Application Management in Europe...commissioned by TREND STUDY Application Management in Europe Status quo, developments, and new requirements due to the cloud, DevOps, and agile software

commissioned by

TREND STUDY

Application Management in Europe Status quo, developments, and new requirements due to the cloud, DevOps, and agile software development

Authors: Sabrina Donatell i Karsten Leclerque January 2019

Appl icat ion Management in Europe – Copyr ight CXP Group, 2019 2

CONTENTS

Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 3 Key Findings ........................................................................................................................... 4 Status Quo: Application Management Today ................................................................................. 5 Relevance of SAP Application Management ......................................................................................... 6 With SAP into the cloud .......................................................................................................................... 7 The Role of Service Providers ............................................................................................................... 10 Developments in Application Management ................................................................................ 13 Nearshore vs. Offshore ......................................................................................................................... 13 The Role of new Technologies .............................................................................................................. 15 New Requirements in Application Management .................................................................. 16 Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 20 Disclaimer, usage rights, independence, and data protection ........................................................... 21 About Itell igence ................................................................................................................................. 22 About PAC ........................................................................................................................................... 23


Application management in Europe Status quo, developments, and new requirements due to the cloud, DevOps, and agile software development

Sabrina Donatell i, Analyst Karsten Leclerque, Head of Infrastructure & Cloud Services Practice January 2019

INTRODUCTION

For years, application management has been at the center of companies’ IT

agenda. However, processes and requirements which used to be sufficient for

running companies’ operations, are no longer feasible. The digital era demands

a new approach to application management; one which helps automate

businesses as well as improve agil ity, speed, and efficiency.

Originally, application management targeted assuring the availabil ity and

stabil ity of an application while at the same time freeing up internal resources

for more innovative tasks. With increasing maturity, however, value propositions

changed from simply “running” an application towards steady optimization of

delivery.

Factors such as price pressure, increasing usage of software as a service, and cloud adoption

have all become obstacles to regular application management. At the same time, however, the

need for standardized processes, as well as legacy modernization and overall cost reduction wil l

continue to put application management on IT decision-makers’ agenda.

In order to get a better overview of the status quo and future development in the field of SAP

application management, PAC questioned 207 SAP and IT managers between July and August

2018 across various countries in Europe, asking about their views and opinions. The study aims to

provide a current overview of how companies are maintaining and refining existing software

applications, and what challenges they see in this regard, also in terms of developments such

as the cloud, software as a service, DevOps, or agile software projects.

“As of now, we are at a stage where we

are trying to evaluate which

solution or technology can help

us improve our current system.”

(statement of a participant)


KEY FINDINGS

• Increasing complexity as the main issue

96% of participants see their SAP landscape as a challenge due to the high degree of customization and adaptations. With SAP’s wide range of solutions targeting individual processes, customers are faced with the dilemma of which applications best support their business. As many companies use or wil l use a number of different cloud applications and deployment models in parallel, they have to face complexity in terms of integration and the management of these solutions.

External provider, yes – but mainly for specific tasks

75% work either predominately or partially with an external service provider when it

comes to their SAP Basis support. Likewise, 77% say they prefer to work with an external

service provider when it comes to their user help desk and 61% with regards to the

planning and execution of tests.

• New requirements for service providers • Although 77% say they prefer to have an external service provider involved in rather

general tasks such as application management and hosting of an application, at the same time, 76% expect their service providers to be involved in providing application transformational support and facil itating cloud implementation.

• External providers are not always the preferred option • The results have shown that companies prefer not to work with an external service

provider in areas where they believe to have sufficient in-house resources (88%) or when they perceive their application to be too strategic to have support provided by a third party (85%). When it comes to external service providers, there are companies who prefer not to work with them as they believe collaboration would restrict their agil ity (72%).

• Nearshore vs. offshore • 79% of participants in this study have stated that they are taking advantage of nearshore

resources. Offshoring is used by 69% of companies. Of those companies using nearshore

resources, 46% are convinced that this share wil l increase in the coming years. In

contrast, 34% of those employing offshore resources today plan to reduce this usage in

the coming years.

The role of automation and AI technologies 41% of participants are already using automation or artif icial intell igence-based

technologies for the management of their SAP systems or are planning to do so. At the

same time, 46% are interested in employing these technologies in their organization.


STATUS QUO: APPLICATION MANAGEMENT TODAY

Up until now, application management could be grouped together with what

could be seen as “traditional” IT, which is highly process and governance

driven, involves deployment and maintenance, and, overall, is mainly focused

on “keeping the l ights on” of an application.

However, with digital transformation evolving, application management has to

support the modernization of companies’ business, thereby having to make

room for topics such as cloud, analytics, and mobility. At the same time,

innovation is taking on a much more prominent role than ever before with the

number of new developments and changes to a company’s application

landscape further increasing.

The question that naturally presents itself is then, how can application

management make this shift? And more precisely, how can today’s application

management support companies’ digital transformation process while sti l l

ensuring management and maintenance at the lowest possible costs?

96% see the SAP system landscape as a challenge due to the high degree of customization and adaptations.

“Times are changing and so is the technology. Moving forwards,

we will be implementing

application management

automation and AI technologies.”



RELEVANCE OF SAP APPLICATION MANAGEMENT

SAP has a strong market presence or even market leadership in all considered

countries. Although the market is highly mature, maturity does not mean

stagnation. The SAP portfolio is constantly changing, thus keeping both SAP

customers and service providers busy.

As a result of various acquisit ions over the last few years, SAP is today capable

of offering a wide range of solutions to its customers. That said, the most widely

used solutions are the “older” ERP systems (SAP R/3, SAP ECC).

Which of the following SAP on-premises solutions are already in use at your company, are planned for the next two years, or have at least been discussed?

Init ially, we explicitly asked for locally operated on-premises SAP solutions, i.e., not cloud-based

solutions:

Much more interesting is the fact that half of respondents are already using or planning to use

the in-memory platform SAP HANA. It can be used as the database for the data warehouse (SAP

BW) and for SAP ERP. A large proportion of respondents (49%) are operating an SAP CRM solution

at the moment. Looking at this in general, topics such as customer experience and customer

satisfaction have become a priority for many companies.

Furthermore, this shows that there is a number of companies who have already gained some

experience with the technical foundation of SAP’s next-generation ERP system SAP S/4HANA.

About 20% of the companies have already deployed this new application on-premises.

“The efficiency of our company has increased due to

the implementation

of an SAP solution.”


21%

23%

24%

24%

27%

28%

31%

32%

33%

39%

45%

49%

36%

31%

26%

36%

24%

22%

28%

16%

31%

25%

15%

18%

25%

34%

29%

24%

24%

36%

28%

17%

21%

20%

10%

23%

SRM

S/4HANA

SAP C/4 HANA (formerly SAPHybris)

SAP BW, SAP BI, SAP BO

SAP industry solution

SAP HANA

SAP PI/PO

SAP ERP (ECC)

HCM

SCM

SAP R/3

CRM

Already in use Planned In discussion

n = 207

© P

AC -

a C

XP G

roup

Com

pa

ny, 2

018

'Neither in use nor planned' and 'not relevant' not shown


WITH SAP INTO THE CLOUD

Since SAP first announced Business ByDesign and with it, its serious entry into the SaaS business,

the cloud portfolio of SAP has increased tremendously – amongst other things due to the

acquisit ions of SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur, and Fieldglass.

Which of the following SAP cloud solutions are already in use, are planned for the next two years, are still being discussed or are not relevant?

Cloud applications have become common for many of the respondents. A large number (39%)

of them have deployed SAP’s new ERP suite SAP S/4HANA in the cloud.

Another result this study has revealed shows a tendency by companies towards investments into

cloud-based platforms (i.e., SAP Cloud Platform & SAP Leonardo, SAP Analytics Cloud), with 56%

of respondents saying they are already using or planning to use both solutions. This makes sense

as these solutions support the development and deployment of data-driven applications. More

and more, such applications complement existing ERP backbones. Also, digital topics such as

the Internet of Things (IoT) are facil itated by these solutions.


The level of complexity keeps increasing

With SAP’s wide range of solutions targeting individual processes, customers are

faced with the dilemma of which applications best support their business. The

results show that there is a large number of companies who prefer adding

solutions that support their separate processes, i.e., Ariba for procurement (63%)

and SuccessFactors for human capital management (77%). According to SAP’s

product strategy, these solutions shall complement the core ERP system.

Feeding this new level of complexity is not only the high number of SAP solutions

– be it on-premises, as SaaS, or cloud-hosted – but also the large number of

possible third-party products. A significant number of respondents stated that

in addition to their SAP cloud applications they are using further cloud solutions

such as Microsoft Office 365, Google’s G Suite, or Salesforce, for instance. And

beyond these most common products, a big variety of further SaaS solutions

from different vendors were mentioned to be in use.

Challenges brought forward by SAP application management

Traditional IT tasks – efficiently supporting and automating processes, resulting in a reduction of

overall costs – have lost nothing in terms of their importance. However, the increasing complexity

due to the number of different solutions being deployed makes such tasks even more difficult.

In addition, digitalization and the resulting increased pace of change and innovativeness mean

that companies are facing new challenges regarding management of their SAP systems.

With regard to management of your SAP systems: Which of the following aspects represent a major or minor challenge?

As many companies use or will use a number of different cloud applications in parallel, they have to face complexity in terms of integration and the management of these solutions.


Complexity as the dominant challenge

The majority of participants (96%) perceive the excessive complexity of the SAP landscape as a

challenge due to the high degree of customization and adaptations. This shows that in the past,

SAP systems were the target of individual customization in order to make the software fit

companies’ business processes.

With cloud-based solutions, this level of individualization is no longer an option as solutions come

as standard packages, with a more l imited level of customization available. As a result,

companies now have to change their business processes to fit the new software – providing

companies with a unique chance to combine new software implementation with an overall

business transformation.

For 91% of respondents, the complexity of hybrid IT landscapes is posing a challenge. This

complexity can be related to the increasing number of different platforms and deployment

models companies have in place, often from various providers. Such hybrid IT landscapes often

comprise legacy IT, private and public cloud models, as well as self-operated and (out)sourced

infrastructures, and thus require consistent end-to-end governance, compliance, and security.

The harmonization of SAP landscapes following mergers and acquisit ions is obviously only

relevant for companies with an M&A history; but if relevant, hardly any decision-maker considers

this to be only a minor challenge.

User experience and new technologies

85% said they perceive the need for optimization in relation to user-fr iendliness as a challenge.

This speaks in support for the cloud as the overall user experience is usually up to date and

handling is much more convenient.

85% of respondents see the need for optimization in relation to agil ity and flexibil ity to take on new trends and new technologies as challenging. Companies seem to consider their existing SAP landscapes as not sufficiently flexible to support often agile developments in digital business areas. Interestingly, there was a larger number of participants from France, the UK, and the Netherlands or Luxembourg who saw this as a challenge.

Security and compliance not among the top challenges

Only 34% perceive security and compliance related optimization as a major challenge – which

is good news. Nevertheless, overall, 63% do see need for optimization in these areas.

New challenges related to security and compliance can again be related to the ris ing level of

complexity. It is of course much more difficult to guarantee security standards or to meet

compliance requirements when handling a wide range of various applications, infrastructure

platforms, and vendors.

Compared to these major challenges, topics such as increasing internationalization, lack of

resources in IT, need for optimization in relation to transparency and predictabil ity, lack of

support for new business processes, and the need to modernize SAP application infrastructure

are considered as a major challenge by a smaller number of participants.

.


THE ROLE OF SERVICE PROVIDERS

The study has shown that, although varying in degree and complexity, there is

almost no area in which companies do not work with external service providers.

Particularly when it comes to SAP applications, external providers have a large

quantity of experts at hand who can offer the required competences.

In the highly competitive SAP services market, however, service providers have

to work harder than ever to differentiate themselves from their r ivals. From a

user perspective, clear positioning and differentiation on the provider side is

highly beneficial as it allows to pick and choose service providers whose specific

competencies are most suitable to the company’s individual needs and use

cases.

Does your company predominantly or partially work with external service providers

for the following SAP-related project and operating services?

“I do not see a major difference when it comes to

the services which different

vendors provide.” (statement of a

participant)


External provider, yes – but mainly for specific tasks

Overall it can be said that companies usually prefer to collaborate with external service

providers when it comes to topics which are less differentiable from a customer perspective.

Indeed, 75% either work predominately or partially with an external service provider when it

comes to their SAP Basis support. Likewise, 77% say they prefer to work with an external service

provider when it comes to their user help desk; i.e., tasks that can be standardized and easily

processed nearshore or offshore.

This is also true for custom-specific development, which is realized predominantly with external

support by almost half of the interviewed companies. However, in addition, custom development

increasingly takes place in digital topics, where interest is high but internal competences are sti l l

low (e.g. Leonardo for IoT).

Application management – mostly covered by external providers

The study has shown that particularly when it comes to application management, companies

prefer to work with external service providers (66%). However, only 15% are ready to leave this

topic fully in the hands of external service providers – more than half prefer selective support

from their supplier, and 29% maintain and optimize their SAP applications without significant

external support.

When asked for specific tasks related to application management services, 62% of participants

state services involving application monitoring, 61% work with an external provider for

application optimization, 55% for application management (incident, problem, and change

management), 36% for support/service desk, 34% for BPO, and 34% for technical management.

SaaS will increase the level of external collaboration

With the trend towards SaaS generally increasing, companies wil l increasingly be seeking the

help of external service providers for operation of their SAP SaaS solutions over the coming years.

Indeed, 43% of participants have agreed on this. This is usually due to the lack of ski l ls and

competences within companies, but which can already be found at service providers. Ideally,

by collaborating with external providers in implementing and operating their SaaS solutions,

companies wil l have the opportunity to benefit not only from providers’ technical capabil it ies,

but also from their innovativeness, as cloud migration can often be considered a trigger for

business transformation.


External providers are not always the preferred option

There are some cases where companies prefer not to work with an external partner. Although

this has much to do with the organization itself – its structure, management, and overall

preferences – there are also some quantifiable reasons.

For what reason do you not work with an external service provider for your application management?

The study has clearly shown that companies prefer not to work with an external service provider when they perceive their application to be too strategic.

Another 88% mention that they have sufficient in-house resources available.

A large number of study participants were also skeptical about offshoring on the provider side, as well as the associated language and cultural challenges.

Another interesting finding is the fact that many companies believe

collaboration would restrict them in their agil ity. In fact, application management with an

external partner has quite often been merely an extension of a company’s current state at lower

costs. And actually, several survey participants complained that their current suppliers are not

proactive enough when it comes to valuable changes or innovations.

“They always think their responsibility

ends once the contract is signed.”



DEVELOPMENTS IN APPLICATION MANAGEMENT

As is the case in many other areas of IT, traditional application management is

also undergoing significant changes and developments. At the same time,

internal IT departments are trying to handle the current tremendous challenges

with ever more l imited resources in terms of headcount and knowledge.

NEARSHORE VS. OFFSHORE

One such example has been the growing importance of near- and offshoring for application

management services in recent years. In particular, the ever-growing need for lower prices has

increased companies’ demand for low-cost services. As a result, 79% of participants in this study

stated that they are taking advantage of nearshore resources. Offshoring is used by 69% of

companies.

79% use nearshore resources to manage their SAP systems.


Are near- or offshore resources used for the management of your SAP systems? And what do you think: Will the share increase, stay the same or decline over the next

two years?

The results of this study show that the nearshore/offshore trend is not about to stop anytime soon.

Although most participants make use of nearshore and offshore resources, it appears that

particularly for those companies who participated in this study, nearshore seems to be the

preferable solution. Indeed, the results demonstrate that the nearshoring concept is functioning

well since of those companies who are taking advantage of nearshoring, 46% want to increase

this share in the coming years. Respondents from Germany in particular believe that this share

wil l increase in the next two years.

In contrast, 34% of those employing offshore resources today plan to reduce this usage in the

coming years.

At the same time, companies who at this point are not using near- or offshoring remain rather

skeptical and do not plan on using near- or offshoring anytime soon.

In PAC’s opinion, offshoring or nearshoring wil l be highly impacted by the move towards greater

automation in the next few years. Artif icial intell igence (AI) or cognitive intell igence wil l be used


particularly for routine delivery processes, service desk, or testing. Although costs can be

minimized by lower labor costs, these can be decreased further if labor costs are omitted

completely – making near- or offshoring even obsolete to some extent.

THE ROLE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Given the current cloud, mobile, analytics, and digitalization agendas, many companies have

been starting platform modernization projects within their organization. These include

application consolidation and standardization of systems, but also topics such as automation

and artif icial intell igence. Indeed, 41% of participants in this study have already implemented or

are planning to implement automation or artif icial intell igence-based technologies for the

management of their SAP systems. At the same time, 46% are interested in these new

technologies for their organization.

Are technologies such as automation or artificial intelligence used for the management of your SAP systems or in the SAP user communication technologies?

Although these new technologies are sti l l rather in their infancy, interest from companies at the

moment is huge. In PAC’s opinion, automation and AI even have the capacity to be the next

big thing in application management after offshoring and nearshoring – not only in terms of

further cost savings but also regarding the increase of quality, reliabil ity and agil ity.

New technologies, new benefits

These new technologies can also bring companies many other benefits beyond

cost savings. For example, overall quality could be improved as automation

software is much less l ikely to make errors in documentation compared to

humans.

Documentation can also be automated and thus be sped up tremendously,

which is particularly relevant in agile or DevOps scenarios. One aspect that

companies have to keep in mind is the fact that although automation can

clearly offer many new benefits, the initial effort companies have to invest can

be quite high and should not be underestimated.

“We are looking at aspects of AI and

are trying to better understand how we can make the most

out of it.” (statement of a

participant)


NEW REQUIREMENTS IN APPLICATION MANAGEMENT

Application management as it is today has been mainly addressing the “systems

of record” world, with highly standardized and rigid delivery processes. “Systems

of engagement”, in contrast, have to be responsive, agile, and collaborative.

In addition, today’s demands call for integration of mobile devices, data

analytics, cloud computing, and social media. Topics such as IoT wil l

additionally increase the need for different IT architectures.

All these new requirements lead to the desire to quickly implement innovations

with overall much shorter cycle times than has previously been the case.

New requirements for service providers

What can generally be said is that, based on the results of this study, companies are more l ikely

to obtain external support when it comes to operational services. Indeed, 78% of companies

prefer to have an external service provider involved in rather general tasks such as application

management and hosting of an application.

However, a large group of respondents also see the role of service providers in offering

transformational support of their solutions and help with cloud implementation (76%).

76% see the role of service providers in offering transformational support & help with cloud implementation.


What kind of operation support would you like from an external SAP service provider?

Multi- vs. single-vendor

The trend in recent years has clearly been towards multi-vendor sourcing (i.e., to select several

providers based on their individual key competences for specific service towers or technologies).

However, strategies are diverse. A third of the survey participants prefer a “one-stop shopping

model” for their SAP landscape – including hosting and application management services

through a single provider. Another 45% agree in part.

Finally, a suitable sourcing strategy depends on the requirements and targets of a company. A

single-vendor approach holds the risk of dependency on one provider, while a multi-vendor

approach means multi-vendor management, and thus increased complexity.

Customers seek greater commitment from their service provider

Which payment models would you prefer when working with an external SAP service

provider?


A mix of ticket-based, time & material, and fixed-price models have so far been the predominant

commercial models for SAP application management. With increasing maturity on the provider

side and businesses looking for greater cost visibil ity, PAC has seen a greater focus on fixed-price

models in recent years. The results of this study demonstrate this fact as 93% state that they either

fully or partially prefer SLA-based payment models, which at the same time indicates that

customers are seeking a greater commitment from their service provider.

Outcome-based pricing puts even greater responsibil ity on the provider side since payment is

directly associated with the achievement of agreed KPI improvements. Such agreements can

be related to an increase in the level of quality, to cost reduction, to a reduction in the number

of tickets etc., or even to real business KPIs on the client side. This payment model is preferred

by 81% of companies in this study.

Moving away from simply “keeping the lights on”

When the surveyed decision-makers were asked for their expectations regarding their external

service partners’ offerings, the answers were manifold.

Open question: Are there support services that you would want from an SAP service provider but that you currently do not see on the market – be it in terms of current

challenges or your future strategy? Overall, many seem rather happy with the available service

offerings. There were hardly any real gaps identif ied between

the customers’ requirements and the providers’ portfolios.

Nevertheless, the study participants have a number of

suggestions and requests for their service suppliers.

They are sti l l asking for typical application management

services, such as support with end-of-l ife application

management for applications that are not migrated or

transformed, but that wil l remain business crit ical in the short to

mid term.

But most wishes are related to services beyond mere maintenance and incident handling, i.e.,

the “need to be more proactive when it comes to the delivery of services”.

With the emergence of cloud delivery models, clients are demanding more technical consulting

and support, beyond mere application support, and also help with multi-vendor management.

In addition, clients expect support with regards to their investments in SAP software and how to

make out most of it. Several interviewees asked for more onsite support, more flexibil ity during

the contract term, closer collaboration with the internal IT teams, and more knowledge transfer

from the provider to the client.

This demand for closer local collaboration is a general trend as established application

management delivery concepts are not totally suitable for agile projects in new digital areas.

And it goes hand in hand with the participants’ wishes for their service suppliers to provide

support not only with the application but also with business transformation.

Consequently, customers would l ike their suppliers to have deeper industry-specific know-how

to allow a stronger business alignment, and they want them to take more responsibil ity, e.g.

through real outcome-based pricing models.

“All relevant services can be

found on the market, you just have to choose

which ones best suit your requirements.”



But as mentioned before, the survey participants do not generally miss these kinds of support

services on the provider side; today, they seem just not to be part of most application

management agreements.

And even if the required services are generally available on the market, it seems challenging for

IT decision-makers to find the right service partner; some complained about a lack of

transparency regarding the providers' positioning, strategy, and roadmap.

How to overcome the typical “Dev vs. Ops dilemma”

More than ever, we seem to face a typical dilemma when it comes to operations services. On

the one hand, customers are searching for comprehensive support, ideally with their

infrastructures, applications, and business transformation, and expect providers to bring in

innovation proactively during the contract term. On the other hand, they are aiming to ensure

reliabil ity with ever-decreasing operations costs – lower costs were by far the most frequently

mentioned requirement.

This dilemma has been well known in the IT outsourcing market, but it is far from being unique to

the relationship between client and external supplier. Almost all internal IT departments are

currently looking for the best way to implement DevOps concepts in their companies in order to

support the needs of increasingly agile businesses. However, this challenge is even bigger when

it comes to realizing DevOps approaches with the involvement of external service partners.

Customers expect more comprehensive support with operations, but also with optimization,

transformation, and migration. And most service suppliers do have the capabil it ies and offerings

to help.

But this kind of partnership requires new forms of collaboration, incentivation, and pricing.

Agreements that help to reduce operations costs, while freeing up budgets for joint investment

in innovation, may be a good option. Modularized service packages on the provider side – a

request put forward by one of the participants – that can flexibly be customized according to

the specific client’s needs, may be another.

Obviously, the experts’ statements confirm that the requirements for managing an SAP

application landscape have been changing. A mere “keeping the l ights on” approach, which

was typical for SAP application management services in the past, wil l no longer be sufficient.


METHODOLOGY

Between July and August 2018, PAC interviewed 207 SAP and IT managers from large companies

of various industries across Europe. Based on a CATI (computer-assisted telephone interview)

approach, professionals from France, Germany, the UK, the Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Iceland,

Norway, Sweden), the Netherlands, and Luxembourg participated in this study. In addition, it

was ensured that only participants from large companies with revenues of more than

EUR 500 mil l ion took part in the study.

The aim of the study was, in essence, to get an overview of the status quo and future

development in the field of SAP application management and, more precisely, how companies

are maintaining and refining existing software applications, and what challenges they see in this

regard also in terms of developments such as the cloud, software as a service, DevOps, or agile

software projects.


DISCLAIMER, USAGE RIGHTS, INDEPENDENCE, AND DATA PROTECTION

The creation and distribution of this study was supported by Itell igence.

For more information, please visit www.pac-online.com.

Disclaimer

The contents of this study were compiled with the greatest possible care. However, no l iabil ity

for their accuracy can be assumed. Analyses and evaluations reflect the state of our knowledge

in January 2019 and may change at any time. This applies in particular, but not exclusively, to

statements made about the future. Names and designations that appear in this study may be

registered trademarks.

Usage rights

This study is protected by copyright. Any reproduction or dissemination to third parties, including

in part, requires the prior explicit authorization of Itell igence. The publication or dissemination of

tables, graphics etc. in other publications also requires prior authorization.

Independence and data protection

This study was produced by Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC – a CXP Group Company).

Itell igence had no influence on the analysis of the data and the production of the study.

The participants in the study were assured that the information they provided would be treated

confidentially. No statement enables conclusions to be drawn about individual companies and

no individual survey data was passed to Itell igence or any other third party. All participants in

the study were selected at random. There is no connection between the production of the study

and any commercial relationship between the respondents and Itell igence.

http://www.pac-online.com


ABOUT ITELLIGENCE

itell igence is a leading international full-service provider for SAP

solutions, employing more than 7,500 highly qualif ied employees in 25

countries. As SAP-certif ied provider of cloud services, itell igence has

received many partner awards and is SAP Platinum Partner. itell igence

oversees complex projects in the SAP solution-based environment

worldwide.

The company’s services for SAP solutions range from consulting and

licensing to application management and hosting, as well as

proprietary industry-specific solutions. Expert managed services,

industry experience, and a global service infrastructure enable

itell igence to provide the ideal platform for SAP support.

All managed services are offered through scalable, flexible and cost-

effective delivery models to ensure the right balance between local

support and global economies of scale. Working around the world,

itell igence is responsible for numerous projects, across national borders

and diverse business landscapes. Based on global expertise and

experience, itell igence delivers world-class services and solutions

through local experts that understand the requirements of specific

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We offer worldwide support, tailored to SAP customers’ needs – our

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For more information, please visit: www.itell igencegroup.com

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ABOUT PAC

Founded in 1976, Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) is part of CXP Group,

the leading independent European research and consulting firm for

the software, IT services, and digital transformation industry.

CXP Group offers its customers comprehensive support services for the

evaluation, selection, and optimization of their software solutions and

for the evaluation and selection of IT services providers, and

accompanies them in optimizing their sourcing and investment

strategies. As such, CXP Group supports ICT decision-makers in their

digital transformation journey.

Further, CXP Group assists software and IT services providers in

optimizing their strategies and go-to-market approaches with

quantitative and qualitative analyses as well as consulting services.

Public organizations and institutions equally base the development of

their IT policies on our reports.

Capitalizing on 40 years of experience, based in 8 countries (with 17

offices worldwide) and with 140 employees, CXP Group provides its

expertise every year to more than 1,500 ICT decision-makers and the

operational divisions of large enterprises as well as mid-market

companies and their providers. CXP Group consists of three branches:

Le CXP, BARC (Business Application Research Center), and Pierre

Audoin Consultants (PAC).

For more information, please visit: www.pac-online.com

PAC’s latest news: www.pac-online.com/blog

Follow us on Twitter: @CXPgroup

PAC – a CXP Group Company Holzstr. 26 80469 Munich, Germany Tel.: +49 (0)89 23 23 68 0 [email protected] www.pac-online.com

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Application Management in Europe...commissioned by TREND STUDY Application Management in Europe Status quo, developments, and new requirements due to the cloud, DevOps, and agile software

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