  • Technical and Functional Knowledge – 99.5%
  • Ability to Understand Customer’s Unique Environment – 100%
  • Follow-up and Resolution Times – 100%

We strive to meet all our service level agreements, but equally important is our unprecedented ownership of each issue logged and timeliness to resolution of those issues. We provide the heavy lifting, so our customers can focus on more strategic and transformational initiatives. Every Spinnaker Support customer gets a dedicated Account Support Lead (ASL), selected exclusively for an individual customer. After thorough due diligence, a team of named engineers and archivists are picked for each account, based on the customer’s application environment, technology stack, ticket history, geographic footprint, language requirements, IT staff capabilities, and planned IT roadmap. Our ‘Service First’ approach drives success and proves effective and cost-efficient, as acknowledged by our customers’ satisfaction scores.

Customer and Market Trends

Future Plans for ERP Solution – % of Spinnaker Support Respondents

Spinnaker Support’s customers have varying plans for the future, as evidenced in the chart above. Regardless of your company’s future application plans, Spinnaker Support is a proven, preferred alternative in the SAP and Oracle space.  We support customers on versions that the vendor will no longer support and on the very latest available application and technologies. We provide a world-class team of experts that address all layers of your ERP technology footprint, whether an application, database, middleware, server, or integration point.

A rising number of our third-party support customers are investing in our unique blend of additional services. Spinnaker Support remains the lone third-party support provider to deliver managed services and consulting capabilities. More than one-third of our clients have leveraged at least two of our three primary service offerings.

Our Dedication to Quality: ISO 9001:2015 & ISO/IEC 27001:2013 Certifications

Since inception in 2008, Spinnaker Support has consistently delivered service the right way. Spinnaker Support is the only third-party SAP and Oracle support provider to achieve both ISO 9001:2015 and ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certifications. The ISO 9001:2015 highlights our firm commitment to quality management principles and demonstrates Spinnaker Support’s commitment to provide consistent support processes under a comprehensive quality management system. To help maintain data security effectively, we earned ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification earlier this year. The ISO/IEC 27001:2013 drives a systematic approach for managing sensitive company information so that it remains secure within our organization’s Information Security Management System (ISMS).

The Voice of Our Customers – Customer Comments

“The customer’s perception is your reality!”  Kate Zabriskie

“I have had nothing but positive experiences from Spinnaker Support. Every ticket, whether an issue question, or request for support, has been addressed very quickly. The business & technical knowledge of the Spinnaker Support team is superb and greatly complements our internal staff.”

“Everyone with whom I have had contact has been excellent. The Spinnaker Support team is consistently exemplary, in their attitude, knowledge, and timeliness. They give me confidence that I made the correct decision to rely upon Spinnaker Support for my Oracle and IBM needs.”

“The close relationship we have with our Account Support Lead (ASL) is a comfort and, in general, our IT team is happier than ever with the quality of SAP support.”

Conclusion

Spinnaker Support focuses the highest percentage of its resources and investments to improve and sustain service excellence, as validated by the collective voices of our customers. We define service excellence as offering the most valuable services, delivered by elite engineers, and achieving best-in-class customer satisfaction, retention, and willingness to recommend.

SAPPHIRE NOW 2018 Observations

June 8, 2018 | Shawn du Plessis | Vice President, Global SAP Support Services

Kicking off the week of SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando, Bill McDermott, SAP CEO, took the stage with his usual high-energy, motivational presentation. His main purpose may have been just to get the crowd pumped up and excited, but day one’s keynote was missing the big bang factor of recent years. However, some of the customers in the room did gain a clearer idea of SAP product direction.

Roadmap for next-generation SAP Intelligent Suite:

C/4HANA Announcement

SAP’s biggest announcement was the release of C/4HANA. SAP is determined to grow their CRM market share and appears to be taking Salesforce head-on with heavy investment in this area. The new SAP CRM will be promoted as a relationship builder between the customer and the business. The CRM product is a new hybrid CRM system that integrates functionality gained from acquisitions such as Hybris, Gigya, Callidus Cloud, and CoreSystems. SAP is banking on competitive differentiation from their “one customer view,” where McDermott states that CRM systems must most move away from a 360-degree view of sales automation and focus on the 360-degree view of the actual customer.

The SAP Phrase of the Day

In SAP’s attempt to lighten the mood of the audience, it was mentioned several times during the rollout of C/4HANA, “Don’t be creepy.” This statement is intended to address concerns related to data privacy and sharing of personal and sensitive data. All software vendors must focus on retaining or regaining customer trust after the recent findings of how FaceBook and Google use such data.

Takeaways

It is clear at this show that the innovation plans of many SAP customers are aligned with SAP’s long-term product vision. However, the customer’s immediate plans and business needs aren’t necessarily being met.

SAP customers have expressed frustration with SAP-provided support, sharing with us several major pain points.

  • SAP support services have been downgraded or stripped away yet annual maintenance fees have steadily increased.
  • Self-support tools have replaced people as the primary means for investigating and resolving application issues. When a person is eventually accessed, their expertise level is much shallower than ever before, and they are often unfamiliar with the customer’s application and technology stack environment.
  • Some SAP customers feel trapped in SAP’s product roadmap and are looking for freedom to choose alternate or hybrid paths of innovation – or at least not be pushed to premature cloud and next-generation solutions. They have simply not been able or willing to keep up with the constant push by SAP to upgrade, migrate, and innovate now.

Conclusion

Nothing we have seen from SAP at SAPPHIRE this week sufficiently remedies the pain points described above and they will continue to act as primary drivers of third-party SAP support growth. Our customers get superior service from engineers with deep SAP expertise for a fraction of the cost. Their applications remain high-performing, secure, and interoperable. They redirect the savings to help fund strategic and transformational initiatives. In a nutshell, we enable them to retake control of their application roadmap.  Learn more about our SAP support services.