The consulting approach is more important today than ever

In the non-SAP environment, concepts such as DevOps, continuous integration and continuous delivery have become standard. Developers as well as infrastructure and system administrators work hand in hand to continuously offer new and high-quality solutions for a better user experience and user satisfaction. People are no longer satisfied with individual products, but expect more, especially in terms of convenience and usability, individual support and performance when linking and interacting with other products. In view of the wide range of digitalization measures and innovations in advanced technologies, SAP Basis must also meet these requirements today. 

The motto for companies was often: "If you don't hear anything from SAP Basis, the requirement is fulfilled." But that is no longer enough. Because IT, which used to be the driving force and trendsetter, has now become the driven force of the specialist departments and the diverse customer requirements. Systems have been set up and expanded, but little has been optimized. Lift-and-shift sounds comfortable, and in fact the systems are often adopted one-to-one in outsourcing. Patches and upgrades are implemented when absolutely necessary, but often as late as possible and usually only under pressure from the specialist departments with regard to new application functionalities and not on the recommendation of the outsourcer. At the end of the month, there is then a report on the status of the systems - or they simply wait until the user calls to report that there are problems. 

If you compare this situation with the daily technological environment of users and customers, an immense gap becomes apparent. At the same time, the employees responsible are confronted with constantly increasing complexity. Quick upgrades and patches are a thing of the past - today, the impact on business activities is high and implementation is complex. In addition, dependencies are becoming greater and release cycles shorter - it's easy to lose track. Security aspects, peripheral systems, interfaces, AI and the connection to IoT solutions are just some of the new topics that SAP Basis employees also have to take into account. This is hardly feasible for one employee alone or even for a compact SAP Basis team. 

In order to do justice to this problem, the diverse topics and the demand for innovation and digitalization, SAP Basis needs more than an outsourcing construct today. After all, a system based purely on operation and licenses no longer meets complex customer requirements. Cloud providers such as Azure, AWS and Google may take over the operation of the hardware, but when it comes to driving SAP Basis innovation, they do not provide any input. This is why individual consulting with a view to digitalization and innovation - and therefore also service - is more important than ever.

Due to its complexity and diversity, a service provider not only advises on lifecycle issues, but also on the optimization of architecture, infrastructure, security and innovation - on an ongoing basis. They focus directly on the needs of their customers and offer a high level of individual support. Specifically, for example, maintenance plans are drawn up to ensure that the systems are kept up to date with the latest releases every year. Due to cyber threats, it is extremely important to identify vulnerabilities as quickly as possible and secure them with patches.

Due to the complexity of the matter, routine is important; the entire process should be standardized and automated whenever possible - and preferably by means of automated tests. In addition, incidents should be evaluated and projects launched that bring sustainable and automated improvements and thus also provide ideas for digitalization planning and innovation. This also includes regular housekeeping to ensure that the systems always run with high performance and stability and that neither technical debt is accumulated nor innovations are delayed. 

Visibility of the systems provides control: 24/7 monitoring and real-time alerts enable rapid responses. Monitoring tools are equipped with AI so that anomalies can be detected more quickly and reported early or even identified proactively. Some of these monitoring tools, such as Avantra, also support lifecycle automation.
tasks and thus promote reliability and scaling. 

The SAP basis is therefore not invisible. You can catch up, you can do more
and, above all, you can achieve more. Take the next step too.