The entire SAP landscape at a glance

As a provider of provident and long-term care insurance, Münchener Verein Versicherungsgruppe offers products for the private and commercial segments. The group’s three companies, Münchener Verein Krankenversicherung a.G., Münchener Verein Lebensversicherung AG, and Münchener Verein Allgemeine Versicherungs-AG, ensure services in all insurance segments from a single source and earn 800 million euros per year in income from premiums.

To map its complex business processes one-to-one and to control them efficiently, Münchener Verein Versicherungsgruppe needs a high-performance application landscape. The IT department operates a complex, three-level SAP environment for this purpose. It has been using PRIMEFLEX for SAP Landscapes from Fujitsu as a stable IT base since 2008. The insurance company’s IT team needs in-depth performance data to reliably measure the system’s performance and efficiency. To do this, Münchener Verein has been using the System Inspection Service from Fujitsu since 2011, which has continued to develop steadily since that time.

This service can be used to monitor the entire SAP IT system landscape, from the servers to the storage systems and even the SAP application performance. It thus provides a complete understanding of the current performance and the resource consumption associated with this, and it makes clear recommendations for optimization measures. The service permits the evaluation of the technical performance, actual capacity utilization, and potential vulnerabilities: Which application instances run on which servers? What performance and workload trends can be seen? Are the servers utilized efficiently? How are the workloads of each SAP system distributed over the individual servers? Does the SAP environment indicate unusual performance?

Münchener Verein Versicherungsgruppe uses the System Inspection Service from Fujitsu once a year to take measurements of all IT performance data. This gives the people responsible for IT a transparent overview, and they can determine whether investments are needed, such as in expanding the storage systems or in additional servers. The most recent measurement, for example, demonstrated that new applications had placed a greater load on the system in individual cases. These peaks are visualized in clearly organized graphics and analyzed, so that the use of these applications can be optimized if necessary. In addition, the insurance group can reliably plan IT infrastructure, avoid unnecessary IT investments, and prevent performance bottlenecks. It is also possible to circumvent problems, for example in the systems’ performance, thanks to an early warning system. This increases the overall quality of the SAP services. The System Inspection Service supplies individual, short-term results with a minimum of effort.

Thanks to the clearly organized graphics, the reports can be presented to the managing board very easily and visually. Münchener Verein is pleased with the reliable collaboration with Fujitsu as the managed service provider. “We’ve had the same contact person from the very beginning and never had to struggle through a help desk when urgent questions arose. Fujitsu always gives us professional and personal support,” explains Sonja Fellermeier, who is responsible for SAP Basis administration at Münchener Verein. The company also plans to use SAP HANA in the future. “In that case, the System Inspection Service will become even more relevant to us,” Sonja Fellermeier adds.