The VMS AdaptiveTCO Workbench

The analysis of an SAP installation with VMS looks at costs, use and quality. While the measurement of system-use and technical quality by the VMS DataCollector is automated, costs and performance structures need to be manually prepared for inclusion in a TCO model.

We developed VMS AdaptiveTCO for this task. The model takes makes allowances for the ITIL model; however, this model has been specifically adapted and expanded to operate on SAP systems. That means that software and service components can be displayed better than with conventional ITIL. Here's what Ralph Treitz, one of the founders of VMS, says about it:

The possibilities in structuring IT services by ITIL are very helpful for many of our clients. But as far as managing applications such as SAP is concerned, ITIL still has large gaps. We fill these gaps in order to be able to offer a good, consistent TCO model.

One essential benefit of the VMS AdaptiveTCO model is that it combines the various different cost structures from VMS' client company in a uniformly displayable and comparable TCO model.

In conventional benchmarks this problem is left to the client, who has to calculate the costs per GB disk or the costs per SAP applications administrator.

This is not the case with VMS, which records real cost structures. VMS calculates unit costs so that they can be understood and so that any deviations from best practice can be easily detected and explained. VMS makes the benchmarking process transparent for the client.

This is made possible by the flexibility of the VMS AdaptiveTCO model.

Cost structures differ from IT system to IT system. But even concepts are not really standardized. What does first level support include, for example? And of course, not every company has costs available in itemized form or in as much detail as you might want. This is where the VMS model makes it possible to work at the level of detail available in each client company.

That's the second advantage of VMS AdaptiveTCO: costs are recorded in the client's structures and not according to an inflexible grid, as happens in conventional processes. However, project-based cooperation makes it possible to determine costs in such a complete form after being recorded that they are of the best possible quality for analysis, e.g., as part of a benchmarking process.