ISG to Release Report on Innovative SAP Service Partners Helping Enterprises Maximize Benefits of SAP S4/HANA

Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a leading global technology research and advisory firm, has launched a research study examining the large and growing ecosystem of SAP partner companies that help enterprises deliver the best results from the SAP S/4HANA enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

The study results will be published in a comprehensive ISG Provider Lens report, called SAP HANA Ecosystem Services 2021, scheduled to be released in August. The report will cover providers of several types of SAP-related services for enterprises, including implementation of SAP S/4HANA, managed services for S/4HANA and legacy SAP ERP, support services for SAP cloud deployments and application development and integration on SAP Cloud Platform.

Enterprise buyers will be able to use information from the report to evaluate their current vendor relationships, potential new engagements and available offerings, while ISG advisors use the information to recommend providers to the firm’s buy-side clients.

Enterprises rely on the vast ecosystem of SAP partners to achieve superior application performance, including security, availability and stability. Innovative service providers are now using intelligent automation for functions such as incident prediction and troubleshooting, helping companies scale up SAP operations and lower support costs.

“SAP has more than 21,000 partner companies, including many that are applying new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to support SAP S/4HANA,” said Jan Erik Aase, partner and global leader, ISG Provider Lens Research. “Our study will offer an in-depth look at SAP service providers that can help enterprises implement S/4HANA and other SAP technologies while achieving higher business value at a lower cost of transformation.”

ISG has distributed surveys to more than 150 SAP HANA service providers. Working in collaboration with ISG’s global advisors, the research team will produce five quadrants representing the services the typical enterprise customer is buying in the SAP HANA space, based on ISG’s experience working with its clients. The five quadrants that will be covered are:

• SAP S/4HANA System Transformation – Large Accounts, assessing a provider’s ability to develop, deploy and test enterprise applications using SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Suite with SAP Fiori, including the ability to manage the complexity and scale found in most large enterprises. These providers have frameworks, tools and accelerators to support large enterprise needs. Services include planning, design and modeling of applications. Providers can support companies in both on-premises and cloud-based implementations in greenfield and brownfield environments.

• SAP S/4HANA System Transformation – Midmarket, covering SAP partners’ capacity for rapidly turning around SAP S/4HANA implementations for clients with fewer than 5,000 SAP users or annual revenue below $1 billion. The implementations may use multiple methodologies, including SAP’s packaged solutions for small and midsize businesses, and provider use of SAP S/4HANA templates to reduce the transformation cycle.

• Managed Application Services for SAP ERP, looking at providers’ abilities to offer managed services, including maintenance and support functions for SAP S/4HANA and legacy SAP Business Suites such as ECC 6.0. Managed application services include troubleshooting, level 2 and level 3 application support, root-cause analysis and other functions. Typical service requests include user management, performance reports, database services and security monitoring, among others. Clients expect providers to be able to enhance and change applications, apply SAP Service Pack Stacks and predict the business outcome of updates.

• Managed Cloud Services for SAP HANA, analyzing providers that manage hybrid cloud environments, security, system availability, backup and restoration, data compliance and other infrastructure and cloud operations. Effective providers have deep knowledge of the in-memory database technology underlying SAP S/4HANA to maintain smooth operations. Other services include data volume and application code management, cloud cost optimization and support for clients’ SAP HANA and legacy SAP ERP versions running alongside SAP S/4HANA.

• SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) and Intelligent Technologies, assessing providers’ capabilities to support enterprises through SAP Cloud Platform, the platform-as-a-service for application development and integration in SAP Business Technology Platform. Key capabilities include design, development, change, integration and support of enterprise applications on SCP. Providers drive innovation around SAP S/4HANA by offering innovation workshops, design thinking and lab facilities for client experimentation. They may also provide use cases and frameworks, including ready-to-use apps for functions such as fraud prevention.

The report will cover the global SAP HANA ecosystem services market and examine services available in Brazil, Germany, the Nordics, the U.K. and the U.S. For the first time, the report will also cover services available in France. ISG analysts Kartik Subramaniam, Akhila Harinarayan, Pedro L. Bicudo Maschio, Rainer Suletzki, Yves Kervadec, ArulManoj M and Arjun Das will serve as authors of the geographic reports.