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<White Paper><SAP Solution Manager >Document Version: 1.0 – 2013-10-01

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ITIL ver.2011 with SAP Solution Manager15 ITIL Pink Elephant certified processes mapped with SAP SolutionManager capabilities

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Typographic Conventions

Type Style Description

Example 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.

Example Emphasized words or expressions.

EXAMPLE Technical names of system objects. These include report names, program names,transaction codes, table names, and key concepts of a programming language when theyare surrounded by body text, for example, SELECT and INCLUDE.

Example 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 anddatabase tools.

Example Exact user entry. These are words or characters that you enter in the system exactly as theyappear in the documentation.

<Example> Variable user entry. Angle brackets indicate that you replace these words and characterswith appropriate entries to make entries in the system.

EXAMPLE Keys on the keyboard, for example, F2 or ENTER .

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Document History

Version Date Change

1.0 <01.10.2013> <Initial version >

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Table of contents

1 Financial Management ............................................................................................................................. 71.1 ITIL Requirement ..................................................................................................................................................... 71.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ........................................................................................................................... 81.3 Best Practice Process ............................................................................................................................................. 91.4 Feature and Function Highlights .......................................................................................................................... 101.5 ITIL Process Integrations ...................................................................................................................................... 10

2 Service Portfolio Management ............................................................................................................... 112.1 ITIL Requirement .................................................................................................................................................... 112.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ......................................................................................................................... 122.3 Best Practice Process ........................................................................................................................................... 132.4 ITIL Process Integrations ...................................................................................................................................... 13

3 Service Catalog Management ............................................................................................................... 143.1 ITIL Requirement ................................................................................................................................................... 143.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ......................................................................................................................... 153.3 Best Practice Process ........................................................................................................................................... 173.4 Feature and Function Highlights .......................................................................................................................... 183.5 ITIL Process Integrations ...................................................................................................................................... 19

4 Service Level Management ................................................................................................................... 204.1 ITIL Requirement ...................................................................................................................................................204.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ......................................................................................................................... 214.3 Best Practice Process ........................................................................................................................................... 234.4 Feature and Function Highlights .......................................................................................................................... 244.5 ITIL Process Integrations ...................................................................................................................................... 25

5 Capacity Management .......................................................................................................................... 265.1 ITIL Requirement ................................................................................................................................................... 265.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ......................................................................................................................... 265.3 Best Practice Process ........................................................................................................................................... 265.4 Feature and Function Highlights .......................................................................................................................... 275.5 ITIL Process Integrations ...................................................................................................................................... 29

6 Availability Management ...................................................................................................................... 306.1 ITIL Requirement .................................................................................................................................................. 306.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ........................................................................................................................ 306.3 Best Practice Process .......................................................................................................................................... 306.4 Feature and Function Highlights .......................................................................................................................... 316.5 ITIL Process Integrations ...................................................................................................................................... 32

7 Change Management .............................................................................................................................337.1 ITIL Requirement ................................................................................................................................................... 337.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ......................................................................................................................... 33

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7.3 Best Practice Process .......................................................................................................................................... 347.4 Feature and Function Highlights ......................................................................................................................... 357.5 ITIL Process Integrations ......................................................................................................................................37

8 Service Asset and Configuration Management....................................................................................398.1 ITIL Requirement .................................................................................................................................................. 398.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ........................................................................................................................ 398.3 Best Practice Process ........................................................................................................................................... 418.4 ITIL Process Integrations ..................................................................................................................................... 44

9 Release and Deployment Management ................................................................................................459.1 ITIL Requirement .................................................................................................................................................. 459.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ........................................................................................................................ 459.3 Best Practice Process .......................................................................................................................................... 469.4 Feature and Function Highlights ......................................................................................................................... 469.5 ITIL Process Integrations ..................................................................................................................................... 48

10 Knowledge Management ...................................................................................................................... 4910.1 ITIL Requirement .................................................................................................................................................. 4910.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ........................................................................................................................ 4910.3 Best Practice Process .......................................................................................................................................... 4910.4 Feature and Function Highlights ......................................................................................................................... 5010.5 ITIL Process Integrations ...................................................................................................................................... 51

11 Incident Management ............................................................................................................................ 5211.1 ITIL Requirement .................................................................................................................................................. 5211.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ........................................................................................................................ 5211.3 Best Practice Process .......................................................................................................................................... 5211.4 Feature and Function Highlights ......................................................................................................................... 5411.5 ITIL Process Integrations ..................................................................................................................................... 55

12 Problem Management ............................................................................................................................ 5612.1 ITIL Requirement .................................................................................................................................................. 5612.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ........................................................................................................................ 5612.3 Best Practice Process .......................................................................................................................................... 5612.4 Feature and Function Highlights .......................................................................................................................... 5712.5 ITIL Process Integrations ..................................................................................................................................... 58

13 Request Fulfillment................................................................................................................................ 5913.1 ITIL Requirement .................................................................................................................................................. 5913.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ........................................................................................................................ 5913.3 Best Practice Process .......................................................................................................................................... 6013.4 Feature and Function Highlights ......................................................................................................................... 6013.5 ITIL Process Integrations ...................................................................................................................................... 61

14 Event Management ................................................................................................................................6214.1 ITIL Requirement .................................................................................................................................................. 6214.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach ........................................................................................................................ 6214.3 Best Practice Process .......................................................................................................................................... 6214.4 Feature and Function Highlights ......................................................................................................................... 64

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14.5 ITIL Process Integrations ...................................................................................................................................... 65

15 IT Service Continuity Management ..................................................................................................... 6615.1 ITIL Requirement ...................................................................................................................................................6615.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach .........................................................................................................................6615.3 Best Practice Process ...........................................................................................................................................6615.4 Feature and Function Highlights ..........................................................................................................................6815.5 ITIL Process Integrations ......................................................................................................................................68

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 Objective

Financial Management Support Define the necessary structures for the management of financial planningdata and costs, as well as for the allocation of costs to services.

Financial Planning Determine the required financial resources over the next planning period(IT budget) and allocate those resources for optimum benefits.

Financial Analysis andReporting

Analyze the structure of service provisioning cost and the profitability ofservices. The resulting financial analysis allows Service PortfolioManagement to make informed decisions when making changes to theservice portfolio.

Service Invoicing Issue invoices for the provision of services and transmission of the invoiceto the customer.

The following roles and responsibilities occur in Financial Management:

Role Description

Financial Manager (ProcessOwner)

The financial manager is responsible for managing an IT service provider'sbudgeting, accounting, and charging requirements.

1.2 SAP Solution Manager Approach

To depict the Financial Management ITIL process in SAP Solution Manager, SAP ERP is used as a CMDB. Severalbusiness scenarios are used. The table below describes the SAP Solution Manager approach for each of the ITILFinancial Management subprocesses:

Subprocess SAP Solution Manager Approach

FinancialManagementSupport

Pricing and billing is provided by the SAP Solution Manager pricing module and the billingengine.

The framework for planning and analyzing financial data and costs is provided by theControlling (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 SAPERP.

FinancialPlanning

The framework for planning and analyzing financial data and costs is provided by theControlling module of SAP ERP. This also includes the allocation of costs to services.

FinancialAnalysis andReporting

The framework for analyzing actual financial data and costs is provided by the Controllingmodule 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 theControlling object (internal order or profitability segment).The actual use of spare parts is transferred to the Materials Management (MM) modulefirst and subsequently to the controlling object (internal order or profitability segment).

Service ProcessWhen creating a service process in SAP CRM, the characteristics relevant for CO must beextracted. This information is used to create a Controlling object for this service process.

Service ContractWhen creating a service contract in SAP CRM, the characteristics relevant for CO must beextracted. A CO object for the service contract and its characteristics is also created.

Actual ConfirmationAn actual confirmation has no reference to a service process or service contract.Therefore, in the case of an actual confirmation, the Controlling-relevant characteristicsmust be extracted directly from the confirmation and transferred to CATS/MM togetherwith the data necessary for posting. A Controlling object with the relevant characteristicsis then created directly for the actual confirmation.

Further information concerning the Controlling integration can be found under thefollowing links:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_crm700_ehp01/helpdata/en/46/5dda00a04902f9e10000000a1553f6/content.htm?frameset=/en/46/55084691441ca4e10000000a155369/frameset.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_crm700_ehp01/helpdata/en/0a/4d88ef587649f4a9d16bf34c487fe6/frameset.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_crm60/helpdata/fr/59/b9383fdb800804e10000000a114084/frameset.htm

Service Invoicing Several invoicing scenarios are covered by SAP Solution Manager:








Billing After Contract ReleaseThe 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 requestresulting from a complaint.

Transaction-Related Billing After Completion

The order quantity is billed once a transaction (usually a service order or a serviceconfirmation) is completed.

Further information about billing can be found at the following links:

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_crm700_ehp01/helpdata/en/46/5501d391441ca4e10000000a155369/frameset.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_crm700_ehp01/helpdata/en/46/55084691441ca4e10000000a155369/content.htm?frameset=/en/46/5501d091441ca4e10000000a155369/frameset.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 isautomatically 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 objectinternal 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: Forexample, if a spare part is used and documented in the service confirmation, a goods issue is automaticallyposted, thereby updating the inventory in MM.

The hours used by the service technician are also documented in the service confirmation. They aretransferred 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 fromSAP Solution Manager, a profitability analysis is performed in the module CO-PA. This analysis provides agreater insight into the profitability of services and customers.






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 serviceconfirmation.

Tight Integration with Controlling Module (CO)

The service processing in SAP Solution Manager is tightly integrated with the Controlling module in ERP. Servicerecords 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 theservice 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 inERP. Service confirmations for spare parts in SAP Solution Manager trigger automatic postings in thecorresponding 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 thecosts 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 whencompiling a request for change. An approved budget request means that the required financial resources forimplementing 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

2 Service Portfolio Management


Service Portfolio Management (SPM) involves proactive management of the investment throughout the servicelifecycle, including those services in the concept, design, and transition pipeline, as well as live services defined inthe various service catalogues and retired services.

The process responsible for managing the service portfolio. Service portfolio management ensures that theservice provider has the right mix of services to meet required business outcomes at an appropriate level ofinvestment. 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 managethe 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, howwell the existing service portfolio meets these needs, which service assets are required for the servicestrategy, and how to align and prioritize to meet demands.

Approve: Finalization of the desired future state of the service portfolio and authorization for retention ofappropriate 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 theexecution of actions to promote newly chartered services into service design, refresh selected existingservices 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 isresponsible for managing this service as a product over the entire lifecycle.


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 managementcapabilities.

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 PortfolioManagement, monitor project status - including information about project resources - and manage your entireproject portfolio. You can align activities, resources, and budgets with business priorities, allowing for increasedportfolio transparency, timely monitoring of portfolio performance, easier resource forecasting, avoidance ofbottlenecks, and improved decision making. These project and Portfolio Management solutions in SAP ERP, SAPPLM, and SAP xApps composite applications seamlessly integrate with one another to give you optimalmanagement tools. In addition, effective project and Portfolio Management functions allow you to poolinformation from different project management areas, such as HR, finance, and time-recording systems. As aresult, 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 requirementticket. These requirements are related to a service portfolio item and are managed as part of the Service PortfolioManagement process. The phases of the service portfolio item are reflected by the status of the service asset inthe 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 andchange documents.


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



Each service portfolio item has a corresponding service asset (service CI) in the CMS. The status of the service CImust 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 improvethe IT service and avoid interruptions to the service in the future.

Change Management

Change Management implements the requirements from Service Portfolio Management. The respective requestsfor 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 CIswith 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

3 Service Catalog Management


ITIL Service Catalog Management aims to ensure that a service catalog is produced and maintained, containingaccurate information on all operational services and those being prepared for operation. Service CatalogManagement 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 orUCs) that are part of the technical catalog.

The service catalog is a database or structured document containing information about all live services, includingthose available for deployment. The service catalog is the only part of the service portfolio published to customersand is used to support the sale and delivery of IT services. The service catalog includes information aboutdeliverables, prices, contact points, ordering, and request processes.

The following roles and responsibilities occur in Service Catalog Management:

Role Description

Service Catalog Manager(Process Owner)

The service catalog manager is responsible for maintaining the servicecatalog, ensuring that all information in the service catalog is accurate andup-to-date.

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Level_Management#SLA

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Level_Management#OLA

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Supplier_Management#UC

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Portfolio_Management#Service_Portfolio

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Catalogue_Management#Service_Catalogue

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Catalogue_Management#Service_Catalogue


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 containsphysical products, in the context of an ITIL service catalog, it only contains services. In this document, the termservice 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 SolutionManager.

While in other business scenarios (for example, a sales scenario), the SAP CRM product hierarchy mostlycontains 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. Thepurpose 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-levelcategories inherit the set types from the higher-level category. Additional set types can be assigned to lower-levelcategories.

A service can be assigned to more than one category as long as the categories belong to different hierarchies. Aservice can, therefore, only be assigned to one category in each hierarchy.

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 Managementprocess, the following set types are relevant:

Prices

Prices are used for pricing purposes in business transactions (for example, service orders or contracts). Theyare based on the condition technique and enable pricing information to be determined from the pricingcondition records you create for the service concerned.

The mechanism by which prices are calculated is extremely complex. It enables a number of prices to becalculated, such as gross price, discount, and surcharge, which might be relevant for a certain customer or ona certain date.

The data required for calculating the price can be derived from the pricing information specified for a serviceorder, 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 thisservice.

CI Object Model Related to the Service

Relates the service to the logical and physical CIs that are required to provide the service.


The creation of service records is part of Service Portfolio Management (not Service Catalog Management). Whena service record is made available for deployment (by SPM), it can be transferred to the service catalog by theService 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 Usergains 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. Theservice can be divided in several material requirements, service requests and license requirements. Each ofthem 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 betriggered.

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 SAPCRM.

The Service Request is processed in SAP Solution Manager according the process described in chapter ofRequest Fulfillment.


Creation of a Service Catalog

The service catalog manager creates a new service catalog, maintains the header data, including validity, and setsthe 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 theservice hierarchy into the service catalog, assigns services to the service catalog, and sets the status of therelevant 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 particularbusiness partners or target groups. For example, they can prevent certain customers from seeing certain servicesin the catalog. The views contain particular areas and items from a main catalog and are visible only to assignedrecipients. 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 generatecatalogs in several languages, currencies, or distribution chains on the basis of the same set of data. The servicelevel 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 forthe customer's organization.


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 fordeployment, they are transferred to Service Catalog Management.


Services can be offered in different service levels in the service catalog.


In the technical service catalog, you can see the CI object model, which is provided by Service Asset andConfiguration Management.

Change Management

When the end user selects a service from the service catalog, this can lead to a request for change andsubsequent change.


Provides data of service order into FM

Request Fulfillment

Service Order can result in service requests. They are processed in RF

4 Service Level Management


ITIL Service Level Management (SLM) aims to negotiate service level agreements (SLAs) with the customers andto design services in accordance with the agreed service level targets. Service Level Management is alsoresponsible for ensuring that all operational level agreements (OLAs) and underpinning contracts are appropriateand for monitoring and reporting on service levels.

The table below describes the SLM subprocesses and their objectives:

Subprocess Objective

Maintenance of the SLMFramework

Design and maintain the underlying structure of the customer agreementportfolio and provide templates for the various SLM documents.

Identification of ServiceRequirements

Identify desired outcomes (requirements from the customer viewpoint) fornew services or major service modifications. The service requirementsmust be documented and submitted for initial evaluation so thatalternatives can be found at an early stage for requirements that are nottechnically or economically feasible.

Agreements Sign-Off andService Activation

Have all relevant contracts signed off after completion of service transitionand check whether service acceptance criteria have been fulfilled. Inparticular, this process makes sure that all relevant OLAs are signed off bytheir service owners and that the SLA is signed off by the customer.

Service Level Monitoring andReporting

Monitor achieved service levels and compare them with agreed servicelevel targets (service level report). This information is circulated tocustomers and all other relevant parties as a basis for measures to improveservice quality.

The following roles and responsibilities occur in Service Level Management:

Role Description

Service Level Manager(Process Owner)

The service level manager is responsible for negotiating service levelagreements and ensuring that these are met. They make sure that all ITService Management processes, operational level agreements andunderpinning contracts are appropriate for the agreed service level targets.The service level manager also monitors and reports on service levels.

Service Owner The service owner is responsible for delivering a particular service in theagreed service levels. Typically, they act as the counterpart of the servicelevel manager when negotiating OLAs. Often, the service owner will lead ateam of technical specialists or an internal support unit.

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Level_Management#Customer_Agreement_Portfolio

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Level_Management#Customer_Agreement_Portfolio

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Level_Management#SLM_Document_Templates

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Level_Management#Service_Requirements

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Level_Management#SAC

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Level_Management#OLA

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Level_Management#Service_Owner

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Level_Management#SLA

http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Service_Level_Management#Service_Level_Report


To depict the Service Level Management ITIL process in SAP Solution Manager, several business scenarios areused:

SAP CRM Service Contract Management is used to document service level agreements (SLAs), operational levelagreements (OLAs) and underpinning contracts (UCs).

SLAs, OLAs, and UCs are represented in the SAP Solution Manager as different record types. These record typesare 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 datesdefined 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 theprocessing should be completed. The corresponding dates (first response date and completion date) arecalculated based on these periods and with reference to the service profile in the service process, which is createdwith 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 quantitativetarget 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 predefinedperiod.

The promised service (such as maintenance or hotline) is defined at contract item level. The following data is alsomaintained 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 stipulatedin the contract item.

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 coveredcompletely, 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 thatthe installation of service parts should be billed at USD 25 per hour. If contractually agreed service processesare 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 billingare 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 tobilling 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 processingtime (MPT) are monitored. Plan values are calculated with the help of the service profile and response profile thatare defined in the SLA, OLA, and UC records. Reporting capabilities are available to compare planned and actualvalues.


The process sequence below describes the creation of a service requirement. After collection and evaluation ofthe service requirements, a service contract (of type service level agreement) is created as a follow-up record tothe service requirement. Both are linked to each other, which means that at any time, the service requirement canbe 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 businessprocesses.

2. Create service requirement

You create a service requirement. A service requirement identifies the desired outcome (requirements fromthe customer viewpoint) for new services or major service modifications. Service requirements can contain areference to the customer, the service provider, prices, as well as releasable products and services. Theseconditions and products can be valid for service contracts that are created with reference to this servicerequirement.

3. Create items in service requirement

You create the items in the service requirement. In the system, you create the services that should be agreedupon 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 takeprecedence 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 thecontext 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 beclaimed.

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 tothe controlling object, or an existing controlling object is assigned to the service contract.


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 determinedautomatically. An access sequence is processed to determine the service profile and response profile from anexisting 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 bydate) are calculated.

This functionality is available for service orders, incidents, service requests, and requests for change. As it isperformed on item level, a record with several items (for example, a request for change) could have a separatedate 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 thestandard 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 cansee 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. Actualprocessing times are recorded and compared with the planned dates. Thresholds can be defined and monitored.




When an end user orders a service from the service catalog, the corresponding service level can be automaticallydetermined using the underlying SLA.

Incident Management

When an incident is created, the service profile and response profile can be automatically determined to calculatethe 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 tocalculate the planned dates for first reaction and completion of the change.


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


Provide data for pricing

5 Capacity Management


The process responsible for ensuring that the capacity of IT services and the IT infrastructure is able to meetagreed capacity- and performance-related requirements in a cost-effective and timely manner. Capacitymanagement considers all resources required to deliver an IT service, and is concerned with meeting both thecurrent 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 tocurrent and future needs of the business. The main activities are monitoring the current capacity demand andpredicting the future capacity demand from a business, technical, and component point of view. Besides technicalmonitoring, typical activities include observing trends and capacity tuning, optimizing the capacity demand byproposing business activities, scheduling, modeling, and sizing activities.


Capacity Management in SAP Solution Manager is a comprehensive framework for monitoring and alertingcombined with an integrated data warehouse solution, the SAP Business Warehouse (BW). This allows anintegrated technical approach for Capacity Management, Availability Management, and Event Management.

The monitoring and alerting infrastructure in SAP Solution Manager provides the functionality to monitor thecapacity 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 thesethresholds.

This data is persisted in the integrated SAP Business Warehouse , where the customer can access predefined outof the box reporting or extend the existing templates. This makes it easy to monitor the components and providedservices and gather information about their availability


Review Current Capacity and Performance

The central monitoring in SAP Solution Manager 7.1 is the foundation for reliable and stable operation of complexheterogeneous 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 orperformance 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 SAPSolution Manager based on the component data stored in the landscape management database (LMDB).

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 productivesystems. The reports are structured and designed to provide information that can help with trend analysis as wellas statistical evaluation of technical component usage.

Technical Analytics provides an aggregated overview of the managed objects behavior over a period of time andprovides 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 moreefficient.

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 notonly 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 itscompetitive edge, optimizing processes, and enabling it to react quickly and in line with the market. As a corecomponent of SAP Solution Manager, the SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW) provides datawarehousing functionality, a business intelligence platform, and a suite of business intelligence tools that enablebusinesses to attain these goals. Relevant business information from productive SAP applications and all externaldata 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 asfacilitating its distribution. Businesses are able to make informed decisions and determine target-orientatedactivities 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-SAPsystems in SAP Solution Manager. The following managed system data is collected weekly and passed to SAPSolution Manager: General component status, system configuration, hardware, performance development,average response times, and current system load. Correlating provided utilization, capacity, and workload dataindicates trends for capacity planning.


Measuring Performance and Capacity Data in SAP Solution Manager

SAP Solution Manager's monitoring and alerting infrastructure discovers and collects performance and capacitydata from managed systems to which it is connected, providing a single-point management tool for performingsystem monitoring, analysis, and management activities. Monitoring the systems ensures SAP customerscontinued 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 easyand flexible way. The templates contain SAP best practices and standards and can be extended and customizeddepending on the customer's landscape requirements regarding the activation and deactivation of metrics andalerts, modifications to thresholds or the configuration of autoreactions.

Work Mode Management and Monitoring Customizing for Controlling Frequency and Format of MonitoringActivities

The Work Mode Management application allows you to schedule and maintain work modes (for example, downtime 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 ascollection period of data collectors or metric thresholds. Certain alerts can be switched on or off for different workmodes. Alert consumers can be defined depending on the work mode. For example, during peak business youwant to be notified if the average dialog response time exceeds 1000 ms; during other work modes you do notexpect a notification at all.

Trend Analysis

SAP Solution Manager enables you to set up a standardized service level reporting system that combinesinformation from several EarlyWatch Alerts in a solution landscape. The trend analysis displays specific data overa period of three months. In addition, you can also include the average response times of certain transactions intothe reports in standard service level reporting.

Another advantage of service level reporting in the solution landscape is that you can combine different weeklyreports to generate monthly reports and track the trend over a certain time period. In addition, you can set targetvalues for specific parameters that cause red ratings in the reports and adapt the capacity for the measuredvalues.


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 usethe same infrastructure and data storage and capacity. Availability data can be monitored and analyzed using thesame views.

Incident Management

When using the monitoring and alerting infrastructure for monitoring and analysis purposes, this is closelyintegrated with Incident Management because it is possible to create incidents and jump to the ticket creationdirectly from the monitoring overviews.


The services and components overviews in the monitoring capabilities of SAP Solution Manager allow you to drilldown directly from the monitored CIs to the related information stored in the CMS.


The monitoring and alerting infrastructure contains predefined service level reports and allows you to define andreport 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 ofevents and production of notifications.

6 Availability Management


The goal of Availability Management is to provide IT services on a cost-effective level matching or exceeding thecurrent and future business needs. A key activity is monitoring and controlling the availability, reliability, andmaintainability of IT services and components. Another important part of Availability Management is conductingimpact analysis, risk management, producing an availability plan, and providing information about planned serviceoutages.


Availability Management in SAP Solution Manager is a comprehensive framework for monitoring and alertingcombined with an integrated data warehouse solution, namely the SAP Business Warehouse. This allows anintegrated technical approach for Capacity Management, Availability Management, and Event Management.

The monitoring and alerting infrastructure in SAP Solution Manager provides the functionality to monitor theavailability 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 usuallyprovided by several technical components. Thresholds can be defined for all of these metrics and you cancustomize event and alerting options based on these thresholds. In addition, SAP BW, the professional datawarehouse tool, uses this availability and capacity data for standard reporting and highly flexible functionalities foraggregating, correlating, and calculating any data and KPIs.


Monitor, Measure, Report, and Analyze Availability

The SAP Solution Manager allows to monitor and report on all of customers IT landscape. Dependend on thetechnology it uses different agents to collect data. This data is persisted in the integrated, where the customer canaccess predefined out of the box reporting or extend the existing templates. This makes it easy to monitor thecomponents 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 thebusiness in a cost-effective and timely manner. Availability management defines, analyses, plans, measures andimproves all aspects of the availability of IT services, and ensures that all IT infrastructures, processes, tools, rolesetc. are appropriate for the agreed service level targets for availability

Investigate Service and Component Outages

When detecting a service or component outage using monitoring views or created incidents, you can drill down totechnical 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 monitoringoverviews. It also offers trend analysis for CIs and services, as well as providing comprehensive reportingfunctionalities that allow multidimensional analytics of data and trend correlation. This information supports thedetection of possible risks and helps you to plan countermeasures. A detailed risk list may be controlled byKnowledge Management.

Implement Countermeasures

SAP Solution Manager supports a mechanism through which any arbitrary code execution is possible as anautomatic reaction to selected alert types. Code executed in this way is generally referred to as automaticreaction to alerts or just autoreaction. E2E monitoring and alerting infrastructure does not include anyautoreaction features other than the standard autonotification and autoincident creation features describedabove, 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. Thisallows you to aggregate data, define different residual times for aggregation levels in the database, and usevarious functions for correlating and evaluating data.


IT Calendar – Projected Service Outage

The Technical Administration work center in SAP Solution Manager provides tools and capabilities to support ITOperations Management teams in the efficient planning, implementation, execution, and reporting of the day-to-day operational activities.

In particular, it offers the functionality SAP IT Calendar, which provides customers an overview of the plannedwork modes (for example, downtimes and peak business hours) for selectable systems and technicalcomponents 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 “Whenis 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 SolutionManager applications, such as Work Mode Management, Alert Inbox, System Monitoring, PI Monitoring, BIMonitoring, and so on. Different recipient lists can be maintained for different use cases, for example, notifyingend 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 andbusiness workflows.


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 andanalyzed using the same views.

Incident Management

When using the monitoring and alerting infrastructure for monitoring and analysis purposes, there is a closeintegration to Incident Management because it is possible to create incidents and jump to the ticket creationdirectly from the monitoring overviews.




The monitoring and alerting infrastructure contains predefined service level reports and allows you to define andreport additional service level KPIs.

Event Management


7 Change Management


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 andother configuration items.

Change Management: Responsible to control the lifecycle of all changes in order to minimize downtimes of the ITservices 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 inadaptations to the IT infrastructure and application landscape. Businesses today require their IT services to meetthese needs precisely and demand a high level of flexibility, elasticity, and thoroughness. The answer to this is aproactive 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 tothe IT service.

Change Management must, therefore, maintain a balance between flexibility and stability. For each change, it isessential to weigh up the potential negative impact, for example, on availability of resources, with the anticipatedbenefits of the change. The Change Advisory Board (CAB) deals with what can be a difficult decision-makingprocess. This board, which is comprised of highly experienced and senior key individuals, looks after the interestsof the customers and service operators. In order to take account of the time-to-market aspect, the decision-making process must have a lean and flexible structure. To remove some of the burden from the CAB, processingsimple and routine changes must be possible without any red tape. This requires a standardized risk-assessmentprocess, 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 ofan emergency. This requires an Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB), which normally comprises of twoexperienced service employees.


Change Management in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM service documents. These documents arepreconfigured 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 ChangeRequest Management and is highly integrated into the SAP environment. It provides tool support for theprocesses Change Management and Release and Deployment Management. However, the tool does not just allowyou 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 configurationprocedure. Based on this ready-to-use configuration, customers can adjust the tool to match their individualprocesses, such as status values, service organization, user roles, escalation procedures, notifications, UIadoptions, and reporting. For individual configurations, SAP offers many standard functionalities that areavailable in all SAP systems (authorizations, workflows, inbound and outbound channels, and so on) as well as aneasy 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 anyfield in the document. You can even include this field in a dashboard (a highly-aggregated management viewreport).

Change Request Management uses two main entities: The request for change, for reporting new requests forchange, and dedicated change records, for the individual execution of changes based on the evaluation performedas part of the request for change process. This provides customers with a high level of flexibility when dealing withchanges in their enterprise.


Create a Request for Change

The process typically starts with creating a request for change. A requestor (change initiator) creates a newrequest for change and describes the requirements or tasks that will be fulfilled with this change. As analternative, 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 orchange practitioner) who further evaluates the change. This includes a detailed analysis of the change, includingrisk 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 alreadybeen 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 iscreated that is associated with the request for change. A dedicated workflow model guides the execution of thechange based on the change type that has been defined before. The tool also controls the test execution andmakes 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 functionalpoint of view, the coordination of the release of the change is handed over to the Release and DeploymentManagement process. This process is relevant for managing the successful transfer into the productiveenvironment.

Closure of Change

Once the change has been released, it can be closed and confirmed by the initiator. Once the change record hasbeen confirmed by a process manager, the related request for change is also set to the status Implemented andcan be confirmed by the change initiator.


Approval Management

You can assign an approval transaction to the request for change. This transaction must then be processedbefore the request receives the status Approved. An approval transaction is an approval process that consists of adefined sequence of approval steps. During Customizing, you can define which approval steps must be completedfor 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 laterselect the approval transaction in the request for change, you have to assign a concrete business partner to eachstep. Each business partner can be informed through a workflow item or e-mail from the SAP Business Workflowif they need to make a decision.

To execute the approval, you can choose between three options: Approved, Rejected, and Not Relevant. Inaddition, the approver can enter a comment for each approval step when executing this step. All this informationis 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 withthe change type. You can also use a set of rules to define your own rules. These rules can, for example, assign acertain approval transaction on the basis of field values (for example, if the urgency and priority of the change arevery 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 thechange 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, whichenables clients to easily coordinate the transfer and deployment of changes throughout the landscape. Thisfunctionality is deeply integrated into the Change Management process, including additional technical checks (forexample, 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 theirrelease, as well as supporting the client by keeping the landscape consistent, as only tested and validated changesare 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 theactions and conditions framework in the background: The Post Processing Framework (PPF) provides SAPapplications with a uniform interface for the condition-dependent generation of actions (for example, printingdelivery notes, sending email notifications, or triggering approval procedures). The actions are generated ifspecific conditions are met for an application document, for example, a specific status is set (approved) or aspecific date has been reached (two weeks before end of SLA time). The actions are then processed eitherdirectly 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, changeof 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 notmet or the execution of the change takes too long, the escalation level of the ticket can be raised and atimeframe 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 documentis 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 thechange record is closed, the related request for change is set to Implemented automatically, This triggers a

notification to the change manager or requester asking them to confirm the successful changeimplementation

Multilevel Categorization

The categorization plays an important role in the incident and Problem Management process. IT can definevarious levels. SAP Solution Manager provides a template schema as a starting point for defining your owncategories. You first decided how many levels to use. In the standard system, the process is designed for fourlevels. 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 theworkload 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 articlescan 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 incidentprocessor. 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 adoptthe template and automatically copy standard texts to the document, such as a standard response for resetting apassword.

The categorization plays an important role in evaluating incidents in order to identify trends or filter errormessages.


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, achange 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. ProblemManagement can help to identify the root cause and help to put a solution in place. New requests for change oftenneed 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. ChangeManagement is integrated so that requests for change can be created and processed easily without losing thecontext information about the related service request.


A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected by a change. Knowledge about the relationship withother CIs supports effective solution finding.


The business requirements for a service are described in service level agreements. Service Management offers atool 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 forservice 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 orincidents

8 Service Asset and ConfigurationManagement


Service Asset and Configuration Management (SACM) supports the business by providing accurate informationand 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 theirrelationships. Configuration Management is the management and monitoring of every aspect of a configurationfrom beginning to end.

The process is responsible for ensuring that the assets required to deliver services are properly controlled, andthat accurate and reliable information about those assets is available when and where it is needed. Thisinformation 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 sharedassets need to be controlled.

To manage large and complex IT services and infrastructures, SACM requires the use of a supporting systemknown as the Configuration Management System (CMS).


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 thisready-to-use configuration, the customers can adjust the tool to match their individual processes, such as statusvalues, service teams, user roles, escalation procedures, notifications, UI adoptions, and reporting. For individualconfigurations, 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 makeindividual field adjustments without the need for coding. SAP Solution Manager comes complete with a reportingengine (SAP BW) that can be used to generate a report based on any field in the document. You can even includethis field in a dashboard (a highly aggregated management view report).

SAP Solution Manager is responsible for the process of Service asset & Configuration Management. Systems, ITassets, Applications and any infrastructure item is stored as Configuration Item based on individual object in theSAP CRM ibase structure.

SAP Solution Manager represents a Configuration Management System which receives CI data from severalCMDB sources. For SAP related data, input comes from a System Landscape Directory (SLD), for infrastructurethe integration to SAP IT Infrastructure Management is recommended.

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


Architecture of CMS

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 demandor scheduled for a specific time. New CIs are added to the CMS or and attributes or relationships of existingobjects are updated.

Update Configuration Items

The users can perform a manual update of existing configuration items if the attributes are not automaticallydiscovered by the system or if it is necessary to document planned values of attributes.

Navigation In the CMS

Users can drill down from the configuration item documented in the incident ticket to the information in the ITlandscape browser.

Maintain Relationships Between Objects

Users can maintain the relationships between configuration items to define parts of the service tree that are notautomatically discovered by the system.

Defining the relationships between IT tickets, such as incidents, problems, and requests for change, andconfiguration 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 existingconfiguration 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. Plannedchanges and their impact on other devices can be displayed and assessed easily in the infrastructure. You canalso 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.


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 theservice 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 theservice desk. Problem Management analyzes information in the CMS and looks for possible problems that mayarise 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 risksmay 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 costallocation), maintenance, and repair costs.

Service Continuity Management

Identifies the assets on which the business services depend and controls key spares and software.


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

9 Release and Deployment Management


The aim of Release and Deployment Management is to plan, schedule and control the build, test and deploymentof releases while protecting integrity of existing services, and deliver the capabilities (or skills) in accordance withthe service design specification in such a way that the service meets the requirements demanded by thestakeholders. In order to minimize the frequency of changes to service assets and IT infrastructures andconsequently 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 ajoint fashion. A release may consists of changes for Hardware, Software, Documentation, Processes or othercomponents.

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. Theacceptance criteria for the releases are defined on a joint basis. Authorization from the Change Advisory Board forthe production rollout is only given after testing has been successfully concluded. In contrast to ChangeManagement, which is geared towards controlling and monitoring the changes, Release Managementconcentrates on their implementation.


The solution as part of SAP Solution Manager is called Change Request Management and is highly integrated intothe SAP environment.

Release and Deployment Management in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM service documents. Thesedocuments are preconfigured and enhanced with ITSM-specific functionalities and release management know-how that was collected by SAP experts from our support organization with customers. The solution as part of SAPSolution Manager is called Change Request Management and is highly integrated into the SAP environment. Itprovides 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 managedbecause the configuration and framework are fully flexible.

There is a standard, preconfigured process that can be automatically set up with a guided configurationprocedure. Based on this ready-to-use configuration, customers can adjust the tool to match their individualprocesses, such as status values, service organization, user roles, escalation procedures, notifications, UIadoptions, and reporting. For individual configurations, SAP offers many standard functionalities that areavailable in all SAP systems (authorizations, workflows, inbound and outbound channels, and so on) as well as aneasy enhancement workbench to make individual field adjustments without the need for coding. SAP SolutionManager comes complete with a reporting engine (SAP BW) that can be used to generate a report based on anyfield in the document. You can even include this field in a dashboard (a highly aggregated management viewreport).

In SAP Solution Manager, the tool differentiates between two main types of release: releases that are related toSAP Components and custom releases that can be assigned and related to any type of configuration item ofservice 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 automatethe deployment process of a release. Due to open interfaces, even non-SAP technologies can be integrated andclients can benefit from using this tool for other technologies and software related changes or releases. SAPSolution Manager also contains a project management suite that runs on the same installation of SAP Project andPortfolio Management. The Project Management module enables detailed control and management of all release-related activities.


Create Release Record

A new release record can be created for each release. This release record is the main entity for controlling therelease.

Process Release Record

One of the first tasks is to specify the attributes and details of the release according the release policy of theclient: Which release was the predecessor of the current release, what is the description of the release, who isresponsible for release processing and execution, what kind of release-version is assigned, which service isplanned 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 allrequired handover criteria, coordinating and preparing the projected service outage plan, checking required oracquired 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 therelease. This defines the release package that will be deployed together. Release testing before deployment isessential.

Go-Live / Deployment of Release (Deploy)

Once the release package is complete, all tests have been executed, and the required checklists and qualitycriteria for the deployment are met, the release can be deployed. In the case of a software release, SAP SolutionManager controls and manages the correct deployment into the productive system. In the case of non-softwarereleases or any other kind of release, the deployment process may be executed outside of the system and thestatus 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 tooperative mode. This means the release is active in the productive environment and available to all users.


Deployment Management

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 forchange and approvals, manual intervention becomes absolutely necessary when a transport request (SAP) orgeneric deployment component needs to be created or imported. The ID of this component has to be copied tothe database by hand, which is a potential source of errors. A typo or mistake when copying invalidates the entireprocess. With Change Request Management, transport requests are generated centrally from SAP SolutionManager. A reference to the corresponding change record is created automatically (with the ID and descriptioncopied to the transport request’s name), enabling a clear relationship to be identified at any time. The ChangeRequest Management scenario lets you track all transports relating to a specific project or release, enabling youto 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 maintenanceproject, the project plan, and the connected systems. Each change record provides an overview of all transportsand transport tasks created for it. From there, you can monitor the status of transports at any time and alsobranch directly into the log file.

Integrated Project Management

Another great option for managing releases using Change Request Management is the integration with SAPProject and Portfolio Management (PPM), the SAP project planning tool. A client’s organization can record andplan all the activities that need to be implemented in a release in a Project Management project plan. You can planresources 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 approvalprocedure can be scheduled here and integrated into the overall release project plan. This allows the releasemanager to plan the release in detail, keeping an overview of time, budget, and all relevant resources required forsuccessful execution.

The Project Management component defines document templates, checklists, and entire project templates thatcan be used to define release and deployment models. As part of a project template, the client can define astructured model containing a list of tasks and milestones for a release. The document templates and checklisttemplates 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 theexecution of a release.

Test Management Integration

Test Management is a subject that is closely related to Changes and Release Management. In SAP SolutionManager, there are numerous functions and applications for checking and administering test transactions andtest processes in the customer landscape. These functions are also integrated in Change Request Managementand the Release and Deployment Management process. For release testing, you can establish a relationshipbetween these release records and entities from Test Management.

The Test Management assignment block enables you to assign test plans or test packages from SAP SolutionManager to a Change Request Management document. This enables a release manager or test coordinator, forexample, 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 away 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 betested to tested successfully only if the assigned test cases have been tested positively. This adds further stabilityto your software and minimizes the risk of errors in the production system.


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 ChangeManagement. Successful Change Management can only work if it interacts correctly with Release andDeployment Management. In SAP Solution Manager, you can link any kind of release record with a related changerecord, allowing full traceability for the release manager.


A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected by a change. Knowledge about the relationship withother CIs supports effective processing of the release and allows you to asses risk and impact correctly.

10 Knowledge Management


Knowledge Management is responsible for sharing perspectives, ideas, experience, and information and forensuring that these are available in the right place. The Knowledge Management process enables informeddecisions, and improves efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge. The Service KnowledgeManagement System (SKMS) is the central repository of the data, information, and knowledge that the ITorganization needs to manage the lifecycle of its services. Its purpose is to store, analyze, and present the serviceprovider's data, information, and knowledge. The SKMS is not necessarily a single system; in most cases it is afederated system based on a variety of data sources.


In SAP there are several functionalities that support Knowledge Management, such as store, subscribe, andpublish information. In the context of SAP Solution Manager ITSM solution, the core object used is the knowledgearticle (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 provideparticular guidance, notes, or detailed descriptions as text with different text types, with attachments or even withfurther 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 linksto 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 whileprocessing 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 todistribute 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 ITservice related information on one platform. It has references to any SAP system in the customer's IT landscapeand stores IT related information to a central place. SAP Solution Manager bundles and relates information aboutbusiness processes, applications, IT infrastructure items, IT services, business partner information, and evenreporting data, to act as an overall enterprise resource planning tool specifically to manage the IT of SAPcustomers.


Create a Knowledge Article

A knowledge article can be created from scratch or based on a solution or work around while processing anincident or a problem. Another possibility is to create a new knowledge article from a template. The template

could already include guidance on how certain types of KAs should be documented and some data fields couldalready be prefilled to speed up the creation process.

While filling in the KA data, there are fields to record the author, approver, stakeholder, status, authorizationscope, 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 SAPauthorization concept.

Before a KA can be found, it is reviewed and approved for release. This is set in the KA status field. A secondperson then finds a list of KAs that are waiting for approval. After setting this status, the KA can be found in theself-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 canuse 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 searchbased on the identity of categories. The tool lists all released KAs that have the same category as the currentincident. In some cases, the tool can proactively suggest a KA if a predefined KA is assigned to the specificcategory. If a KA matches the described issue, the processor can reference the KA to the incident or problemrecord and make it available to the end user through the self-service portal.


You can record details in a knowledge article, such as language, description, and keywords, in addition to thecategories assigned to the knowledge article. You can also record short notes, for example, about solutions orwork-arounds to problems.

You can specify administration details, such as the dates during which the knowledge article is valid, the priority ofthe knowledge article, or its status.

Under the relevant assignment blocks, you can add various pieces of information, such as CIs and transactions, tothe 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, ora 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, thesystem automatically creates a knowledge base index. The system automatically updates an existing index withnew or modified knowledge articles.

Attach objects, such as documents, outbound campaigns, business partners, and questionnaires to knowledgearticles, allowing access to various relevant types of information.

Use the autosuggest knowledge articles function available in the service desk. When you select a categorizationfor a business transaction, the system automatically checks for knowledge articles assigned to thatcategorization. If they exist, the system displays an alert from which you can navigate directly to the relatedknowledge articles.

Create knowledge articles from a template to save time and also create them in various languages.


Knowledge Management is closely integrated with other IT process so that it can provide information in any phaseand 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.


A configuration item (CI) can have references to knowledge articles.


Procedures of what to do if any unexpected situations are described in the knowledge database and, therefore,are highly available.

11 Incident Management


An incident is an unplanned interruption of an IT service or a reduction in the quality of an IT service. The aim ofIncident Management is to restore normal service as quickly as possible in order to minimize the negative impacton operations. Incidents are often identified by means of events or alerts, or when the user contacts the servicedesk. Incidents are categorized for later analysis so that responsibilities can be established. They are alsoprioritized by urgency and business process impact. If an incident cannot be solved quickly, it can be escalated. Afunctional escalation forwards the incident to a technical support team with the relevant expertise a hierarchicalescalation involves the relevant management levels. Once the incident has been investigated, solved and thesolution has been successfully tested, the service desk employee should check that the user is satisfied with thesolution before the incident is closed. An Incident Management tool is, therefore, crucial for recording andmanaging information about the incident.


Incident Management in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM service documents. These documents arepreconfigured and enhanced with ITSM-specific functionalities. There is a standard, preconfigured process thatcan 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, serviceorganization, user roles, escalation procedures, notifications, UI adoptions, and reporting. For individualconfigurations, 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 makeindividual field adjustments without the need for coding. SAP Solution Manager comes complete with a reportingengine (SAP BW) that can be used to generate a report based on any field in the document. You can even includethis field in a dashboard (highly aggregated management view report).

You can find detailed functionality descriptions that are common in all records at:http://help.sap.com/saphelp_crm700_ehp01/helpdata/en/0d/531976ded8475b8d29e36b4f771f58/frameset.htm.


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 deskteams using portal access (IT service portal) or a telephone call to the service desk. The incident may contain, butis 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,

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_crm700_ehp01/helpdata/en/0d/531976ded8475b8d29e36b4f771f58/frameset.htm


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 ofcontact (SPOC), they are also responsible for the communication with the customer. If the service desk agentcannot resolve the incident or the issue is not in their area of responsibility, the ticket can be dispatched tospecialized groups or an external service provider.

For the handling of tickets, the service desk agents can access various sources of information. The informationmay include IT assets, configuration items (CI), service contracts with service level agreements (SLA), further ITsystems, 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 queryperiod, the service desk agent stays responsible for the incident and may set a reminder to support themonitoring.

If a solution for the incident is provided, the ticket is updated and an appropriate solution description is sent to thereporter. 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 tomore 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 theteam or agent. The team is informed by e-mail that a new incident needs their attention. Any work is documenteddirectly in the incident.

If the team or agent is marked as an external service provider, the incident is forwarded to that service providerand the responsibility for the solution is transferred to the external system. The work is documented in the systemof 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, e-mails are sent to the agent with therelevant 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 aquery to the reporter requesting more information. The incident status is set to Customer Action. This query issend to the reporter by e-mail. The respond to the query can be send directly by e-mail to the service desk or thereporter can access the IT service portal to provide the answer in the ticket. In both cases, the SLA clocks arestopped until the answer is provided. The service desk can monitor tickets with the status Customer Actionseparately.

Respond to the Reporter

As soon as a solution to the incident / ticket can be provided to the reporter, the service desk agent describes thesolution in the note Solution Description and sets the status of the incident to Solution Provided. An e-mail informsthe reported that a solution can be applied or that the service is working again. The reporter checks if the solutionis working and confirms the successful solution. The ticket is closed. If the reporter does not react to the providedsolution, the system automatically closes the incident.


Escalation Process

If the IT service is subject to time restrictions in message processing, such as service agreements (SLA), it canuse the functions for SLA escalation.

The prerequisite for this is that it has defined service times and SLA agreements (that is, reaction and processingtimes) on the basis of priorities. The IT objects (applications, IT hardware, and so on) have assigned SLAs or youuse a service contract to determine SLA times. In addition, the statuses that are not relevant to SLA should bedefined in the support, such as customer action or sent to SAP. This means that, over the course of processingthe message, processors continuously receive updated, calculated times by which the message should becompleted. A color bar in the document shows at all times what percentage of the reaction or processing time haspassed. If the percentage reaches 60%, the first escalation status is automatically set. If 90% is reached, thestatus is raised to escalation level two. You can address this status with separate actions and, if necessary, sende-mails 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 definevarious levels. SAP Solution Manager provides a template schema as a starting point for defining your owncategories. You first decided how many levels to use. In the standard system, the process is designed for fourlevels. 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 theworkload 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 articlescan 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 incidentprocessor. 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 adoptthe template and automatically copy standard texts to the document, such as a standard response for resetting apassword.

The categorization plays an important role in evaluating incidents in order to identify trends or filter errormessages.

Further functions and features are described in more detail at:

http://www.service.sap.com/~sapidb/011000358700001167572011E




Problem Management

An increase of incidents in a certain area may indicate a problem in the process design of the service. ProblemManagement 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, achange may also result in the failure of the service and incidents are created to get the service working again.


A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected by a change. Knowledge about the relationship withother CIs supports effective problem solving.


The business requirements for a service are described in service level agreements. Service Management offers atool 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 quicksolution for the reported incident. You can also create a knowledge article containing your solution from within theincident message.

Event Management

Events can automatically trigger the creation of incidents. An appropriate reference back to the event is displayedin the incident message.

Request Fulfillment

Incidents can be transferred into service requests in case that the user have not chosen the right record type inthe self service creation.

12 Problem Management


A problem is a cause of one or more incidents. The cause is not usually known at the time a problem record iscreated and the Problem Management process is responsible for further investigation. Problem Management isresponsible for managing the lifecycle of all problems. Problem Management proactively prevents incidents fromhappening and minimizes the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented.


Problem Management in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM Service documents. These documents arepreconfigured and enhanced with ITSM-specific functionalities. The functionality is equal to IncidentManagement. There is a standard preconfigured process that can be automatically set up with a guidedconfiguration procedure. Based on this ready-to-use configuration, customers can adjust the tool to match theirindividual 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 orservice request record. You can find detailed functionality descriptions that are common in all records here at:http://help.sap.com/saphelp_crm700_ehp01/helpdata/en/0d/531976ded8475b8d29e36b4f771f58/frameset.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 thedisruptive event or at least allow the event to be quickly remedied by means of documented work-arounds. All theinformation relating to the disruptive event is documented in the problem record. This includes a reference to allthe incident messages that were used as the basis for creating the problem. Problem records can also be createdinitially without a reference to incidents to do a trend analysis to preventing disruptive cases. Problems can alsobe forwarded to SAP support or follow in RFCs.


Create an Incident Record

If a number of similar incidents may indicate a problem with a specific service or configuration item, the problemmanager can open a problem ticket in order to lock the issue. Incident information may be copied to create aproblem ticket in order to reduce manual efforts. A problem ticket may include following information:

Short description of the problem

Parties involved

o Reporter



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 andreferenced to the problem record.

The solution of a problem may result in a workaround or in a change of the affected service using ChangeManagement 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 theorganization in order to optimize the Incident Management process.


Lock and Unlock Related Incidents

If several incidents (or service requests) are probably related to the same root cause, the problem manager canassign these incidents to a problem or a master incident.

The problem manager can search for the incidents using the Find Related Incidents option. Find Related Incidentsgenerates a list of incidents that have the same catalog categorization as the problem. The problem manager canselect 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 theproblem 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 arounddescriptions or general solution descriptions that might be helpful for the service desk. SAP Solution Managerallows you to create follow-up records with a preconfigured set of data by transferring data from the problemrecord to a new record. A typical use case is to create a knowledge article from a known error and transfer thesolution 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. Thereference to the previous record is automatically set.

In particular, RFCs in SAP Solution Manager are often created from previous problem or incident records. Due tothe fact that a lot of data is transferred from the previous record, it is very simple to hand over the processbetween support teams.

Further functions and features are described in more detail at:



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 datacan 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.


A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected by a change. Knowledge about the relationship withother CIs supports effective analysis of the problem.


During incident processing, it is easy to find related knowledge articles that can help the processor find a quicksolution for the reported incident. You can also create a knowledge article containing your solution or describework-arounds in known errors from within the incident.

Service Level management

Provide service times for problem resolving.


13 Request Fulfillment


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; toreset 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 - canbe used for processing and fulfilling the order. These types of request models are normally standard changes thathave already been preauthorized. The process that the request must fulfill depends to a significant extent on whatthe 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 normallyrepresents an unplanned event, a service request can be planned. Ultimately, it is up to each organization todecide and document which service requests are to be handled using the request fulfillment process and whichrequests are to be processed using a formal RFC in Change Management.


Request fulfillment in SAP Solution Manager is based on SAP CRM service documents that are preconfigured forService Requests. The functionalities have been prepared so that clients can establish a request fulfillmentprocess quickly and easily, for example, without having to set up a service catalog first. However, if a servicecatalog 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 configurationprocedure. Based on this ready-to-use configuration, customers can adjust the tool to match their individualprocesses, such as status values, service organization, user roles, escalation procedures, notifications, UIadoptions, and reporting. For individual configurations, SAP offers many standard functionalities that areavailable in all SAP systems (authorizations, workflows, inbound and outbound channels, and so on) as well as aneasy enhancement workbench to make individual field adjustments without the need for coding. SAP SolutionManager comes complete with a reporting engine (SAP BW) that can be used to generate a report based on anyfield in the document. You can even include this field in a dashboard (highly aggregated management viewreport).

In request fulfillment, the focus is on providing the right input forms for the requester to order the service incombination with a flexible fulfillment model, allowing the service organization to easily define the necessary stepsthat 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 serviceexecution (called checklists)

Service Requests can be created from scratch or directly from the Service Catalog by selecting any of theavailable services.


Browser Service Catalog

The end user is browsing the service catalog to identify and look for a specific service. They can review all theservice descriptions of the services that are available. Finally the user picks a particular service and triggers thefulfillment 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 thisservice. The relevant information is taken over automatically from the service catalog or a template that has beenattached. The requester fills out the request as much as possible before the request is forwarded to the serviceorganization for processing.

Process Service Request

The responsible service organization receives the request and triggers the fulfillment process. Based on theservice that was chosen, a dedicated list of check-items (including working instructions) is selected by the systemautomatically or is assigned by the processor. The processor then assigns responsible personnel to carry out therelevant 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 isforwarded to the requester for confirmation. The record is then set to the closed status, which prevents anyfurther changes to this document.


Checklists

One of the main features for request fulfillment is checklists. The checklist functionality provides the possibility forthe client to define multiple lists of activities that need to be carried out. You can use this function for step-by-steptask processing by one or more users for transactions, such as service requests. A checklist is a list of steps to beperformed by assigned step partners.

With checklists, you can select the appropriate checklist from a list of all available checklists for the transactiontype that you are creating or editing. Depending on the checklist profile settings you define in Customizing, youcan change your selection to a different checklist. However, in this case, the information contained in the previouschecklist is removed from the transaction.

Insert steps manually into the selected checklist or cancel steps that are not in status Completed and are not setas Mandatory in Customizing, Define checklist step details, for example, required actions for each step and thesequence 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 determinechecklists as well as checklist step partners automatically. Integrate checklists with SAP Business Workflow sothat checklist step partners are notified when they have steps to carry out. If workflow is not enabled, steppartners 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:http://scn.sap.com/people/bettina.giese/blog/2011/06/10/how-to-make-use-of-checklists-in-sap-crm-service-transactions

http://scn.sap.com/people/bettina.giese/blog/2011/06/10/how-to-make-use-of-checklists-in-sap-crm-service-transactions

http://scn.sap.com/people/bettina.giese/blog/2011/06/10/how-to-make-use-of-checklists-in-sap-crm-service-transactions

Flexible Input Forms

As part of request fulfillment, it is possible to define a custom input form per service. This allows clients to definetheir own specific user interface for the request fulfillment process, which provides their end users with a tailoredform 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 forCurrent Location, Target Location, and Planned Date.

The correct form is selected automatically based on the category of the service that has been ordered. It ispossible to define an individual form for each service by using predefined custom fields or creating completelynew fields with the application enhancement tool of the UI framework.


The tool is capable of recording and reporting service fulfillment costs in order to charge the user with the relevantcosts for the fulfillment of the service. This data can also be transferred into the SAP ERP for further accountingand controlling of the IT costs.

Example: The costs for an individual service fulfillment can be collected in an internal order in ERP. In the internalorder, the costs are displayed according to their cost element.


Request Fulfillment is closely integrated with other ITIL processes:


Services that are requested are defined in the service catalog. The solution is integrated with the Service CatalogManagement process to allow users to view a detailed description of the service before ordering it. The servicecatalog also allows you to structure the services that are available to end users because not all services can beordered 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. ChangeManagement is integrated so that requests for change can be created and processed easily without losing thecontext information about the related service request.


The business requirements for a service are described in service level agreements. Service Management offers atool 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 maximumtimeframe for service delivery.


A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected by a change. Knowledge about the relationship withother CIs supports the effective processing of a request.

14 Event Management


According to the ITIL standard, Event Management is a basis for operations since it recommends the ability todetect 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 mainactivities of IT operations


The general approach for event management in SAP Solution Manager is the comprehensive framework forApplication Operations combined with an integrated data warehouse solution, the SAP Business Warehouse(BW). This allows an integrated technical approach for Capacity Management, Availability Management, andEvent Management.

The monitoring and alerting infrastructure provides the functionality to monitor all relevant technicalcomponents, SAP and non-SAP components regarding capacity and availability. For all these metrics, existsthresholds for event and alerting options. Furthermore SAP BW, the professional data warehouse tool, is fed withavailability and capacity and provides a standard reporting on these data.


Central Configuration

After connecting the data provider and managed object to SAP Solution Manager, the central configuration isperformed 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-partycomponents can be adjusted according to customer needs. For the different managed objects, SAP deliverstemplates 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 andcustomized depending on the customers landscape requirements. For example, activation and deactivation ofmetrics and alerts, modifications to thresholds, configuration of auto-reactions, such as Incident Management, ornotifications 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 custommetrics. This allows a customer to create alerts based on metrics that are deemed important but are not included

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

Alert Inbox

The alert inbox is the central access point to handle alerts that have been generated by the different monitoringscenarios. It provides customers with an efficient alert handling process based on consolidation of single alerts toalert groups, a personalized view of existing alerts, drill down capabilities from alert type to alert groups and singlemetrics, 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 variousadministration and reporting capabilities of SAP Solution Manager 7.1.


Open Infrastructure

The monitoring and alerting infrastructure (MAI) alert inbox already supports forwarding of alerts as e-mails, textmessages, and incidents and there is usually no need for any further external implementation for commonconsumers.

E2E MAI, however, also includes a set of open interfaces known as Alert Consumer Connector. If alerts with allimportant attributes are to be forwarded to any other tool as well, this interface needs to be implemented inappropriate way by the customer.

E2E MAI Alert Consumer Connector (E2E MAI ACC, or referred to simply as ACC) can to Push alerts to externalapplications when they occur. By default, there is no mechanism supported for any external applications to Pull aset of alerts from a store. This is consistent with the notion of explicit interfacing rather than unwarranted copyand 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 haveconfigured the standard autonotification and auto-incident creation features for the alert type, Solution Managersends notification by e-mail or text messages and creates an incident. This configuration should be carried outduring Solution Manager Configuration in Technical Monitoring.

ACC supports a mechanism through which any arbitrary code execution is possible as an automatic reaction toselected 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 creationfeatures 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 bestarted as an autoreaction. ACC only defines a set of interface methods that can be implemented by one or moreclasses. 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 diagnosticstakes place, Technical Analytics provides an aggregated overview of the different managed objects' behavior overa 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 toadministrators, managers, and customers. Based on the trend analysis, optimization of internal processes and ITsetups is more efficient. Jump-in capability in metric viewer with zoom functionality feature offers customersgreat flexibility to go from high level overview to in depth details in matter of few clicks. Technical Analytics can bebroadly classified into two groups: Technical Reporting and Management Reporting offering a wide variety ofreports addressing the needs of management and technical teams alike. Some of the reports include document-based reports, highly interactive reports, customizable reports, and management dashboards.


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. Capacitymonitoring 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. Inthe SAP Solution Manager integrated ticket system, you can easily create e-mails, text messages,, and incidentnotifications.






Reference between event and KA via incident.

15 IT Service Continuity Management


IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM) is an integral part of the overall Business Continuity Managementprocess. The goal of ITSCM is to ensure that the minimum required IT technical and all service facilities can beresumed within required, and agreed, business timescales after a disaster loss of normal service operation.


Due to the nature of the ITSCM process mainly documentation features, e.g. the process documentation anddocuments 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 SolutionManager. Process steps and responsibilities are documented and all relevant documents can be assigned todifferent process steps.

All service relevant information, e.g. the unavailability costs of IT services over time in case of a disaster or therequired minimum configuration of an IT service can be documented in the Configuration Items in the iBase orwithin SAP IT Infrastructure Management.

Documented service dependencies support in creating a business impact analysis and help identifying singlepoints of failure. Vital business functions can also be documented in the solution documentation and businessblueprint 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 toolcould also be affected by the loss of IT capabilities. That means it cannot be simply relied on the availability of allrelevant operational documents in case of a disaster. The availability of these documents like the ITSCM plan orcommunication plans has to be assured by different approaches, e.g. by printed versions that are kept up-to-dateand that are stored at secure places.

High availability of SAP Solution Manager could be set up!


Initiation

During the initiation phase the ITSCM process is established within the IT organization. During this designphase the complete process with process steps, responsibilities and relevant documents will be maintainedin the blueprint area of SAP Solution Manager. Maintain the standard steps of the process and individualsteps and maintain the process steps documentation and attributes. If ITSCM and BCM are implemented as

projects use the project administration capabilities of SAP Solution Manager additionally. Policies and otherdocuments 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. Ifnot 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 BusinessImpact Analysis. The results of this analysis may also be stored in the project and blueprint area. Additionalinformation for the risk analysis and management can be taken from SLD, LMDB and the Monitoring andAlerting Infrastructure (MAI) – e.g. by considering information from the monitoring trees. Furthermorerecovery options may be planned and documented in SAP Solution Manager. Contracts and recoveryprocedures can also be stored in the blueprinting area.

Implementation

During the implementation phase the ITSC plan and other relevant documents as the Emergency ResponsePlan, a Vital Records Plan, a Crisis Management and Publiuc Relations Plan, Personnel Plans or the SecurityPlan are produced and stored in the blueprinting area of SAP Solution Manager. All plans will be classifiedwith the current document status and document version. Furthermore walk-through tests, full tests, partialtests or scenario tests are designed and maintained in the Test Workbench of SAP Solution Manager. Thesetests may be assigned to the already documented business processes and grouped in special test plans orthe test cases and descriptions can be maintained in a special recovery testing SAP Solution Managerproject or the ITSCM project.

Ongoing Operation

During the ongoing operation some additional plans and schedules may be created and stored in SAPSolution Manager. However it is mainly important to regularly conduct and document tests and to keep allrelevant documents up-to-date. Especially the latter must be part of the Change Management process. Incase 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 affectedby the disaster. In this case all information is available and features from other processes or SAP SolutionManager features such as Incident Management, Configuration Management or the Monitoring and AlertingInfrastructure can be used for implementing counter measures. If SAP Solution Manager is not available thesecurely stored external versions of all documents have to be used.

Alert Inbox

The alert inbox is the central access point to handle alerts that have been generated by the different monitoringscenarios. It provides customers with an efficient alert handling process based on consolidation of single alerts toalert groups, a personalized view of existing alerts, drill down capabilities from alert type to alert groups and singlemetrics, 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 variousadministration and reporting capabilities of SAP Solution Manager 7.1.


The ITSCM implementation with SAP Solution Manager mainly bases on well-known standard features of thesystem.

IT Calendar – Planning of periodic disaster recovery tests

The IT Calender in the Technical Administration Work Center within SAP Solution Manager provides thepossibility of a periodic scheduling of the disaster revcovery tests and allows to align these tests withplanned maintenance windows.

Project Administration and Business Blueprint

The project administration and business blueprint features of SAP Solution Manager in the transactionsSOLAR01 and SOLAR02 are used for the project administration (in case ITSCM will be implemented via aproject), 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 BusinessFunctions may be maintained.

Service Definition

Besides the business blueprint all IT services and components are recorded via SAP Solution Managercapabilities for Asset & Configuration Management. For details comp. chapter Asset & ConfigurationManagement. ITSCM simply uses the same capabilities for the documentation of minimum configurationsand uses information about dependencies between configuration items as input for risk analysis and riskmanagement.

Test Workbench

The SAP Solution Manager Test Workbench is also a well-known functionality of SAP Solution Manager. In asuitable Solution Manager project, e.g. the general ITSCM project or a special ITSCM testing project the testcases that have to be conducted for a disaster recovery test are maintained and described. These test casesare grouped in test plans and test packages that may be assigned to testers. The test cases must containdetailed descriptions of the testing steps that have to be conducted during a test run. Results will also bemaintained via Test Workbench features. Test cases, descriptions and test plans have to be kept up-to-date.


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 andcounter measures that have been established in ITSCM. Therefore close collaboration between both processes is

crucial for the process ability of ITSCM and also BCM. At least for major changes the effects on ITSCM proceduresmust be assessed and if necessary changes also to the ITSCM planning must be implemented. On the other handchanges for establishing counter measures for disaster losses of services or recovery options obviously have tobe implemented under control of Change Management.

Service Asset and Configuration Management. A configuration item (CI) indicates which service is affected in caseof 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 configurationrequired in case of a disaster are described within Service Level Agreements. The Service Management offers atool to monitor the fulfillment of those agreements especially in case of failures.

Availability Management and Security Management. Risk analyses for ITSCM, Availability Management andSecurity 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 doneredundantly.

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