This quarter marks two years since AppDynamics began delivering code-level SAP visibility, real-user business transaction performance monitoring, and overall Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP) stack health. For enterprises running SAP, our solution significantly improves service quality, reduces costs, and enhances speed and end user experiences.
Additionally, AppDynamics is celebrating three years of being an integral part of Cisco, which recently marked a 20-year milestone of working strategically with SAP across a number of different lines of business. Together, Cisco and AppDynamics have a customer-centric mindset and a goal of full-spectrum solutions and services to help SAP customers maximize business value.
New SAP Initiatives Coming Soon
One thing that makes AppDynamics unique in the SAP space is our unparalleled, world-class knowledge gained through the Cisco-SAP partnership. Over the coming months, we’ll be announcing new initiatives and solutions through our own blog and Cisco’s. (For more on our current SAP monitoring solutions, read AppDynamics Delivers an Optimal User Experience to SAP and Non-SAP Environments Alike.)
AppDynamics’ innovation in application performance monitoring (APM) is focused on the Business Transaction. At the center of the Business Transaction (BT) is the end user, and we do everything for the end user through innovations in and around the BT. We’ve always been passionate about helping companies solve business problems and delivering the best possible user experiences, no matter what technologies are involved. What better way to do that than through the transactions that directly impact the end user?
In 2018, AppDynamics launched SAP Monitoring to address the need for enterprise resource planning (ERP) coverage. Given our end user focus, it was natural for AppD to extend coverage to ERP systems, where a vast majority of business transactions occur in backend solutions such as sales, distribution, finance and warehouse management, and on the front end in eCommerce.
As one of the top five enterprise software companies, SAP says that more than 77% of the world’s transaction revenues touch SAP systems. The user experience in these transactions is vitally important to SAP and its customers.
AppDynamics for SAP Monitoring solutions help companies that run SAP in two key ways:
- SAP ABAP Business Transaction Monitoring: Instruments and monitors SAP’s proprietary ABAP language down to the code level within a Business Transaction. With its SAP Agent, AppDynamics auto-detects Business Transactions and errors, reconstructs SAP logs into BTs, and packages and sends SAP performance-related information to our Controller.
- SAP ABAP Stack Monitoring: The AppDynamics for SAP installation includes connectors to Datavard Insights, our partner product. Datavard Insights is used mainly for SAP ABAP and HANA monitoring from a system-wide perspective. Our connector includes the ability to replicate Insights’ metrics and events to the AppDynamics Controller. (You can purchase Datavard ABAP Insights directly from AppDynamics.
While these two SAP solutions solve different problems, they’re often used together to increase the odds of identifying performance issues in a SAP ABAP environment before the issues create problems for the end user. Think of our SAP ABAP offering as a bottoms-up solution bringing detailed, code-level information that’s monitored throughout the Business Transaction. By comparison, Datavard Insights provides a top-down perspective of the health of the ABAP Stack as a whole.
AppDynamics SAP Monitoring fills an important gap in the user journey and across the entire enterprise landscape. Our industry-leading innovation in Business Transaction monitoring blends seamlessly with the SAP transaction flow. Given the depth, complexity and variation of SAP’s vast global market, this is critically important; SAP has more than 440,000 customers worldwide, including 92% of the Forbes Global 2000 companies in industries such as financial services, discrete manufacturing, consumer products, retail, public service and life sciences.
Cisco-AppDynamics: Better Together
Another factor that makes AppDynamics a natural fit for SAP monitoring is that we’re part of Cisco, enabling us to leverage Cisco’s lengthy history of delivering customer success to SAP’s installed base. This is a unique value proposition that only AppDynamics can offer in the APM space.
As AppDynamics’ SAP ambassador, I’ve repeatedly seen the value that Cisco and AppDynamics collectively bring to our customers. A key SAP mission is to help its customers become “intelligent enterprises,” which requires robust connectivity at all customer touchpoints. This mission meshes perfectly with Cisco’s core competency as the world’s leading network provider, and with AppDynamics’ expertise in ensuring performance and reliability across the entire landscape—from the datacenter all the way through the end user experience.
As we work with our SAP customers, we’re learning more about their needs, and developing new solutions to ensure our leading APM capabilities extend fully into their SAP environments. Read more about AppDynamics SAP Monitoring and stay tuned for further developments.
