SAP Sharpens Application Management Tool to Help Customers Easily Master

SAP Sharpens Application Management Tool to Help Customers Easily Master Their IT Environments
New SAP® Solution Manager Drives Bottom-Line Benefits from Top-Ranking SAP Standard Support


HANOVER, Germany - March 09, 2006 - Continuing its strong track record of offering customers unparalleled value in support services, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced the latest version of the proven SAP® Solution Manager, a set of tools, content, services and best practices from SAP to help customers increase the reliability of their solutions, enhance support for all aspects of their solution deployment and drive down the associated costs of managing their IT environments. The new SAP Solution Manager offers enhanced support for collaboration between SAP and customers’ support organizations, a new interface that integrates help-desk products from third parties, as well as best-in-class remote diagnostic capabilities for Java-based solutions. The announcement was made at the CeBIT 2006 trade fair, being held in Hanover, Germany, March 9-15.

SAP Solution Manager is provided to customers at no additional costs. With the new enhancements available by the end of March 2006, the new SAP Solution Manager will offer:

New features to better support project management, including project documentation, task assignments, integration of related services and project-related knowledge exchange. A central and up-to-date overview of current issues enables accelerated resolution and offers links to related content in SAP Solution Manager. Improved knowledge transfer caters to faster integration of SAP experts into customer projects.
End-to-end diagnostic capability to centrally analyze and monitor a complete system landscape based on the SAP NetWeaver® platform, including Java components and third-party applications. Enablement of accelerated root-cause analysis through tighter integration with service desk or monitoring for cross-component processes.
Bi-directional interface for the exchange of messages between SAP Solution Manager and third-party help-desk applications. This enables the service desk in SAP Solution Manager to be integrated into help-desk applications of the existing customer support infrastructure. Customers thus can leverage investments and experience and optimize support processes.

“SAP has added important new capabilities to SAP Solution Manager to complement its business solutions and help customers tap the greatest possible value every day from their investments in SAP software,” said Uwe Hommel, senior vice president, SAP Active Global Support. “With the new version of SAP Solution Manager, we are going the extra mile to support our customers faster and more pro-actively by adding the new collaboration features that bring to bear the combined know-how of our worldwide network of SAP experts.”

“HP successfully worked with the SAP development team to connect HP OpenView Service Desk to SAP Solution Manager,” said Hartmut Braun, worldwide alliance manager, Technology Services, HP. “HP contributed to the definition and development of an open Web services-based interface to link SAP Solution Manager to service desk solutions, like HP Open View Service Desk, as an important step toward enabling customers to leverage existing investments in enterprise IT service management solutions, while at the same time reaping the full benefits of SAP Solution Manager.”

Managing the SOA Transition with SAP Solution Manager
Support that is modeled around business execution becomes increasingly important as companies transition their IT from traditional architectures to leverage the advantages of new services-based architectures. The roadmap to SAP’s business-driven approach to SOA, known as enterprise services architecture (ESA), is enabled by SAP’s market leading platform, SAP NetWeaver, which provides service-enabled, ready-to-use business processes on top of a greatly simplified technology platform. Many of the support services and tools offered by SAP, including the new version of SAP Solution Manager, are designed to help customers effectively manage their current SAP environment, efficiently transition to ESA and fully realize their IT investment goals.

“We were convinced by the enhanced collaboration and diagnostics capabilities of SAP Solution Manager” said Dr. Volker Manns, head of SAP-Basis, ThyssenKrupp Steel AG. “As we wanted to leverage those as quickly as possible we decided to join the Ramp Up program right from the beginning. The upgrade from SAP Solution Manager 3.2 to Release 4.0 was an easy exercise and we are looking forward to using SAP Solution Manager for cost effective management of our SAP NetWeaver landscapes.”

SAP at CeBIT 2006
SAP’s main booth at CeBIT is in hall 4, stands D12/D28; SAP’s booth for public sector organizations is in hall 9, booth E37.

About SAP® Solution Manager
SAP® Solution Manager is an application management platform addressing the entire IT environment, supporting SAP and non-SAP software and covering current and forthcoming SAP solutions. It supports the connection between business processes and the underlying IT infrastructure. As a result, it eases communication between an IT department and its lines of business. It combines tools, content, and direct access to SAP to increase the reliability of solutions and reduce the total cost of ownership. SAP Solution Manager is available for SAP customers free of charge