US-based IT solutions specialist American Digital Corporation's 2014 State of SAP Report shows a rising trend to managed services in that country. The study aims to show trends driving SAP use, and found that 61% of IT leaders plan to invest in outsourced managed services in the next two years, while only 39% will depend on in-house resources for SAP support.
The US is generally regarded as being 1-2 years ahead of Europe in the take-up of SaaS and managed services. There seems to be a recognition of a skills issue with SAP use. Even so, it says, despite an overall growing dependence on third party support, there remains a hesitancy to outsource infrastructure. SAP HANA, SAP Mobile and Managed Cloud rank as the most in-demand SAP offerings.
“SAP environments are relying more heavily on outsourcing to maximize overall efficiency,” said Bill Loupakos, VP of Professional Services, American Digital. “Today we see companies comfortable with outsourcing application support, but many are still holding on to the infrastructure in-house. Providers have evolved to meet these growing market demands, so companies can maximize cost savings and efficiencies and focus their intellectual capital on their business processes and compliance.”
Other findings of the 2014 State of SAP Report include:
IT leaders will continue to rely on outsourced partners to deliver SAP value
- 56% of IT leaders outsource the support of SAP maintenance and delivery
Managed services outsourcing set to grow through 2016
- 61% of IT leaders plan to invest in outsourced managed services in the next two years
- Only 39% will depend on in-house resources for SAP support
Application & database support are the areas most outsourced
- 68% of IT leaders receive outsourced application support
- 47% use basis/database support
- Only 5% receive infrastructure/platform as a service support
IT leaders will keep control of their data centres
- 74% of IT leaders will retain full control of their data centres
- 26% will use a combination of internal resources and outsourced capability
- No-one will fully outsource the running of their data centres
Hybrid SAP models dominate future SAP investments
- 63% of IT leaders plan to adopt a hybrid model – part physical and part virtual private cloud – for their SAP environment; this is up 20% from those engaging in a hybrid environment today