ITIL ver.2011 with SAP Solution Manager

Transcription

1 <White Paper> <SAP Solution Manager > Document Version: PUBLIC ITIL ver.2011 with SAP Solution Manager 15 ITIL Pink Elephant certified processes mapped with SAP Solution Manager capabilities

2 Typographic Conventions Type Style Example Example EXAMPLE Example Example <Example> EXAMPLE Description Words or characters quoted from the screen. These include field names, screen titles, pushbuttons labels, menu names, menu paths, and menu options. Textual cross-references to other documents. Emphasized words or expressions. Technical names of system objects. These include report names, program names, transaction codes, table names, and key concepts of a programming language when they are surrounded by body text, for example, SELECT and INCLUDE. Output on the screen. This includes file and directory names and their paths, messages, names of variables and parameters, source text, and names of installation, upgrade and database tools. Exact user entry. These are words or characters that you enter in the system exactly as they appear in the documentation. Variable user entry. Angle brackets indicate that you replace these words and characters with appropriate entries to make entries in the system. Keys on the keyboard, for example, F2 or ENTER. 2

3 Document History Version Date Change 1.0 < > <Initial version > 3

4 Table of contents 1 Financial Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations Service Portfolio Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process ITIL Process Integrations Service Catalog Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations Service Level Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations Capacity Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations Availability Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations Change Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach

5 7.3 Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations Service Asset and Configuration Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process ITIL Process Integrations Release and Deployment Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations Knowledge Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations Incident Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations Problem Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations Request Fulfillment ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations Event Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights

6 14.5 ITIL Process Integrations IT Service Continuity Management ITIL Requirement SAP Solution Manager Approach Best Practice Process Feature and Function Highlights ITIL Process Integrations

7 1 Financial Management 1.1 ITIL Requirement The objective of ITIL Financial Management for IT Services is to manage the service provider's budgeting, accounting, and charging requirements. The table below describes the FM subprocesses and their objectives: Subprocess Financial Management Support Financial Planning Financial Analysis and Reporting Service Invoicing Objective Define the necessary structures for the management of financial planning data and costs, as well as for the allocation of costs to services. Determine the required financial resources over the next planning period (IT budget) and allocate those resources for optimum benefits. Analyze the structure of service provisioning cost and the profitability of services. The resulting financial analysis allows Service Portfolio Management to make informed decisions when making changes to the service portfolio. Issue invoices for the provision of services and transmission of the invoice to the customer. The following roles and responsibilities occur in Financial Management: Role Financial Manager (Process Owner) Description The financial manager is responsible for managing an IT service provider's budgeting, accounting, and charging requirements.

8 1.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach To depict the Financial Management ITIL process in SAP Solution Manager, SAP ERP is used as a CMDB. Several business scenarios are used. The table below describes the SAP Solution Manager approach for each of the ITIL Financial Management subprocesses: Subprocess Financial Management Support Financial Planning Financial Analysis and Reporting Service Invoicing SAP Solution Manager Approach Pricing and billing is provided by the SAP Solution Manager pricing module and the billing engine. The framework for planning and analyzing financial data and costs is provided by the Controlling (CO) module of SAP ERP. This also includes the allocation of costs to services. Capital costs and depreciations are calculated by the Asset Accounting module of SAP ERP. The framework for planning and analyzing financial data and costs is provided by the Controlling module of SAP ERP. This also includes the allocation of costs to services. The framework for analyzing actual financial data and costs is provided by the Controlling module of SAP ERP. This also includes the allocation of costs to services. Service confirmations can be used to document the usage of services and spare parts. Actual times are automatically transferred to the time sheet CATS first and then to the Controlling object (internal order or profitability segment). The actual use of spare parts is transferred to the Materials Management (MM) module first and subsequently to the controlling object (internal order or profitability segment). Service Process When creating a service process in SAP CRM, the characteristics relevant for CO must be extracted. This information is used to create a Controlling object for this service process. Service Contract When creating a service contract in SAP CRM, the characteristics relevant for CO must be extracted. A CO object for the service contract and its characteristics is also created. Actual Confirmation An actual confirmation has no reference to a service process or service contract. Therefore, in the case of an actual confirmation, the Controlling-relevant characteristics must be extracted directly from the confirmation and transferred to CATS/MM together with the data necessary for posting. A Controlling object with the relevant characteristics is then created directly for the actual confirmation. Further information concerning the Controlling integration can be found under the following links: a1553f6/content.htm?frameset=/en/46/ ca4e a155369/fr ameset.htm 34c487fe6/frameset.htm /frameset.htm Several invoicing scenarios are covered by SAP Solution Manager:

9 Billing After Contract Release The order quantity for the contract is billed once the contract is released. Transaction-Related Billing According to Order Quantity The order quantity is billed for a transaction, for example, a credit memo request resulting from a complaint. Transaction-Related Billing After Completion The order quantity is billed once a transaction (usually a service order or a service confirmation) is completed. Further information about billing can be found at the following links: 000a155369/frameset.htm a155369/content.htm?frameset=/en/46/5501d091441ca4e a155369/fr ameset.htm 1.3 Best Practice Process The deep integration between SAP Solution Manager and 1. An end user requests a service from the service catalog. 2. A service order is created for this customer. A service contract (of type SLA) exists for this customer and is automatically assigned to the service order. 3. The service is performed and actual consumption of resources is documented in a service confirmation. Actual costs and revenues, along with the relevant characteristics, are posted to the Controlling object internal order. From there, they can be transferred to CO module for profitability analysis. Relevant postings in FI, MM, and HR are performed automatically as the business process progresses: For example, if a spare part is used and documented in the service confirmation, a goods issue is automatically posted, thereby updating the inventory in MM. The hours used by the service technician are also documented in the service confirmation. They are transferred to the CATS time sheet first and from there to the internal order (Controlling object). 4. The service contract is periodically billed. 5. The service confirmation is billed (resource-related billing) once the service order is completed. 6. Based on the costs and revenues collected in the internal order and the CO characteristics transferred from SAP Solution Manager, a profitability analysis is performed in the module CO-PA. This analysis provides a greater insight into the profitability of services and customers.

10 1.4 Feature and Function Highlights Periodical Billing of Service Contract Based on a Billing Plan The service contract can be billed periodically based on a billing plan. Resource-Related Billing of a Service Confirmation Resource-related billing can be performed based on the actual resource consumption documented in the service confirmation. Tight Integration with Controlling Module (CO) The service processing in SAP Solution Manager is tightly integrated with the Controlling module in ERP. Service records in SAP Solution Manager trigger automatic postings in the corresponding Controlling object. Tight Integration with Cross-Application Time Sheet (CATS, HR) The service processing in SAP Solution Manager is tightly integrated with the cross-application time sheet in ERP. Service confirmations in SAP Solution Manager trigger automatic postings in the corresponding time sheet of the service technician, and subsequently postings in the Controlling object. Tight Integration with Materials Management Module (MM) The service processing in SAP Solution Manager is tightly integrated with the Materials Management module in ERP. Service confirmations for spare parts in SAP Solution Manager trigger automatic postings in the corresponding Controlling object. 1.5 ITIL Process Integrations Incident Management is closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Service Portfolio Management The financial analysis is an important part of the Portfolio Management process. It contains information on the costs for providing services and provides an insight into the profitability of services and customers. Change Management A request for a budget can be issued from any of the Service Management processes at the same time when compiling a request for change. An approved budget request means that the required financial resources for implementing a change are approved by Financial Management. Service Level Management The billing of a service can depend on the provided service level. Service Asset and Configuration Management Capital costs are calculated for configuration items and aggregated to the total costs of a service. Request Fulfillment Cost calculation based on effort for Request Fulfillment Incident Managament Cost calculation based on effort for Incident Resolution

11 2 Service Portfolio Management 2.1 ITIL Requirement Service Portfolio Management (SPM) involves proactive management of the investment throughout the service lifecycle, including those services in the concept, design, and transition pipeline, as well as live services defined in the various service catalogues and retired services. The process responsible for managing the service portfolio. Service portfolio management ensures that the service provider has the right mix of services to meet required business outcomes at an appropriate level of investment. Service portfolio management considers services in terms of the business value that they provide. The service portfolio is the complete set of services that are managed by a service provider. It is used to manage the entire lifecycle of all services and includes three categories: Service Pipeline (Status: Proposed, In Development) Service Catalog (Status: Live, Available for Deployment) Retired Services (Status: Retired) Service Portfolio Management helps each customer to determine: What services are available What charges are associated with each service Why they should use these services Why they should use this specific service provider Meanwhile, the service provider can determine: What strengths, weaknesses, and gaps exist in their service portfolio What their investment priorities and risks are How their service assets (resources and capabilities) should be allocated to address these priorities and risks SPM is an ongoing process and includes the following key activities: Define: Collection of a validated inventory for all existing and proposed services and their business cases. Analyze: Identification of which services are required for the organization to achieve its service goals, how well the existing service portfolio meets these needs, which service assets are required for the service strategy, and how to align and prioritize to meet demands. Approve: Finalization of the desired future state of the service portfolio and authorization for retention of appropriate existing services, and required investment in the replacement, rationalization, refactoring, renewal, or retirement of existing services. Charter: Communication of approved decisions relating to desired changes to the service portfolio and the execution of actions to promote newly chartered services into service design, refresh selected existing services in the service catalogue and initiate service transition activities. Each service in the service portfolio is owned by a product manager (service manager). The service manager is responsible for managing this service as a product over the entire lifecycle.

12 2.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach The Service Portfolio Management in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM Service Products. Additionally, the Project & Portfolio Management Suite of SAP can be leveraged to extend the portfolio management capabilities. A service product is the technical entity that represents an ITIL service object and holds all references to SLA, other transactions related to the service or configuration items as well as service attributes such as status. With SAP Resource and Portfolio Management (RPM), you can address the strategic aspects of Portfolio Management, monitor project status - including information about project resources - and manage your entire project portfolio. You can align activities, resources, and budgets with business priorities, allowing for increased portfolio transparency, timely monitoring of portfolio performance, easier resource forecasting, avoidance of bottlenecks, and improved decision making. These project and Portfolio Management solutions in SAP ERP, SAP PLM, and SAP xapps composite applications seamlessly integrate with one another to give you optimal management tools. In addition, effective project and Portfolio Management functions allow you to pool information from different project management areas, such as HR, finance, and time-recording systems. As a result, you can monitor and coordinate all projects in your enterprise and make optimal use of valuable resources. The user requests a new service or the improvement of an existing service by sending a service requirement ticket. These requirements are related to a service portfolio item and are managed as part of the Service Portfolio Management process. The phases of the service portfolio item are reflected by the status of the service asset in the CMS. In general, all services have to be documented in the CMS as a service CI with one of the following statuses: Service Pipeline: Services with the status Requirement, Design, Development, or Test Service Catalog: Services with status Released or Operational Retired Services: Services with the status Retired The operational implementation of new requirements is documented and executed with requests for changes and change documents.

13 2.3 Best Practice Process Request of Service Requirements Create a Service Portfolio Item Process the Service Portfolio Item Create of a Service Asset in the CMS Create or relation of Changes to Service Assets Identify Service Assets in the Service Portfolio 2.4 ITIL Process Integrations Service Asset and Configuration Management Each service portfolio item has a corresponding service asset (service CI) in the CMS. The status of the service CI must match the current phase of the service portfolio item. Incident Management/Problem Management For incidents, the service CI relates to the affected IT service. This information can be used as a trigger to improve the IT service and avoid interruptions to the service in the future. Change Management Change Management implements the requirements from Service Portfolio Management. The respective requests for change are defined and implemented during the entire life cycle of an IT service. Service Catalog Management The service portfolio items are represented by a configuration item in the CMS. This means that all service CIs with the status Released or Operational can be added to the service catalog. Demand Management Service Demands are processed in the SPM Financial Management Provides available Funds, and Service Cost Planning for the SPM Business Relationship Management Input and requirements from Business are recognized in the SPM

14 3 Service Catalog Management 3.1 ITIL Requirement ITIL Service Catalog Management aims to ensure that a service catalog is produced and maintained, containing accurate information on all operational services and those being prepared for operation. Service Catalog Management provides vital information for all other Service Management processes, such as service details, current status, and interdependencies of services. There is a clear distinction between business services in the service catalog (services visible to the customer, defined by SLAs) and supporting services (services visible only inside the IT organization, defined by OLAs or UCs) that are part of the technical catalog. The service catalog is a database or structured document containing information about all live services, including those available for deployment. The service catalog is the only part of the service portfolio published to customers and is used to support the sale and delivery of IT services. The service catalog includes information about deliverables, prices, contact points, ordering, and request processes. The following roles and responsibilities occur in Service Catalog Management: Role Service Catalog Manager (Process Owner) Description The service catalog manager is responsible for maintaining the service catalog, ensuring that all information in the service catalog is accurate and up-to-date.

15 3.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach The following elements are used to depict the ITIL service catalog process in the SAP Solution Manager: SAP CRM Product Catalog The SAP CRM service (product) master data is used to depict the service catalog in SAP Solution Manager. While in other business scenarios (for example, a sales scenario) the SAP CRM product catalog mostly contains physical products, in the context of an ITIL service catalog, it only contains services. In this document, the term service catalog is used to describe the use the SAP CRM product catalog in an ITIL environment. SAP CRM Product Hierarchy and Categories The SAP CRM Product Hierarchy is used to depict a structured content framework for services in SAP Solution Manager. While in other business scenarios (for example, a sales scenario), the SAP CRM product hierarchy mostly contains physical products, in the context of an ITIL service catalog, it is only used for services. Therefore, in this document we refer to the service hierarchy. Service hierarchies consist of categories and are used to group services according to different criteria. The purpose of a hierarchy depends on the business criteria involved. A hierarchy can contain multiple levels and can be used for control or informative purposes. All lower-level categories inherit the set types from the higher-level category. Additional set types can be assigned to lower-level categories. A service can be assigned to more than one category as long as the categories belong to different hierarchies. A service can, therefore, only be assigned to one category in each hierarchy.

16 Set Types Set types are groups of service attributes that semantically belong together, e.g. Price Set types appear as assignment blocks on a service record. With set types you create customer-specific views of a catalog for particular business partners or target groups. Prevent certain customers from seeing certain services in the catalog. SAP CRM Service Record An ITIL service record is depicted by a SAP CRM service. In the context of the ITIL Service Catalog Management process, the following set types are relevant: Prices Prices are used for pricing purposes in business transactions (for example, service orders or contracts). They are based on the condition technique and enable pricing information to be determined from the pricing condition records you create for the service concerned. The mechanism by which prices are calculated is extremely complex. It enables a number of prices to be calculated, such as gross price, discount, and surcharge, which might be relevant for a certain customer or on a certain date. The data required for calculating the price can be derived from the pricing information specified for a service order, service contract (SLA), service or customer. Status Lifecycle status of a service Descriptions For example, service descriptions and access instructions Dependencies with Other Services Dependencies exist in both directions, that is, services that require this service and service required for this service. CI Object Model Related to the Service Relates the service to the logical and physical CIs that are required to provide the service.

17 3.3 Best Practice Process The creation of service records is part of Service Portfolio Management (not Service Catalog Management). When a service record is made available for deployment (by SPM), it can be transferred to the service catalog by the Service Catalog Manager. Service Order Process Create IT Service Order: Business User selects available services from the published Service Catalog. In the Self Service UI the User gains detailed information about the service, price and availability. Process Service Order: Depending on the service, the order could contain several subitems, that contribute the service delivery. The service can be divided in several material requirements, service requests and license requirements. Each of them will processed individually but they all are aggregated back in the service order. It is possible to use a approval step of each subitem, before the follow up process of each process will be triggered. The Material requirement would need to be connected with an ERP system to process the logistic process. The License demand can be processed with IPM ( Intellectual Property Management) capability based on SAP CRM. The Service Request is processed in SAP Solution Manager according the process described in chapter of Request Fulfillment.

18 3.4 Feature and Function Highlights Creation of a Service Catalog The service catalog manager creates a new service catalog, maintains the header data, including validity, and sets the status of the service catalog header to Active. Creation of Service Catalog Areas and Subareas The service catalog manager structures the catalog into areas and subareas, transfers relevant parts of the service hierarchy into the service catalog, assigns services to the service catalog, and sets the status of the relevant catalog areas to Active. Creation of a Service Catalog View The service catalog manager uses catalog views to create customer-specific views of a catalog for particular business partners or target groups. For example, they can prevent certain customers from seeing certain services in the catalog. The views contain particular areas and items from a main catalog and are visible only to assigned recipients. The catalog manager sets the status of the catalog view to Active. Creation of a Service Catalog Variant The service level manager creates a new service catalog variant. Defining catalog variants enables you to generate catalogs in several languages, currencies, or distribution chains on the basis of the same set of data. The service level manager sets the status of the catalog variant to Active. End User Selects Services from Business Service Catalog The end user can only select services from the business service catalog that have been defined and released for the customer's organization.

19 3.5 ITIL Process Integrations Service Catalog Management is closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Service Portfolio Management Services are created in Service Portfolio Management throughout their lifecycle. When they are ready for deployment, they are transferred to Service Catalog Management. Service Level Management Services can be offered in different service levels in the service catalog. Service Asset and Configuration Management In the technical service catalog, you can see the CI object model, which is provided by Service Asset and Configuration Management. Change Management When the end user selects a service from the service catalog, this can lead to a request for change and subsequent change. Financial Management Provides data of service order into FM Request Fulfillment Service Order can result in service requests. They are processed in RF

20 4 Service Level Management 4.1 ITIL Requirement ITIL Service Level Management (SLM) aims to negotiate service level agreements (SLAs) with the customers and to design services in accordance with the agreed service level targets. Service Level Management is also responsible for ensuring that all operational level agreements (OLAs) and underpinning contracts are appropriate and for monitoring and reporting on service levels. The table below describes the SLM subprocesses and their objectives: Subprocess Maintenance of the SLM Framework Identification of Service Requirements Agreements Sign-Off and Service Activation Service Level Monitoring and Reporting Objective Design and maintain the underlying structure of the customer agreement portfolio and provide templates for the various SLM documents. Identify desired outcomes (requirements from the customer viewpoint) for new services or major service modifications. The service requirements must be documented and submitted for initial evaluation so that alternatives can be found at an early stage for requirements that are not technically or economically feasible. Have all relevant contracts signed off after completion of service transition and check whether service acceptance criteria have been fulfilled. In particular, this process makes sure that all relevant OLAs are signed off by their service owners and that the SLA is signed off by the customer. Monitor achieved service levels and compare them with agreed service level targets (service level report). This information is circulated to customers and all other relevant parties as a basis for measures to improve service quality. The following roles and responsibilities occur in Service Level Management: Role Service Level Manager (Process Owner) Service Owner Description The service level manager is responsible for negotiating service level agreements and ensuring that these are met. They make sure that all IT Service Management processes, operational level agreements and underpinning contracts are appropriate for the agreed service level targets. The service level manager also monitors and reports on service levels. The service owner is responsible for delivering a particular service in the agreed service levels. Typically, they act as the counterpart of the service level manager when negotiating OLAs. Often, the service owner will lead a team of technical specialists or an internal support unit.

21 4.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach To depict the Service Level Management ITIL process in SAP Solution Manager, several business scenarios are used: SAP CRM Service Contract Management is used to document service level agreements (SLAs), operational level agreements (OLAs) and underpinning contracts (UCs). SLAs, OLAs, and UCs are represented in the SAP Solution Manager as different record types. These record types are based on the SAP service contract and contain service profiles, response profiles and service level metrics. Service Profiles Service profiles define the timeframes during which the IT services specified in the contract must be executed. The service windows defined in the service profile are used as a basis for calculating the start and end dates defined at service process level, as well as the response times. Response Profiles Response profiles define the periods in which the processing of the service should start and by which the processing should be completed. The corresponding dates (first response date and completion date) are calculated based on these periods and with reference to the service profile in the service process, which is created with reference to the contract. Both service profiles and response profiles can be assigned to a number of transactions, such as service request (or incident), problem, request for change, and service order. They can be determined from different sources, such as contracts, products, CIs, or specific customers. Service Level Metrics Service level metrics are criteria negotiated between a customer and service provider that define a quantitative target that must be achieved for the service provided in a timeframe. SLMs are assigned at the contract item level. Actual measurements can be maintained in the interface using reading either manually or automatically. With the help of service level metrics, actual measurements can be compared to the plan values (targets). Anomalies can then be detected and issues can be remediated. SAP Service Contracts Service contracts represent long-term agreements between companies and customers. In service contracts, customers are guaranteed specific services in tolerance limits for certain parameters, for example, in a predefined period. The promised service (such as maintenance or hotline) is defined at contract item level. The following data is also maintained at the service contract item level: Service profile and response profile See definition of service and response profile in the previous paragraph Service Level Metrics See definition of Service Level Metrics above CI List In the CI list, you assign CIs to which the service stipulated in the contract item refers. Product List In the product list, you enter the services and service parts that should be contained in the service stipulated in the contract item.

22 Price agreements In addition to the prices defined at header level, special price agreements can be made for each contract item. Price agreements are contract-specific prices and discounts. You define which services are covered completely, partially, or not at all by a contract. In a price agreement, you can define, for example, that the customer is not charged for service parts and that the installation of service parts should be billed at USD 25 per hour. If contractually agreed service processes are executed, the system takes the price agreements defined in this contract into consideration during billing. Price agreements do not have any influence on periodic contractual billing. The amounts for periodic billing are made up of the header and item conditions in the contract. Billing Plan Billing plans in the contract items control periodic billing. The billing requests are generated according to billing plans and their Customizing settings and transferred directly to the CRM Billing. Processing Time Calculation Processing time monitoring can be used to monitor incidents and service requests that are covered by SLAs, OLAs, and UCs. Typically, for each SLA, OLA, and UC, the initial reaction time (IRT) and maximum processing time (MPT) are monitored. Plan values are calculated with the help of the service profile and response profile that are defined in the SLA, OLA, and UC records. Reporting capabilities are available to compare planned and actual values.

23 4.3 Best Practice Process The process sequence below describes the creation of a service requirement. After collection and evaluation of the service requirements, a service contract (of type service level agreement) is created as a follow-up record to the service requirement. Both are linked to each other, which means that at any time, the service requirement can be accessed from the SLA and vice versa. Finally, a service review is created as a follow-up record to the SLA. 1. Create parameters for service level agreement (SAP CRM) The SLA parameters service profile and response profile are integrated as default settings in SAP CRM. However, you can also freely define other company-specific parameters to support specific business processes. 2. Create service requirement You create a service requirement. A service requirement identifies the desired outcome (requirements from the customer viewpoint) for new services or major service modifications. Service requirements can contain a reference to the customer, the service provider, prices, as well as releasable products and services. These conditions and products can be valid for service contracts that are created with reference to this service requirement. 3. Create items in service requirement You create the items in the service requirement. In the system, you create the services that should be agreed upon in the service contract items as products of type service (for example, maintenance, hotline, inspection). 4. Maintain price agreements You maintain price agreements in the service agreement. Note that price agreements in contract items take precedence over prices defined in the contract header. 5. Maintain product list (SAP CRM) You maintain the product list in which you define the services and service parts that can be claimed in the context of service order processing with reference to a service contract. 6. Create service contract You create a service contract (of type SLA, OLA, or UC) based on the service requirement. 7. Maintain object list (CI list) In the object list, you enter the CIs for which the service agreed upon in the service contract item can be claimed. 8. System generates billing plan 9. System generates billing request items 10. Release service contract items and save contract You release the items in the service contract and save the service contract. 11. System performs revenue recognition for service contracts 12. System creates and assigns appropriate controlling object A controlling object is created for the service contract in financial accounting. Costs and revenues are posted to the controlling object, or an existing controlling object is assigned to the service contract.

24 4.4 Feature and Function Highlights Automatic Determination of Service Profile and Response Profile When a service order is created for a certain customer, the service profile and response profile can be determined automatically. An access sequence is processed to determine the service profile and response profile from an existing service contract, a CI, a service, or a customer. The same functionality is available for incidents, service requests, and requests for changes. Date Calculation Based on Service Profile and Response Profile Once a service profile and response profile have been determined, the planned dates (initial reaction and to do by date) are calculated. This functionality is available for service orders, incidents, service requests, and requests for change. As it is performed on item level, a record with several items (for example, a request for change) could have a separate date calculation on each item. Pricing Based on Service Profile and Response Profile The pricing can be determined based on service profile and response profile. For example, a 10% surcharge to the standard price can be calculated for a service that is delivered with a 24x7 service window. Referenced CIs of a Service Level Agreement You can select all service contracts (SLAs, OLAs, UCs) that are related to a certain CI. In the CI record, you can see a list of all related service contracts. Monitoring of Processing Times in an Incident (covered by SLA, OLA, and UC) In incident and service request records, you can calculate planned dates for each SLA, OLA, and UC. Actual processing times are recorded and compared with the planned dates. Thresholds can be defined and monitored.

25 4.5 ITIL Process Integrations Incident Management is closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Service Catalog Management When an end user orders a service from the service catalog, the corresponding service level can be automatically determined using the underlying SLA. Incident Management When an incident is created, the service profile and response profile can be automatically determined to calculate the planned dates for first reaction and completion of the incident. Change Management When a request for change is created, the service profile and response profile can be automatically determined to calculate the planned dates for first reaction and completion of the change. Service Asset and Configuration Management Service contracts of all types (SLA, OLA, and UCs) reference the CIs that are covered by the agreement. Request Fulfillment Provides the agreed service times in the processing records Financial Management Provide data for pricing

26 5 Capacity Management 5.1 ITIL Requirement The process responsible for ensuring that the capacity of IT services and the IT infrastructure is able to meet agreed capacity- and performance-related requirements in a cost-effective and timely manner. Capacity management considers all resources required to deliver an IT service, and is concerned with meeting both the current and future capacity and performance needs of the business. The main objective of ITIL Capacity Management is to provide cost-justifiable capacity in all areas of IT relevant to current and future needs of the business. The main activities are monitoring the current capacity demand and predicting the future capacity demand from a business, technical, and component point of view. Besides technical monitoring, typical activities include observing trends and capacity tuning, optimizing the capacity demand by proposing business activities, scheduling, modeling, and sizing activities. 5.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach Capacity Management in SAP Solution Manager is a comprehensive framework for monitoring and alerting combined with an integrated data warehouse solution, the SAP Business Warehouse (BW). This allows an integrated technical approach for Capacity Management, Availability Management, and Event Management. The monitoring and alerting infrastructure in SAP Solution Manager provides the functionality to monitor the capacity and availability for all Configuration Items such as applications or Infrastructure, both SAP and non-sap. You can define metrics thresholds for monitoring and customize event and alerting options based on these thresholds. This data is persisted in the integrated SAP Business Warehouse, where the customer can access predefined out of the box reporting or extend the existing templates. This makes it easy to monitor the components and provided services and gather information about their availability 5.3 Best Practice Process Review Current Capacity and Performance The central monitoring in SAP Solution Manager 7.1 is the foundation for reliable and stable operation of complex heterogeneous system landscapes, as well as their instances, databases, hosts, and business processes. The monitoring application provides a status overview of all technical systems, not only showing the capacity or performance of a chosen managed object but also information about existing alerts. In a top-down approach, you are able to see your different system components, integrating all metrics and events, including their thresholds and current rating or value. The data shown is automatically determined inside SAP Solution Manager based on the component data stored in the landscape management database (LMDB).

27 Improve Current Service and Component Capacity For improving current service and component capacity, SAP Solution Manager provides SAP Technical Analytics, an efficient feature for evaluating and reporting the availability, capacity, and performance of your productive systems. The reports are structured and designed to provide information that can help with trend analysis as well as statistical evaluation of technical component usage. Technical Analytics provides an aggregated overview of the managed objects behavior over a period of time and provides dashboards to visualize the trends in various categories such as availability, performance, exceptions, capacity, and usage. Based on the trend analysis, optimization of internal processes and IT setups is more efficient. Store Information in the Capacity Management Information System (CMIS) SAP Solution Manager comes complete with a reporting engine (SAP BW), which uses stored data to generate not only different technical reports, but also highly aggregated management view reports. The reporting, analysis, and interpretation of business data is essential for a company to guarantee its competitive edge, optimizing processes, and enabling it to react quickly and in line with the market. As a core component of SAP Solution Manager, the SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) provides data warehousing functionality, a business intelligence platform, and a suite of business intelligence tools that enable businesses to attain these goals. Relevant business information from productive SAP applications and all external data sources can be integrated, transformed, and consolidated in SAP BW with the toolset provided. SAP BW provides flexible reporting and analysis tools to support you in evaluating and interpreting data, as well as facilitating its distribution. Businesses are able to make informed decisions and determine target-orientated activities on the basis of this analysis. Assess, Agree, Document, and Plan New Requirements and Capacity Technical Analytics, in combination with the integrated SAP BW, provides all relevant data for assessing, agreeing, documenting, and planning new requirements and capacity. SAP EarlyWatch Alert as part of Technical Analytics is a diagnosis that monitors solutions in SAP and non-sap systems in SAP Solution Manager. The following managed system data is collected weekly and passed to SAP Solution Manager: General component status, system configuration, hardware, performance development, average response times, and current system load. Correlating provided utilization, capacity, and workload data indicates trends for capacity planning. 5.4 Feature and Function Highlights Measuring Performance and Capacity Data in SAP Solution Manager SAP Solution Manager's monitoring and alerting infrastructure discovers and collects performance and capacity data from managed systems to which it is connected, providing a single-point management tool for performing system monitoring, analysis, and management activities. Monitoring the systems ensures SAP customers continued availability and performance and enables them to detect and manage problems proactively. Delivering SAP templates enables customers to measure performance, exception, and capacity data in an easy and flexible way. The templates contain SAP best practices and standards and can be extended and customized depending on the customer's landscape requirements regarding the activation and deactivation of metrics and alerts, modifications to thresholds or the configuration of autoreactions. Work Mode Management and Monitoring Customizing for Controlling Frequency and Format of Monitoring Activities

28 The Work Mode Management application allows you to schedule and maintain work modes (for example, down time and peak business hour) for selected components and is tightly integrated with the monitoring capabilities. For example, alerting and monitoring are sensitive to planned downtimes so that no spurious alerts are triggered. It is also possible to define work mode-specific and template-specific settings in monitoring templates, such as collection period of data collectors or metric thresholds. Certain alerts can be switched on or off for different work modes. Alert consumers can be defined depending on the work mode. For example, during peak business you want to be notified if the average dialog response time exceeds 1000 ms; during other work modes you do not expect a notification at all.

29 Trend Analysis SAP Solution Manager enables you to set up a standardized service level reporting system that combines information from several EarlyWatch Alerts in a solution landscape. The trend analysis displays specific data over a period of three months. In addition, you can also include the average response times of certain transactions into the reports in standard service level reporting. Another advantage of service level reporting in the solution landscape is that you can combine different weekly reports to generate monthly reports and track the trend over a certain time period. In addition, you can set target values for specific parameters that cause red ratings in the reports and adapt the capacity for the measured values. 5.5 ITIL Process Integrations Capacity Management is closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Availability Management Capacity and availability monitoring and data collection are closely integrated in SAP Solution Manager; both use the same infrastructure and data storage and capacity. Availability data can be monitored and analyzed using the same views. Incident Management When using the monitoring and alerting infrastructure for monitoring and analysis purposes, this is closely integrated with Incident Management because it is possible to create incidents and jump to the ticket creation directly from the monitoring overviews. Service Asset and Configuration Management The services and components overviews in the monitoring capabilities of SAP Solution Manager allow you to drill down directly from the monitored CIs to the related information stored in the CMS. Service Level Management The monitoring and alerting infrastructure contains predefined service level reports and allows you to define and report additional service level KPIs. Event Management The monitoring infrastructure is completely integrated with the event and alerting infrastructure. For services, technical components, and each measured performance or capacity KPI, it is possible to define the detection of events and production of notifications.

30 6 Availability Management 6.1 ITIL Requirement The goal of Availability Management is to provide IT services on a cost-effective level matching or exceeding the current and future business needs. A key activity is monitoring and controlling the availability, reliability, and maintainability of IT services and components. Another important part of Availability Management is conducting impact analysis, risk management, producing an availability plan, and providing information about planned service outages. 6.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach Availability Management in SAP Solution Manager is a comprehensive framework for monitoring and alerting combined with an integrated data warehouse solution, namely the SAP Business Warehouse. This allows an integrated technical approach for Capacity Management, Availability Management, and Event Management. The monitoring and alerting infrastructure in SAP Solution Manager provides the functionality to monitor the availability not only of all relevant Configuration items such as applications or Infrastructure, both SAP and non- SAP, but also on various layers ranging from dependent components to the defined IT service, which is usually provided by several technical components. Thresholds can be defined for all of these metrics and you can customize event and alerting options based on these thresholds. In addition, SAP BW, the professional data warehouse tool, uses this availability and capacity data for standard reporting and highly flexible functionalities for aggregating, correlating, and calculating any data and KPIs. 6.3 Best Practice Process Monitor, Measure, Report, and Analyze Availability The SAP Solution Manager allows to monitor and report on all of customers IT landscape. Dependend on the technology it uses different agents to collect data. This data is persisted in the integrated, where the customer can access predefined out of the box reporting or extend the existing templates. This makes it easy to monitor the components and provided services and gather information about their availability. The process responsible for ensuring that IT services meet the current and future availability needs of the business in a cost-effective and timely manner. Availability management defines, analyses, plans, measures and improves all aspects of the availability of IT services, and ensures that all IT infrastructures, processes, tools, roles etc. are appropriate for the agreed service level targets for availability Investigate Service and Component Outages

31 When detecting a service or component outage using monitoring views or created incidents, you can drill down to technical information about the service, component CI, or information about underlying CIs that caused the error. SAP root cause analysis helps you to analyze and solve the problem. Risk Assessment and Management SAP Solution Manager provides an overview of the landscape and dependencies of CIs in the CMS and monitoring overviews. It also offers trend analysis for CIs and services, as well as providing comprehensive reporting functionalities that allow multidimensional analytics of data and trend correlation. This information supports the detection of possible risks and helps you to plan countermeasures. A detailed risk list may be controlled by Knowledge Management. Implement Countermeasures SAP Solution Manager supports a mechanism through which any arbitrary code execution is possible as an automatic reaction to selected alert types. Code executed in this way is generally referred to as automatic reaction to alerts or just autoreaction. E2E monitoring and alerting infrastructure does not include any autoreaction features other than the standard autonotification and autoincident creation features described above, but can be extended with all kinds of customer-specific BAdI implementations. Reporting and Data Storage in the Availability Management Information System All availability and capacity data are stored in the SAP Solution Manager integrated business warehouse. This allows you to aggregate data, define different residual times for aggregation levels in the database, and use various functions for correlating and evaluating data. 6.4 Feature and Function Highlights IT Calendar Projected Service Outage The Technical Administration work center in SAP Solution Manager provides tools and capabilities to support IT Operations Management teams in the efficient planning, implementation, execution, and reporting of the day-today operational activities. In particular, it offers the functionality SAP IT Calendar, which provides customers an overview of the planned work modes (for example, downtimes and peak business hours) for selectable systems and technical components in a calendar view. It can be used as the single source of truth for both IT and business departments, with regards to planned uptimes and downtimes for systems This helps you to answer questions, such as When is the next planned downtime for system ABC? or When are the next peak business hours for system ABC? Escalation and Notification Alerts Notification Management allows you to centrally maintain recipients or recipient lists for various SAP Solution Manager applications, such as Work Mode Management, Alert Inbox, System Monitoring, PI Monitoring, BI Monitoring, and so on. Different recipient lists can be maintained for different use cases, for example, notifying end users about upcoming system downtimes or notifying technical operators that they should look into an alert. Notifications can either be created automatically, if a certain alert is triggered, or created manually. In addition, customers can define error handling procedures and escalation paths adapted to their individual needs and business workflows.

32 6.5 ITIL Process Integrations Availability Management is closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Capacity Management Availability monitoring, capacity monitoring, and data collection are closely integrated in SAP Solution Manager both use the same infrastructure and the same data storage and capacity. Availability data can be monitored and analyzed using the same views. Incident Management When using the monitoring and alerting infrastructure for monitoring and analysis purposes, there is a close integration to Incident Management because it is possible to create incidents and jump to the ticket creation directly from the monitoring overviews. Service Asset and Configuration Management The services and components overviews in the monitoring capabilities of SAP Solution Manager allow you to drill down directly from the monitored CIs to the related information stored in the CMS. Service Level Management The monitoring and alerting infrastructure contains predefined service level reports and allows you to define and report additional service level KPIs. Event Management The monitoring infrastructure is completely integrated with the event and alerting infrastructure. For services, technical components, and each measured performance or capacity KPI, it is possible to define the detection of events and production of notifications.

33 7 Change Management 7.1 ITIL Requirement A Change is defined as addition, modification or removal of anything that could have an effect on IT services. Changes to all architectures, processes, tools, metrics and documentation, as well as changes to IT services and other configuration items. Change Management: Responsible to control the lifecycle of all changes in order to minimize downtimes of the IT services and maximize the value resulting in a change. Enterprises have to adapt to the new market challenges more and more frequently. These changes often result in adaptations to the IT infrastructure and application landscape. Businesses today require their IT services to meet these needs precisely and demand a high level of flexibility, elasticity, and thoroughness. The answer to this is a proactive Change Management process, the aim of which is to enable changes to be implemented reliably, economically, and on-time. The use of standardized methods and processes minimize the risks of disruption to the IT service. Change Management must, therefore, maintain a balance between flexibility and stability. For each change, it is essential to weigh up the potential negative impact, for example, on availability of resources, with the anticipated benefits of the change. The Change Advisory Board (CAB) deals with what can be a difficult decision-making process. This board, which is comprised of highly experienced and senior key individuals, looks after the interests of the customers and service operators. In order to take account of the time-to-market aspect, the decisionmaking process must have a lean and flexible structure. To remove some of the burden from the CAB, processing simple and routine changes must be possible without any red tape. This requires a standardized risk-assessment process, the categorization of changes, which makes a distinction between critical and non-critical changes. The Change Management process must enable changes to be implemented smoothly and reliably in the event of an emergency. This requires an Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB), which normally comprises of two experienced service employees. 7.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach Change Management in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM service documents. These documents are preconfigured for Request for Change (change Request) and Change Documents (Change Records/Execution) with experience collected by many SAP customers. The solution as part of SAP Solution Manager is called Change Request Management and is highly integrated into the SAP environment. It provides tool support for the processes Change Management and Release and Deployment Management. However, the tool does not just allow you to manage SAP-related changes; all kinds of changes can be managed. There is a standard, preconfigured process that can be automatically set up with a guided configuration procedure. Based on this ready-to-use configuration, customers can adjust the tool to match their individual processes, such as status values, service organization, user roles, escalation procedures, notifications, UI adoptions, and reporting. For individual configurations, SAP offers many standard functionalities that are available in all SAP systems (authorizations, workflows, inbound and outbound channels, and so on) as well as an easy enhancement workbench to make individual field adjustments without the need for coding. SAP Solution

34 Manager comes complete with a reporting engine (SAP BW) that can be used to generate a report based on any field in the document. You can even include this field in a dashboard (a highly-aggregated management view report). Change Request Management uses two main entities: The request for change, for reporting new requests for change, and dedicated change records, for the individual execution of changes based on the evaluation performed as part of the request for change process. This provides customers with a high level of flexibility when dealing with changes in their enterprise. 7.3 Best Practice Process Create a Request for Change The process typically starts with creating a request for change. A requestor (change initiator) creates a new request for change and describes the requirements or tasks that will be fulfilled with this change. As an alternative, the change might result from other processes, such as Incident Management, Problem Management, or Request Fulfillment. Process Request for Change Once the request for change has been created, it is picked up by a processor (for example, a process manager or change practitioner) who further evaluates the change. This includes a detailed analysis of the change, including risk assessment, impact analysis, and categorization. Approve Request for Change After all these details have been specified, the request for change needs to be authorized by a change authority. Who is responsible for the change depends on the result of the request for change validation in step 2. Example: If an emergency change is made, an extra change authority might be required than for a normal change. For standard changes, which are preauthorized, this step is completely skipped because the change has already been carried out and defined as a standard change. Change Execution Once the change has been approved, it can be handed over to the execution. In this step, another change record is created that is associated with the request for change. A dedicated workflow model guides the execution of the change based on the change type that has been defined before. The tool also controls the test execution and makes sure that segregation of duties is applied. Manage Release of Change Once the change has been implemented in the development environment and has been tested from a functional point of view, the coordination of the release of the change is handed over to the Release and Deployment Management process. This process is relevant for managing the successful transfer into the productive environment. Closure of Change Once the change has been released, it can be closed and confirmed by the initiator. Once the change record has been confirmed by a process manager, the related request for change is also set to the status Implemented and can be confirmed by the change initiator.

35 7.4 Feature and Function Highlights Approval Management You can assign an approval transaction to the request for change. This transaction must then be processed before the request receives the status Approved. An approval transaction is an approval process that consists of a defined sequence of approval steps. During Customizing, you can define which approval steps must be completed for each approval transaction. You can choose which steps can run in parallel and which steps are interdependent. For each approval step, you can also define which business partner role is responsible for executing it. If you later select the approval transaction in the request for change, you have to assign a concrete business partner to each step. Each business partner can be informed through a workflow item or from the SAP Business Workflow if they need to make a decision. To execute the approval, you can choose between three options: Approved, Rejected, and Not Relevant. In addition, the approver can enter a comment for each approval step when executing this step. All this information is also recorded in the change log and can be called up at any time. You can define any number of approval transactions in Customizing. You can assign these to a request in line with the change type. You can also use a set of rules to define your own rules. These rules can, for example, assign a certain approval transaction on the basis of field values (for example, if the urgency and priority of the change are very high, you need to use a different approval transaction than for a normal change). In the standard system, SAP provides a simple approval transaction that consists of just one approval step for the change manager. You can adjust and enhance this as required. Tight Integration with Release and Deployment Management Especially for SAP related changes, there is a tight integration with SAP s transport management system, which enables clients to easily coordinate the transfer and deployment of changes throughout the landscape. This functionality is deeply integrated into the Change Management process, including additional technical checks (for example, the change cannot be set to Successfully Tested if the change has not reached the test environment and, therefore, cannot be tested). The integration also helps to increase the effort for managing changes and their release, as well as supporting the client by keeping the landscape consistent, as only tested and validated changes are released by the system. Actions and Conditions Framework The solution is very flexible and allows a lot of automation for workflows and notifications. This is based on the actions and conditions framework in the background: The Post Processing Framework (PPF) provides SAP applications with a uniform interface for the condition-dependent generation of actions (for example, printing delivery notes, sending notifications, or triggering approval procedures). The actions are generated if specific conditions are met for an application document, for example, a specific status is set (approved) or a specific date has been reached (two weeks before end of SLA time). The actions are then processed either directly or in a scheduled report later. This framework allows you to define in detail what types of activity are allowed for the user (for example, change of status) and what types of activity are triggered automatically, based on a given condition. Examples: Automatic escalation of the record if a defined timeframe has passed: When the initial response time is not met or the execution of the change takes too long, the escalation level of the ticket can be raised and a timeframe of the escalation is saved. Notifications can also be sent to relevant personnel Management of actions that are displayed to the end user, for example, if the current status of the document is In Development the user has other actions available, such as the status To Be Tested Automatic setting of the request for change status if the related change record has been fulfilled: When the change record is closed, the related request for change is set to Implemented automatically, This triggers a

36 notification to the change manager or requester asking them to confirm the successful change implementation

37 Multilevel Categorization The categorization plays an important role in the incident and Problem Management process. IT can define various levels. SAP Solution Manager provides a template schema as a starting point for defining your own categories. You first decided how many levels to use. In the standard system, the process is designed for four levels. The person who enters the message only selects the first two levels. The following is an example of a categorization: Level 1: Typing the document (incident, service request, test error, alarm) Level 2: Typing the IT area (SAP, IT hardware, mobile application) Level 3: Typing the error (error message, crash, missing data) Level 4: Specific error (Cannot create data in SM, Error 6734) Good categorization offers fundamental benefits during later processing of the message. The categorization can be used for automatic assignment to a processor or a support team, reducing the workload of the first support level, or even bypassing them completely. The categorization is used to propose knowledge articles with the same category to the processor. These articles can be assigned to the incident and may already provide a solution. The categorization is used to display problem messages with the same category (if any exist) to the incident processor. The processor could, for example, assign the incident to a problem with the same root cause. The category is used as the basis for displaying a template document to the processor. The processor can adopt the template and automatically copy standard texts to the document, such as a standard response for resetting a password. The categorization plays an important role in evaluating incidents in order to identify trends or filter error messages. 7.5 ITIL Process Integrations Change Management is closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Incident Management Incidents may request a change in the configuration of a service in order find a solution to the incident. However, a change may also result in the failure of the service and incidents are created to get the service working again. Problem Management An increase of incidents in a certain area may indicate a problem in the process design of the service. Problem Management can help to identify the root cause and help to put a solution in place. New requests for change often need to be created and processed in order to close and solve those problems. Request Fulfillment As part of the fulfillment process of a service request, it may be necessary to create a request for change. Change Management is integrated so that requests for change can be created and processed easily without losing the context information about the related service request. Service Asset and Configuration Management A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected by a change. Knowledge about the relationship with other CIs supports effective solution finding.

38 Service Level Management The business requirements for a service are described in service level agreements. Service Management offers a tool to monitor the fulfillment of those agreements, especially in the case of failures (reported through incidents). This is also important for changes because the service level agreements often specify a maximum timeframe for service changes. Release & Deployment Management The results of Post-Implementation Review will recognized in the Change Management processes A success implemented change will also update the status of the previous records, such as RFC, problems or incidents

39 8 Service Asset and Configuration Management 8.1 ITIL Requirement Service Asset and Configuration Management (SACM) supports the business by providing accurate information and control of all assets and relationships that make up the infrastructure of an organization. The purpose of SACM is to identify, control, and account for service assets and configuration items (CIs), protecting and ensuring their integrity across the service lifecycle. SACM is focused on maintaining information (that is, configurations) about configuration items (that is, assets) required to deliver an IT service, including their relationships. Configuration Management is the management and monitoring of every aspect of a configuration from beginning to end. The process is responsible for ensuring that the assets required to deliver services are properly controlled, and that accurate and reliable information about those assets is available when and where it is needed. This information includes details of how the assets have been configured and the relationships with other CIs The scope of SACM also extends to non-it assets and to internal and external service providers, where shared assets need to be controlled. To manage large and complex IT services and infrastructures, SACM requires the use of a supporting system known as the Configuration Management System (CMS). 8.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach Service Asset and Configuration Management in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM service documents. These documents are preconfigured and enhanced with ITSM-specific functionalities. There is a standard, preconfigured process that can be automatically set up with a guided configuration procedure. Based on this ready-to-use configuration, the customers can adjust the tool to match their individual processes, such as status values, service teams, user roles, escalation procedures, notifications, UI adoptions, and reporting. For individual configurations, SAP offers many standard functionalities that are available in all SAP systems (authorizations, workflows, inbound and outbound channels, and so on) as well as an easy enhancement workbench to make individual field adjustments without the need for coding. SAP Solution Manager comes complete with a reporting engine (SAP BW) that can be used to generate a report based on any field in the document. You can even include this field in a dashboard (a highly aggregated management view report). SAP Solution Manager is responsible for the process of Service asset & Configuration Management. Systems, IT assets, Applications and any infrastructure item is stored as Configuration Item based on individual object in the SAP CRM ibase structure. SAP Solution Manager represents a Configuration Management System which receives CI data from several CMDB sources. For SAP related data, input comes from a System Landscape Directory (SLD), for infrastructure the integration to SAP IT Infrastructure Management is recommended.

40 CIs are used in IT services, in ITIL processes such as Incident or Change Management and provide status and relationships to other CI s to enable impact analysis in the service processes.

41 8.3 Best Practice Process Architecture of CMS

42 Create Configuration Items Users can create new configuration items if required CIs are not automatically discovered. Discovery of Configuration Items Automated discovery is possible, for example, of a specific IP range. The discovery process can be run on demand or scheduled for a specific time. New CIs are added to the CMS or and attributes or relationships of existing objects are updated. Update Configuration Items The users can perform a manual update of existing configuration items if the attributes are not automatically discovered by the system or if it is necessary to document planned values of attributes.

43 Navigation In the CMS Users can drill down from the configuration item documented in the incident ticket to the information in the IT landscape browser. Maintain Relationships Between Objects Users can maintain the relationships between configuration items to define parts of the service tree that are not automatically discovered by the system. Defining the relationships between IT tickets, such as incidents, problems, and requests for change, and configuration items is a common task for users. Define and Modify Service Trees The owner of a service can define their own service tree (for example, business service) by relating existing configuration items or predefined services (for example, technical services). Impact and Root Cause Analysis Relationships between configuration items enable quick identification of connected objects and persons. Planned changes and their impact on other devices can be displayed and assessed easily in the infrastructure. You can also conduct a root cause analysis for system downtime or an impact analysis for planned changes. Reports and Dashboards You can define reports and dashboards by retrieving information from the CMS.

44 8.4 ITIL Process Integrations Service Asset and Configuration Management are closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Incident Management Provides and maintains key diagnostic information and is responsible for maintenance and provision of data to the service desk. Each incident relates to a configuration item. Information contained in the CMS allows you to classify (category, priority) CIs. The CMS and the service tree identify which other CIs may be affected by the incident. Problem Management Provides and maintains key diagnostic information and is responsible for maintenance and provision of data to the service desk. Problem Management analyzes information in the CMS and looks for possible problems that may arise in the future (proactive). Information contained in the CMS allows you to classify (category, priority) CIs. Change Management Identifies the impact of proposed changes by examining which services are affected and what the potential risks may be. Each change of the IT infrastructure must be documented in the CMS. CMS audit reports allow you to identify unauthorized changes. All approved changes must be registered in the CMS. Finical Management Captures key financial information, such as cost, depreciation methods, owner, user (for budgeting and cost allocation), maintenance, and repair costs. Service Continuity Management Identifies the assets on which the business services depend and controls key spares and software. Service Level Management The IT services must be documented in the CMS by referencing the CI that belongs to the service tree. Capacity Management Reflects capacity in CI data Availibility Management Reflects availability in CI status

45 9 Release and Deployment Management 9.1 ITIL Requirement The aim of Release and Deployment Management is to plan, schedule and control the build, test and deployment of releases while protecting integrity of existing services, and deliver the capabilities (or skills) in accordance with the service design specification in such a way that the service meets the requirements demanded by the stakeholders. In order to minimize the frequency of changes to service assets and IT infrastructures and consequently provide stability of the services for the user, multiple changes are combined into one release. A release is a set of one or multiple changes of an IT Service where build, test and deployment will be done in a joint fashion. A release may consists of changes for Hardware, Software, Documentation, Processes or other components. Issuing new releases must be closely coordinated with customers and users, as well as IT operating personnel. The varying expectations must be skillfully managed in order to avoid potential friction following introduction. The acceptance criteria for the releases are defined on a joint basis. Authorization from the Change Advisory Board for the production rollout is only given after testing has been successfully concluded. In contrast to Change Management, which is geared towards controlling and monitoring the changes, Release Management concentrates on their implementation. 9.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach The solution as part of SAP Solution Manager is called Change Request Management and is highly integrated into the SAP environment. Release and Deployment Management in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM service documents. These documents are preconfigured and enhanced with ITSM-specific functionalities and release management knowhow that was collected by SAP experts from our support organization with customers. The solution as part of SAP Solution Manager is called Change Request Management and is highly integrated into the SAP environment. It provides tool support for the processes Change Management and Release and Deployment Management. However, the tool does not just allow you to manage SAP-related changes; all kinds of changes can be managed because the configuration and framework are fully flexible. There is a standard, preconfigured process that can be automatically set up with a guided configuration procedure. Based on this ready-to-use configuration, customers can adjust the tool to match their individual processes, such as status values, service organization, user roles, escalation procedures, notifications, UI adoptions, and reporting. For individual configurations, SAP offers many standard functionalities that are available in all SAP systems (authorizations, workflows, inbound and outbound channels, and so on) as well as an easy enhancement workbench to make individual field adjustments without the need for coding. SAP Solution Manager comes complete with a reporting engine (SAP BW) that can be used to generate a report based on any field in the document. You can even include this field in a dashboard (a highly aggregated management view report).

46 In SAP Solution Manager, the tool differentiates between two main types of release: releases that are related to SAP Components and custom releases that can be assigned and related to any type of configuration item of service that has been defined in the system. One of the major benefits of the solution is the integration with the SAP deployment tools that help to automate the deployment process of a release. Due to open interfaces, even non-sap technologies can be integrated and clients can benefit from using this tool for other technologies and software related changes or releases. SAP Solution Manager also contains a project management suite that runs on the same installation of SAP Project and Portfolio Management. The Project Management module enables detailed control and management of all releaserelated activities. 9.3 Best Practice Process Create Release Record A new release record can be created for each release. This release record is the main entity for controlling the release. Process Release Record One of the first tasks is to specify the attributes and details of the release according the release policy of the client: Which release was the predecessor of the current release, what is the description of the release, who is responsible for release processing and execution, what kind of release-version is assigned, which service is planned to be updated, and so on. Plan Release Execution (Design and Scope) By using predefined release models, release manager plans the release execution. This includes the defining all required handover criteria, coordinating and preparing the projected service outage plan, checking required or acquired configuration items, establishing checklists, and so on. Change Execution (Build and Test) An essential part of the release and deployment process is the interface to the Change Management process. Once the release has been defined, all the required changes have to be created, processed, and assigned to the release. This defines the release package that will be deployed together. Release testing before deployment is essential. Go-Live / Deployment of Release (Deploy) Once the release package is complete, all tests have been executed, and the required checklists and quality criteria for the deployment are met, the release can be deployed. In the case of a software release, SAP Solution Manager controls and manages the correct deployment into the productive system. In the case of non-software releases or any other kind of release, the deployment process may be executed outside of the system and the status needs to be updated manually. Release Closure After successful deployment of the release, there is an early go-live support phase, before the release is set to operative mode. This means the release is active in the productive environment and available to all users. 9.4 Feature and Function Highlights Deployment Management

47 In this regard, SAP Solution Manager closes a gap that exists in many Change Management solutions for software. When databases or lists, for example, are used to depict Change Management processes and log requests for change and approvals, manual intervention becomes absolutely necessary when a transport request (SAP) or generic deployment component needs to be created or imported. The ID of this component has to be copied to the database by hand, which is a potential source of errors. A typo or mistake when copying invalidates the entire process. With Change Request Management, transport requests are generated centrally from SAP Solution Manager. A reference to the corresponding change record is created automatically (with the ID and description copied to the transport request s name), enabling a clear relationship to be identified at any time. The Change Request Management scenario lets you track all transports relating to a specific project or release, enabling you to check where they were created and in which systems they have been imported. From SAP Solution Manager, you can navigate to the transport logs and import queue, as well as to the SAP Solution Manager maintenance project, the project plan, and the connected systems. Each change record provides an overview of all transports and transport tasks created for it. From there, you can monitor the status of transports at any time and also branch directly into the log file. Integrated Project Management Another great option for managing releases using Change Request Management is the integration with SAP Project and Portfolio Management (PPM), the SAP project planning tool. A client s organization can record and plan all the activities that need to be implemented in a release in a Project Management project plan. You can plan resources and also establish a connection to the back end, for example, to the cross-application time sheet (CATS) component for recording the required time for specific tasks. Changes that have undergone the approval procedure can be scheduled here and integrated into the overall release project plan. This allows the release manager to plan the release in detail, keeping an overview of time, budget, and all relevant resources required for successful execution. The Project Management component defines document templates, checklists, and entire project templates that can be used to define release and deployment models. As part of a project template, the client can define a structured model containing a list of tasks and milestones for a release. The document templates and checklist templates that have been defined can be reused in project templates. Together with the release record, this provides the full transparency for successfully managing and controlling the execution of a release. Test Management Integration Test Management is a subject that is closely related to Changes and Release Management. In SAP Solution Manager, there are numerous functions and applications for checking and administering test transactions and test processes in the customer landscape. These functions are also integrated in Change Request Management and the Release and Deployment Management process. For release testing, you can establish a relationship between these release records and entities from Test Management. The Test Management assignment block enables you to assign test plans or test packages from SAP Solution Manager to a Change Request Management document. This enables a release manager or test coordinator, for example, to assign a test plan in advance that contains test cases to be used for testing the planned change. In another step, you can configure Change Request Management by implementing your own condition in such a way that the process control is dependent on the successful execution of the assigned test packages or test plans. This makes it possible to implement a change that, for example, enables the status to be changed from to be tested to tested successfully only if the assigned test cases have been tested positively. This adds further stability to your software and minimizes the risk of errors in the production system.

48 9.5 ITIL Process Integrations The Release and Deployment Management is closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Change Management One of the most important integrations for the release and deployment process is the integration with Change Management. Successful Change Management can only work if it interacts correctly with Release and Deployment Management. In SAP Solution Manager, you can link any kind of release record with a related change record, allowing full traceability for the release manager. Service Asset and Configuration Management A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected by a change. Knowledge about the relationship with other CIs supports effective processing of the release and allows you to asses risk and impact correctly.

49 10 Knowledge Management 10.1 ITIL Requirement Knowledge Management is responsible for sharing perspectives, ideas, experience, and information and for ensuring that these are available in the right place. The Knowledge Management process enables informed decisions, and improves efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge. The Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS) is the central repository of the data, information, and knowledge that the IT organization needs to manage the lifecycle of its services. Its purpose is to store, analyze, and present the service provider's data, information, and knowledge. The SKMS is not necessarily a single system; in most cases it is a federated system based on a variety of data sources SAP Solution Manager Approach In SAP there are several functionalities that support Knowledge Management, such as store, subscribe, and publish information. In the context of SAP Solution Manager ITSM solution, the core object used is the knowledge article (KA). The KA is based on the CRM one-order concept and is, therefore, highly integrated in service records, such as incident, problem, change, etc.. Any CI or process can include knowledge articles, which provide particular guidance, notes, or detailed descriptions as text with different text types, with attachments or even with further links to other knowledge databases or external URLs.. Such information can be described as text with different text types, with attachments or even with further links to other knowledge databases or external URLs. A KA can have different types, such as known error, FAQ, and guide. You can categorize KAs so that while processing incidents, changes, and so on, you can find KAs of the same category. With standard UI functionalities, such as sharing, favorites, saved search lists, or tag clouds, it is possible to distribute information to specific people or groups across the enterprise. SAP Solution Manager itself has the role of a service Knowledge Management system as it collects various IT service related information on one platform. It has references to any SAP system in the customer's IT landscape and stores IT related information to a central place. SAP Solution Manager bundles and relates information about business processes, applications, IT infrastructure items, IT services, business partner information, and even reporting data, to act as an overall enterprise resource planning tool specifically to manage the IT of SAP customers Best Practice Process Create a Knowledge Article A knowledge article can be created from scratch or based on a solution or work around while processing an incident or a problem. Another possibility is to create a new knowledge article from a template. The template

50 could already include guidance on how certain types of KAs should be documented and some data fields could already be prefilled to speed up the creation process. While filling in the KA data, there are fields to record the author, approver, stakeholder, status, authorization scope, text types (solution, issue description, work around, and so on), validity dates, and so on. You can define whether the KA is for public use or only for specific groups, which can be limited with the SAP authorization concept. Before a KA can be found, it is reviewed and approved for release. This is set in the KA status field. A second person then finds a list of KAs that are waiting for approval. After setting this status, the KA can be found in the self-service UI from the end users. Find related Knowledge Articles A KA should support end users by finding a solution to their problem before they report a new incident. They can use the search for KA functionality in the self-service UI to search full text or categories for an existing solution. If the incident has been created and arrives at the service desk, the agents can also search with a related search based on the identity of categories. The tool lists all released KAs that have the same category as the current incident. In some cases, the tool can proactively suggest a KA if a predefined KA is assigned to the specific category. If a KA matches the described issue, the processor can reference the KA to the incident or problem record and make it available to the end user through the self-service portal Feature and Function Highlights You can record details in a knowledge article, such as language, description, and keywords, in addition to the categories assigned to the knowledge article. You can also record short notes, for example, about solutions or work-arounds to problems. You can specify administration details, such as the dates during which the knowledge article is valid, the priority of the knowledge article, or its status. Under the relevant assignment blocks, you can add various pieces of information, such as CIs and transactions, to the knowledge article, as well as assign the knowledge article to other related pieces of information. The sharing tool that is integrated in SAP Solution Manager UI framework enables you to share favorites, predefined search and result lists, tags, or reports with others. The recipients might be individual users, groups, or a business role (UI). With authorizations, you can control who is allowed to share or receive shared objects. Compile knowledge bases for faster searching. When you create a knowledge article in a new language, the system automatically creates a knowledge base index. The system automatically updates an existing index with new or modified knowledge articles. Attach objects, such as documents, outbound campaigns, business partners, and questionnaires to knowledge articles, allowing access to various relevant types of information. Use the autosuggest knowledge articles function available in the service desk. When you select a categorization for a business transaction, the system automatically checks for knowledge articles assigned to that categorization. If they exist, the system displays an alert from which you can navigate directly to the related knowledge articles. Create knowledge articles from a template to save time and also create them in various languages.

51 10.5 ITIL Process Integrations Knowledge Management is closely integrated with other IT process so that it can provide information in any phase and any situation: Incident Management Incidents can have references to one or more knowledge articles. Problem Management Problems can have references to one or more knowledge articles. Change Management Changes or RFCs can have references to one or more knowledge articles. Request Fulfillment Service requests can have references to one or more knowledge articles. Service Catalogue Management Services can have references to knowledge articles. Service Asset and Configuration Management A configuration item (CI) can have references to knowledge articles. Availability Management Procedures of what to do if any unexpected situations are described in the knowledge database and, therefore, are highly available.

52 11 Incident Management 11.1 ITIL Requirement An incident is an unplanned interruption of an IT service or a reduction in the quality of an IT service. The aim of Incident Management is to restore normal service as quickly as possible in order to minimize the negative impact on operations. Incidents are often identified by means of events or alerts, or when the user contacts the service desk. Incidents are categorized for later analysis so that responsibilities can be established. They are also prioritized by urgency and business process impact. If an incident cannot be solved quickly, it can be escalated. A functional escalation forwards the incident to a technical support team with the relevant expertise a hierarchical escalation involves the relevant management levels. Once the incident has been investigated, solved and the solution has been successfully tested, the service desk employee should check that the user is satisfied with the solution before the incident is closed. An Incident Management tool is, therefore, crucial for recording and managing information about the incident SAP Solution Manager Approach Incident Management in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM service documents. These documents are preconfigured and enhanced with ITSM-specific functionalities. There is a standard, preconfigured process that can be automatically set up with a guided configuration procedure. Based on this ready-to-use configuration, customers can adjust the tool to match their individual process adoptions, such as status values, service organization, user roles, escalation procedures, notifications, UI adoptions, and reporting. For individual configurations, SAP offers many standard functionalities that are available in all SAP systems (authorizations, workflows, inbound and outbound channels, and so on) as well as an easy enhancement workbench to make individual field adjustments without the need for coding. SAP Solution Manager comes complete with a reporting engine (SAP BW) that can be used to generate a report based on any field in the document. You can even include this field in a dashboard (highly aggregated management view report). You can find detailed functionality descriptions that are common in all records at: htm Best Practice Process Create an Incident Record If a business process is not working as agreed or an IT service fails, an incident can be reported to the service desk teams using portal access (IT service portal) or a telephone call to the service desk. The incident may contain, but is not restricted to, the following information depending on the status: Short description of the incident, parties involved (reporter, service team, service agent), impact for the business, urgency, priority to resolve the incident,

53 categorization of the incident (business process or service effected), notes (Incident description, solution description, queries to the reporter, answers from the reporter), References to: IT assets or configuration items (CI), master incidents or problems, requests for change, knowledge articles For each incident, SLA information is determined and the time stamps are calculated and stored in the ticket. Process the Incident Record The service desk teams are responsible for the handling and the monitoring of incidents. As a single point of contact (SPOC), they are also responsible for the communication with the customer. If the service desk agent cannot resolve the incident or the issue is not in their area of responsibility, the ticket can be dispatched to specialized groups or an external service provider. For the handling of tickets, the service desk agents can access various sources of information. The information may include IT assets, configuration items (CI), service contracts with service level agreements (SLA), further IT systems, knowledge databases in the intranet or the Internet and other support systems. During the incident process, a query to the reporter may be necessary to solve the incident. During this query period, the service desk agent stays responsible for the incident and may set a reminder to support the monitoring. If a solution for the incident is provided, the ticket is updated and an appropriate solution description is sent to the reporter. If the reporter is satisfied, the incident is confirmed and closed. If no solution can be provided by the service desk agent (first level support), the incident can be dispatched to more specialized teams (second and third level support). Dispatch Incident to Other Service Teams or Agents (Internal and External) Incidents may be dispatched to second or third level teams using rules in the tool or by manual selection of the team or agent. The team is informed by that a new incident needs their attention. Any work is documented directly in the incident. If the team or agent is marked as an external service provider, the incident is forwarded to that service provider and the responsibility for the solution is transferred to the external system. The work is documented in the system of the provider. For monitoring purposes, relevant status information is transferred back to the global tool. Teams or agents who do not have access to the global tool or any other service desk tool may communicate by e- mail with the system. Depending on the assigned status of the ticket, s are sent to the agent with the relevant information of the ticket. Any reply is then sent to the central system and the ticket is updated. Query to the Reporter If the information provided in the incident so far is not sufficient for a solution, the service desk agent may send a query to the reporter requesting more information. The incident status is set to Customer Action. This query is send to the reporter by . The respond to the query can be send directly by to the service desk or the reporter can access the IT service portal to provide the answer in the ticket. In both cases, the SLA clocks are stopped until the answer is provided. The service desk can monitor tickets with the status Customer Action separately. Respond to the Reporter As soon as a solution to the incident / ticket can be provided to the reporter, the service desk agent describes the solution in the note Solution Description and sets the status of the incident to Solution Provided. An informs the reported that a solution can be applied or that the service is working again. The reporter checks if the solution is working and confirms the successful solution. The ticket is closed. If the reporter does not react to the provided solution, the system automatically closes the incident.

54 11.4 Feature and Function Highlights Escalation Process If the IT service is subject to time restrictions in message processing, such as service agreements (SLA), it can use the functions for SLA escalation. The prerequisite for this is that it has defined service times and SLA agreements (that is, reaction and processing times) on the basis of priorities. The IT objects (applications, IT hardware, and so on) have assigned SLAs or you use a service contract to determine SLA times. In addition, the statuses that are not relevant to SLA should be defined in the support, such as customer action or sent to SAP. This means that, over the course of processing the message, processors continuously receive updated, calculated times by which the message should be completed. A color bar in the document shows at all times what percentage of the reaction or processing time has passed. If the percentage reaches 60%, the first escalation status is automatically set. If 90% is reached, the status is raised to escalation level two. You can address this status with separate actions and, if necessary, send s to the processor or team leader to inform them of the escalation. Multilevel Categorization The categorization plays an important role in the Incident and Problem Management process. IT can define various levels. SAP Solution Manager provides a template schema as a starting point for defining your own categories. You first decided how many levels to use. In the standard system, the process is designed for four levels. The person who enters the message only selects the first two levels. The following is an example of a categorization: Level 1: Typing the document (incident, service request, test error, alarm) Level 2: Typing the IT area (SAP, IT hardware, mobile application) Level 3: Typing the error (error message, crash, missing data) Level 4: Specific error (Cannot create data in SM, Error 6734) Good categorization offers fundamental benefits during later processing of the message. The categorization can be used for automatic assignment to a processor or a support team, reducing the workload of the first support level, or even bypassing them completely. The categorization is used to propose knowledge articles with the same category to the processor. These articles can be assigned to the incident and may already provide a solution. The categorization is used to display problem messages with the same category (if any exist) to the incident processor. The processor could, for example, assign the incident to a problem with the same root cause. The category is used as the basis for displaying a template document to the processor. The processor can adopt the template and automatically copy standard texts to the document, such as a standard response for resetting a password. The categorization plays an important role in evaluating incidents in order to identify trends or filter error messages. Further functions and features are described in more detail at:

55 11.5 ITIL Process Integrations Incident Management is closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Problem Management An increase of incidents in a certain area may indicate a problem in the process design of the service. Problem Management can help to identify the root cause and help to put a solution in place. Change Management Incidents may request a change in the configuration of a service in order find a solution to the incident. However, a change may also result in the failure of the service and incidents are created to get the service working again. Service Asset and Configuration Management A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected by a change. Knowledge about the relationship with other CIs supports effective problem solving. Service Level Management The business requirements for a service are described in service level agreements. Service Management offers a tool to monitor the fulfillment of those agreements, especially in the case of failures (reported through incidents). Knowledge Management During incident processing, it is easy to find related knowledge articles that can help the processor find a quick solution for the reported incident. You can also create a knowledge article containing your solution from within the incident message. Event Management Events can automatically trigger the creation of incidents. An appropriate reference back to the event is displayed in the incident message. Request Fulfillment Incidents can be transferred into service requests in case that the user have not chosen the right record type in the self service creation.

56 12 Problem Management 12.1 ITIL Requirement A problem is a cause of one or more incidents. The cause is not usually known at the time a problem record is created and the Problem Management process is responsible for further investigation. Problem Management is responsible for managing the lifecycle of all problems. Problem Management proactively prevents incidents from happening and minimizes the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented SAP Solution Manager Approach Problem Management in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM Service documents. These documents are preconfigured and enhanced with ITSM-specific functionalities. The functionality is equal to Incident Management. There is a standard preconfigured process that can be automatically set up with a guided configuration procedure. Based on this ready-to-use configuration, customers can adjust the tool to match their individual processes, such as status values, service organization, user roles, escalation procedures, notifications, UI adoptions, and reporting. The Problem records in SAP Solution Manager are very similar to the incident or service request record. You can find detailed functionality descriptions that are common in all records here at: htm. Problem records has the ability to allocate multiple incident records to one problem. Data (status, text, and so on) from the problem is then replicated to all referenced incidents. In Problem Management, the causes of disruptions are investigated in order to provide solutions that prevent the disruptive event or at least allow the event to be quickly remedied by means of documented work-arounds. All the information relating to the disruptive event is documented in the problem record. This includes a reference to all the incident messages that were used as the basis for creating the problem. Problem records can also be created initially without a reference to incidents to do a trend analysis to preventing disruptive cases. Problems can also be forwarded to SAP support or follow in RFCs Best Practice Process Create an Incident Record If a number of similar incidents may indicate a problem with a specific service or configuration item, the problem manager can open a problem ticket in order to lock the issue. Incident information may be copied to create a problem ticket in order to reduce manual efforts. A problem ticket may include following information: Short description of the problem Parties involved o Reporter

57 o Problem manager o Service team o Service employee Impact for the business Urgency Priority to resolve the problem Solution classification of the problem Categorization of the problem (business process or service effected) Notes o Problem description o Diagnosis steps o Solution description o Description of workaround o Queries to the reporter o Answers from the reporter Problems may have references to: o IT Assets or CIs o Incidents o RFCs o Knowledge articles (known error, general knowledge article) o Tasks Process the Problem The problem manager is responsible for the Problem Management process and assigns resources to the problem. Problem tickets are mostly analyzed (root cause analysis) and worked through in second and third level support. If the root cause of the problem is known and a work around available, a known error would be documented and referenced to the problem record. The solution of a problem may result in a workaround or in a change of the affected service using Change Management processes. If a workaround for the problem exists the reporter is notified and the underlying incidents may be closed. If a problem solution leads to a change in the service or configuration item a request for change is triggered. After solving the problem successfully, the problem and assigned incidents will be closed. From the problem a knowledge article can be created to support knowledge transfer in the service desk and the organization in order to optimize the Incident Management process Feature and Function Highlights Lock and Unlock Related Incidents If several incidents (or service requests) are probably related to the same root cause, the problem manager can assign these incidents to a problem or a master incident.

58 The problem manager can search for the incidents using the Find Related Incidents option. Find Related Incidents generates a list of incidents that have the same catalog categorization as the problem. The problem manager can select the relevant incidents and assign them to the problem record. To stop individual processing of the incidents, the problem manager can lock the referenced incidents to the problem so that only the problem needs to be processed and the locked incidents are then automatically closed. Problem Follow-Ups The investigation in the Problem Management process can result in known error and appropriate work around descriptions or general solution descriptions that might be helpful for the service desk. SAP Solution Manager allows you to create follow-up records with a preconfigured set of data by transferring data from the problem record to a new record. A typical use case is to create a knowledge article from a known error and transfer the solution text, categorization, and attachments from the problem record to the KA. Further use cases include the creation of tasks to delegate detailed steps provided by different employees. The reference to the previous record is automatically set. In particular, RFCs in SAP Solution Manager are often created from previous problem or incident records. Due to the fact that a lot of data is transferred from the previous record, it is very simple to hand over the process between support teams. Further functions and features are described in more detail at: ITIL Process Integrations Problem Management is closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Incident Management One or more incidents may be the cause for a problem. Depending on the status of the message, different data can be replicated between the problem and the referenced incidents. Change Management Problems may request a change in the configuration of a service in order find a solution to the problem. Service Asset and Configuration Management A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected by a change. Knowledge about the relationship with other CIs supports effective analysis of the problem. Knowledge Management During incident processing, it is easy to find related knowledge articles that can help the processor find a quick solution for the reported incident. You can also create a knowledge article containing your solution or describe work-arounds in known errors from within the incident. Service Level management Provide service times for problem resolving.

59 13 Request Fulfillment 13.1 ITIL Requirement The process is responsible for managing the lifecycle of all service requests. The term service request is a general description for many differing types of user requests. These are formal request from a user for something to be provided for example, a request for information or advice; to reset a password; or to install a workstation for a new user. Service requests are managed by the request fulfillment process, usually in conjunction with the service desk. Many service requests are frequently made on a repeat basis so a predefined procedure - a request model - can be used for processing and fulfilling the order. These types of request models are normally standard changes that have already been preauthorized. The process that the request must fulfill depends to a significant extent on what the request is. These requests are often processed in the same way as incidents in the same tool. There is, however, an essential difference between incidents and service requests. Whereas an incident normally represents an unplanned event, a service request can be planned. Ultimately, it is up to each organization to decide and document which service requests are to be handled using the request fulfillment process and which requests are to be processed using a formal RFC in Change Management SAP Solution Manager Approach Request fulfillment in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM service documents that are preconfigured for Service Requests. The functionalities have been prepared so that clients can establish a request fulfillment process quickly and easily, for example, without having to set up a service catalog first. However, if a service catalog is available you can use this in combination with request fulfillment. There is a standard, preconfigured process that can be automatically set up with a guided configuration procedure. Based on this ready-to-use configuration, customers can adjust the tool to match their individual processes, such as status values, service organization, user roles, escalation procedures, notifications, UI adoptions, and reporting. For individual configurations, SAP offers many standard functionalities that are available in all SAP systems (authorizations, workflows, inbound and outbound channels, and so on) as well as an easy enhancement workbench to make individual field adjustments without the need for coding. SAP Solution Manager comes complete with a reporting engine (SAP BW) that can be used to generate a report based on any field in the document. You can even include this field in a dashboard (highly aggregated management view report). In request fulfillment, the focus is on providing the right input forms for the requester to order the service in combination with a flexible fulfillment model, allowing the service organization to easily define the necessary steps that are executed when a particular service has been ordered. It is possible to create individual input fields per Service as well as individual working instructions for the service execution (called checklists) Service Requests can be created from scratch or directly from the Service Catalog by selecting any of the available services.

60 13.3 Best Practice Process Browser Service Catalog The end user is browsing the service catalog to identify and look for a specific service. They can review all the service descriptions of the services that are available. Finally the user picks a particular service and triggers the fulfillment process by creating a service request. Raise Service Request Once the user has picked a service and chosen the order button, a new service request record is created for this service. The relevant information is taken over automatically from the service catalog or a template that has been attached. The requester fills out the request as much as possible before the request is forwarded to the service organization for processing. Process Service Request The responsible service organization receives the request and triggers the fulfillment process. Based on the service that was chosen, a dedicated list of check-items (including working instructions) is selected by the system automatically or is assigned by the processor. The processor then assigns responsible personnel to carry out the relevant activities, if this is not done automatically based on rules. Closure of Service Request Once the checklist and all relevant activities have been completed, the service request can be closed. It is forwarded to the requester for confirmation. The record is then set to the closed status, which prevents any further changes to this document Feature and Function Highlights Checklists One of the main features for request fulfillment is checklists. The checklist functionality provides the possibility for the client to define multiple lists of activities that need to be carried out. You can use this function for step-by-step task processing by one or more users for transactions, such as service requests. A checklist is a list of steps to be performed by assigned step partners. With checklists, you can select the appropriate checklist from a list of all available checklists for the transaction type that you are creating or editing. Depending on the checklist profile settings you define in Customizing, you can change your selection to a different checklist. However, in this case, the information contained in the previous checklist is removed from the transaction. Insert steps manually into the selected checklist or cancel steps that are not in status Completed and are not set as Mandatory in Customizing, Define checklist step details, for example, required actions for each step and the sequence in which steps are performed. Both sequential and parallel processing of checklist steps is possible. Trigger actions, for example, launch a new transaction, from individual checklist steps. Define rules to determine checklists as well as checklist step partners automatically. Integrate checklists with SAP Business Workflow so that checklist step partners are notified when they have steps to carry out. If workflow is not enabled, step partners can find their assigned steps in the agent inbox or on the search page for their business role. More information about the functionality can also be found in this blog on the SAP Developer Network at:

61 Flexible Input Forms As part of request fulfillment, it is possible to define a custom input form per service. This allows clients to define their own specific user interface for the request fulfillment process, which provides their end users with a tailored form that has been especially designed for this service. When users request a defined service, this form is displayed and allows the users to enter specific data. Example: Equipment Move. This service allows the end user to book an equipment move and has dedicated fields for Current Location, Target Location, and Planned Date. The correct form is selected automatically based on the category of the service that has been ordered. It is possible to define an individual form for each service by using predefined custom fields or creating completely new fields with the application enhancement tool of the UI framework. Financial Management The tool is capable of recording and reporting service fulfillment costs in order to charge the user with the relevant costs for the fulfillment of the service. This data can also be transferred into the SAP ERP for further accounting and controlling of the IT costs. Example: The costs for an individual service fulfillment can be collected in an internal order in ERP. In the internal order, the costs are displayed according to their cost element ITIL Process Integrations Request Fulfillment is closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Service Catalog Management Services that are requested are defined in the service catalog. The solution is integrated with the Service Catalog Management process to allow users to view a detailed description of the service before ordering it. The service catalog also allows you to structure the services that are available to end users because not all services can be ordered using a service request. Change Management As part of the fulfillment process of a service request, it may be necessary to create a request for change. Change Management is integrated so that requests for change can be created and processed easily without losing the context information about the related service request. Service Level Management The business requirements for a service are described in service level agreements. Service Management offers a tool to monitor the fulfillment of those agreements, especially in the case of failures (reported through incidents). This is also important for request fulfillment because the service level agreements often specify a maximum timeframe for service delivery. Service Asset and Configuration Management A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected by a change. Knowledge about the relationship with other CIs supports the effective processing of a request.

62 14 Event Management 14.1 ITIL Requirement According to the ITIL standard, Event Management is a basis for operations since it recommends the ability to detect events, define alerts, and create automatic notifications in order to support an appropriate control action. In addition, it provides a way of comparing actual performance and behavior against design standards and SLAs. The process is responsible for managing events throughout their lifecycle. Event management is one of the main activities of IT operations 14.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach The general approach for event management in SAP Solution Manager is the comprehensive framework for Application Operations combined with an integrated data warehouse solution, the SAP Business Warehouse (BW). This allows an integrated technical approach for Capacity Management, Availability Management, and Event Management. The monitoring and alerting infrastructure provides the functionality to monitor all relevant technical components, SAP and non-sap components regarding capacity and availability. For all these metrics, exists thresholds for event and alerting options. Furthermore SAP BW, the professional data warehouse tool, is fed with availability and capacity and provides a standard reporting on these data Best Practice Process Central Configuration After connecting the data provider and managed object to SAP Solution Manager, the central configuration is performed with a step-by-step configuration wizard that supports the customer with further configuration. Different functionalities, such as auto-incidents, notification settings, or the connection to third-party components can be adjusted according to customer needs. For the different managed objects, SAP delivers templates that can be used right away, or easily adjusted to customer needs. Best Practice Templates The templates contain SAP Best Practices and Standards for Event Management and can be extended and customized depending on the customers landscape requirements. For example, activation and deactivation of metrics and alerts, modifications to thresholds, configuration of auto-reactions, such as Incident Management, or notifications and custom text for adding instructions or links to help with problem resolution. In a custom template (copy of a SAP template) it is also possible to create custom alerts based on custom metrics. This allows a customer to create alerts based on metrics that are deemed important but are not included

63 in the standard. A customer can also create metrics based on preexisting data providers or from custom data providers.

64 Alert Inbox The alert inbox is the central access point to handle alerts that have been generated by the different monitoring scenarios. It provides customers with an efficient alert handling process based on consolidation of single alerts to alert groups, a personalized view of existing alerts, drill down capabilities from alert type to alert groups and single metrics, and an integration of root cause analysis and collaboration features. The generated alerts can be handled directly in the alert inbox or forwarded to other channels such as incidents, e- mail, text messages, or third-party applications. The alert inbox also offers close integration with the various administration and reporting capabilities of SAP Solution Manager Feature and Function Highlights Open Infrastructure The monitoring and alerting infrastructure (MAI) alert inbox already supports forwarding of alerts as s, text messages, and incidents and there is usually no need for any further external implementation for common consumers. E2E MAI, however, also includes a set of open interfaces known as Alert Consumer Connector. If alerts with all important attributes are to be forwarded to any other tool as well, this interface needs to be implemented in appropriate way by the customer. E2E MAI Alert Consumer Connector (E2E MAI ACC, or referred to simply as ACC) can to Push alerts to external applications when they occur. By default, there is no mechanism supported for any external applications to Pull a set of alerts from a store. This is consistent with the notion of explicit interfacing rather than unwarranted copy and use of data between E2E MAI and any external application. Auto Reaction Once an alert has occurred in a managed object, Solution Manager displays it in the alert inbox. If you have configured the standard autonotification and auto-incident creation features for the alert type, Solution Manager sends notification by or text messages and creates an incident. This configuration should be carried out during Solution Manager Configuration in Technical Monitoring. ACC supports a mechanism through which any arbitrary code execution is possible as an automatic reaction to selected alert types. Code executed in this way is referred to as Automatic Reaction to Alerts or just Autoreaction. E2E MAI does not ship any autoreaction code other than the standard autonotification and auto-incident creation features described above and, therefore, E2E MAI does not know the effect of such autoreactions. Examples: Alerts may be forwarded to an external application, script may be triggered, or a work flow may be started as an autoreaction. ACC only defines a set of interface methods that can be implemented by one or more classes. Each implementation is an autoreaction that ACC invokes at an appropriate time. Technical Analytics In addition to the central SAP Solution Manager, where all administration, monitoring, alerting, and diagnostics takes place, Technical Analytics provides an aggregated overview of the different managed objects' behavior over a period of time; provides dashboards to visualize the trends in various categories such as availability, performance, exceptions, capacity and usage. It offers real-time SLA management and reporting to administrators, managers, and customers. Based on the trend analysis, optimization of internal processes and IT setups is more efficient. Jump-in capability in metric viewer with zoom functionality feature offers customers great flexibility to go from high level overview to in depth details in matter of few clicks. Technical Analytics can be broadly classified into two groups: Technical Reporting and Management Reporting offering a wide variety of reports addressing the needs of management and technical teams alike. Some of the reports include documentbased reports, highly interactive reports, customizable reports, and management dashboards.

65 14.5 ITIL Process Integrations Event Management is closely integrated with other ITIL processes: Capacity Management For relevant capacity KPIs, you can easily define thresholds and alerting in the integrated infrastructure. Capacity monitoring and event alerting can be performed without any tool breaches. Incident Management For occurring events, you can easily customize whether automatic notifications are sent to defined recipients. In the SAP Solution Manager integrated ticket system, you can easily create s, text messages,, and incident notifications. Service Asset and Configuration Management The services and components overviews in the monitoring capabilities of SAP Solution Manager allow you to drill down directly from the monitored CIs to the related information stored in the CMS. Availability Management The monitoring infrastructure is completely integrated with the event and alerting infrastructure. For services, technical components, and each measured performance or capacity KPI, it is possible to define the detection of events and production of notifications. Knowledge Management Reference between event and KA via incident.

66 15 IT Service Continuity Management 15.1 ITIL Requirement IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM) is an integral part of the overall Business Continuity Management process. The goal of ITSCM is to ensure that the minimum required IT technical and all service facilities can be resumed within required, and agreed, business timescales after a disaster loss of normal service operation SAP Solution Manager Approach Due to the nature of the ITSCM process mainly documentation features, e.g. the process documentation and documents handling, are playing a key role in organizing ITSCM with SAP Solution Manager. The process itself may be documented and organized via the solution documentation features of SAP Solution Manager. Process steps and responsibilities are documented and all relevant documents can be assigned to different process steps. All service relevant information, e.g. the unavailability costs of IT services over time in case of a disaster or the required minimum configuration of an IT service can be documented in the Configuration Items in the ibase or within SAP IT Infrastructure Management. Documented service dependencies support in creating a business impact analysis and help identifying single points of failure. Vital business functions can also be documented in the solution documentation and business blueprint area of SAP Solution Manager. The integrated Test Workbench allows to define and organize regular disaster recovery tests. When establishing a tool supported ITSCM process it is extremely important to consider that the supporting tool could also be affected by the loss of IT capabilities. That means it cannot be simply relied on the availability of all relevant operational documents in case of a disaster. The availability of these documents like the ITSCM plan or communication plans has to be assured by different approaches, e.g. by printed versions that are kept up-to-date and that are stored at secure places. High availability of SAP Solution Manager could be set up! 15.3 Best Practice Process Initiation During the initiation phase the ITSCM process is established within the IT organization. During this design phase the complete process with process steps, responsibilities and relevant documents will be maintained in the blueprint area of SAP Solution Manager. Maintain the standard steps of the process and individual steps and maintain the process steps documentation and attributes. If ITSCM and BCM are implemented as

67 projects use the project administration capabilities of SAP Solution Manager additionally. Policies and other documents can be stored in the project and blueprinting area of SAP Solution Manager. Requirements and Strategy In the Requirements and Strategy Phase maintain service information or use existing service information. If not yet available add minimum configuration information for all critical IT services in the services definition (ibase or SAP IT Infrastructure Management). Use documented dependencies for conducting a Business Impact Analysis. The results of this analysis may also be stored in the project and blueprint area. Additional information for the risk analysis and management can be taken from SLD, LMDB and the Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure (MAI) e.g. by considering information from the monitoring trees. Furthermore recovery options may be planned and documented in SAP Solution Manager. Contracts and recovery procedures can also be stored in the blueprinting area. Implementation During the implementation phase the ITSC plan and other relevant documents as the Emergency Response Plan, a Vital Records Plan, a Crisis Management and Publiuc Relations Plan, Personnel Plans or the Security Plan are produced and stored in the blueprinting area of SAP Solution Manager. All plans will be classified with the current document status and document version. Furthermore walk-through tests, full tests, partial tests or scenario tests are designed and maintained in the Test Workbench of SAP Solution Manager. These tests may be assigned to the already documented business processes and grouped in special test plans or the test cases and descriptions can be maintained in a special recovery testing SAP Solution Manager project or the ITSCM project. Ongoing Operation During the ongoing operation some additional plans and schedules may be created and stored in SAP Solution Manager. However it is mainly important to regularly conduct and document tests and to keep all relevant documents up-to-date. Especially the latter must be part of the Change Management process. In case of any major change the ITSC documents have to be updated or checked at least once a year. Invocation In case of a disaster invocation all information can be taken from SAP Solution Manager if it is not affected by the disaster. In this case all information is available and features from other processes or SAP Solution Manager features such as Incident Management, Configuration Management or the Monitoring and Alerting Infrastructure can be used for implementing counter measures. If SAP Solution Manager is not available the securely stored external versions of all documents have to be used.

68 Alert Inbox The alert inbox is the central access point to handle alerts that have been generated by the different monitoring scenarios. It provides customers with an efficient alert handling process based on consolidation of single alerts to alert groups, a personalized view of existing alerts, drill down capabilities from alert type to alert groups and single metrics, and an integration of root cause analysis and collaboration features. The generated alerts can be handled directly in the alert inbox or forwarded to other channels such as incidents, e- mail, text messages, or third-party applications. The alert inbox also offers close integration with the various administration and reporting capabilities of SAP Solution Manager Feature and Function Highlights The ITSCM implementation with SAP Solution Manager mainly bases on well-known standard features of the system. IT Calendar Planning of periodic disaster recovery tests The IT Calender in the Technical Administration Work Center within SAP Solution Manager provides the possibility of a periodic scheduling of the disaster revcovery tests and allows to align these tests with planned maintenance windows. Project Administration and Business Blueprint The project administration and business blueprint features of SAP Solution Manager in the transactions SOLAR01 and SOLAR02 are used for the project administration (in case ITSCM will be implemented via a project), for blueprinting and documenting the process ITSCM and for storing all process related documents. If business processes are also maintained in the business blueprint attributes for identifying Vital Business Functions may be maintained. Service Definition Besides the business blueprint all IT services and components are recorded via SAP Solution Manager capabilities for Asset & Configuration Management. For details comp. chapter Asset & Configuration Management. ITSCM simply uses the same capabilities for the documentation of minimum configurations and uses information about dependencies between configuration items as input for risk analysis and risk management. Test Workbench The SAP Solution Manager Test Workbench is also a well-known functionality of SAP Solution Manager. In a suitable Solution Manager project, e.g. the general ITSCM project or a special ITSCM testing project the test cases that have to be conducted for a disaster recovery test are maintained and described. These test cases are grouped in test plans and test packages that may be assigned to testers. The test cases must contain detailed descriptions of the testing steps that have to be conducted during a test run. Results will also be maintained via Test Workbench features. Test cases, descriptions and test plans have to be kept up-to-date ITIL Process Integrations The IT Service Continuity Management needs an integration with further ITIL processes: Change Management. Changes to the infrastructure and IT Services may affect the plans, procedures and counter measures that have been established in ITSCM. Therefore close collaboration between both processes is

69 crucial for the process ability of ITSCM and also BCM. At least for major changes the effects on ITSCM procedures must be assessed and if necessary changes also to the ITSCM planning must be implemented. On the other hand changes for establishing counter measures for disaster losses of services or recovery options obviously have to be implemented under control of Change Management. Service Asset and Configuration Management. A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected in case of the loss of the CI. The knowledge about the relation to other CIs supports the conduction of an impact analysis. Minimum configurations can also be described in the CMDB. Service Level Management. The Business Requirements for a service and also the minimum configuration required in case of a disaster are described within Service Level Agreements. The Service Management offers a tool to monitor the fulfillment of those agreements especially in case of failures. Availability Management and Security Management. Risk analyses for ITSCM, Availability Management and Security Management have different focus however all three may use the same information and same methods. Despite the different focusses of these three processes there are several tasks that should not be done redundantly.

70 Material Number 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP AG. The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice. Some software products marketed by SAP AG and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors. National product specifications may vary. These materials are provided by SAP AG and its affiliated companies ( SAP Group ) for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP Group shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP Group products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.