Gartner analyst Derek Prior has recently published a research note entitled Give Your SAP Basis Operations Team the Automation Tools That They Need (G00275473). In the report, he makes the case that SAP landscapes have grown in size and complexity. As a result, SAP Basis operations teams need to leverage automation tools to reduce the workload, reduce costs and improve reliability. One of the major challenges is the fact that, generally, SAP Basis operations teams don’t have the budget for these automation tools. So, they need to develop a business case to justify investment in tools that will provide a positive return on investment (ROI) in the form of reduced software and/or operational costs.

The analyst discusses six different types of automation benefits, including: Avoid Downtime, Minimize Downtime Impact, Maintain Performance in SLA, Time Saving, Infrastructure Saving, etc. He also calls out two classes of SAP Basis operations activities—repetitive/recurring and SAP project based. The report has an extensive table (Table 1) that lists out frequent repetitive activities, the typical approach used by organizations today, the SAP automation tool that would apply, if any, leading 3^rd party tool vendors, and the main automation benefit. For several of the listed activities, such as Database Backups, OS File and Storage Monitoring, High Availability Cluster and DR System Monitoring, and others, the SAP automation tool is SAP Solution Manager.

SOURCE: blogs.flexerasoftware.com