To support its business critical SAP applications and to provide a robust, secure and future-proof IT infrastructure, Princes elected to outsource the management of its SAP environment to Attenda, the Always On Managed Services company and Europe’s leading specialist in operating Internet and enterprise applications.

Princes is a leading UK supermarket brand, synonymous with quality, integrity and choice. The company is a trusted and valued supplier to all major supermarkets and the independent retail and foodservice sectors. In addition to being one of the UK's leading grocery brands in its own right, Princes owns a portfolio of nine other food and drinks brands. The leading importer of canned food in the UK, the third largest soft drinks manufacturer and brands ranging from Princes, Napolina Italian Foods and Shippams spreads to Aqua-Pura natural mineral water and Crisp 'n Dry cooking oil. Princes has a significant manufacturing capability with nine production sites in the UK and a dedicated tuna processing business in Mauritius.

Princes had been using SAP within its business since 1998, but in 2005 a major project was initiated to upgrade SAP to leverage the business benefits of the latest version and provide a platform for growth over the next 5 years. During this time the significant risks associated with the use of its own infrastructure and data centres was highlighted. In particular, the computer room was located on the 6th floor of the world famous Royal Liver Building in Liverpool where, due to planning constraints, it was impossible to get the necessary resilient services into the building. Further, it was recognised that their current approach would not meet the business requirement for 24x7 support in a highly available environment.

As a result, Princes embarked upon a lengthy tendering process to select a suitable partner to work with, in order to provide managed services that would meet the specific needs of their business both now and in the future. In particular, it was important that the business invested in the ability to scale for future growth and agility. Attenda was selected, as a result of this tendering process, specifically because of its recognised ITIL process standards, its depth and breadth of SAP skills; and its strong reputation for service excellence, with an impressive and demanding client list.

Neil Crew, Group IT Director, Princes comments, "As an SAP Hosting Partner, we were confident that Attenda could ensure that our business critical SAP systems were 'always on' providing us with the operational resilience, availability, performance and security that our business demands."

Princes has outsourced the operational management and support of mySAP ERP financial, sales, distribution and manufacturing functions to Attenda. The infrastructure comprised a clustered Windows environment using HP servers, utilising an enterprise-level HP Storage Area Network (SAN). The architecture was designed to eliminate any single points of failure within the infrastructure and employed state of the art clustering technologies for High Availability, high levels of redundancy, and a dedicated Disaster Recovery solution, based at Princes own location, built into the solution.

As part of its SAP Managed Service, Attenda manages the SAP systems up to and including the SAP technology layer; this includes: hardware, operating system, and database monitoring and management services as well as SAP Basis/Web Application Server (WAS) management and monitoring, all fully integrated into the Attenda M.O. platform. The Attenda SAP Managed Service offers complete lifecycle management of the Basis (WAS) layer of all SAP components and includes full monitoring and tuning of all components, as well as day to day administrative tasks, proactive maintenance and problem resolution.

Attenda M.O. is the industry's most efficient IT operations platform. Based upon an unrivalled 60-man year multi-million pound investment in the development of an industry defining technology automation platform, Attenda has created a sophisticated, disciplined and efficient service management regime, based upon ITIL compliant processes and supported by highly experienced operations staff. The platform is unique in that it is used as the foundation for all of the Attenda product solutions, rather than approaching each client project from the ground up. Through this tried and tested foundation Attenda can provide unbeatable availability, performance and security at a fraction of the cost as this investment is shared across the entire client base.

The migration from Princes existing R/3 system to the newly re-implemented mySAP ERP system hosted by Attenda was a complex and critical part of the project. The project plan had to cover: process scenario analysis, development and functional enhancements, authorisations, the deployment of new infrastructure and systems, data migration, testing, training and the final cut-over and go-live phases.

Close co-ordination between Princes and Attenda, dedicated project management, and having the right people with the right skills to hand during each phase was a key element to getting things right. Although timescales were tight, the project successfully went live in March 2006 according to plan.

Attenda provides system monitoring on a 24x7 basis, using SAP bespoke and third party monitors across the entire infrastructure, feeding down to the Attenda standard support model. Princes and Attenda work in partnership operating as a single team. Attenda manages the hardware and operating system layer 24x7, whilst Princes manage the database and SAP layers during business hours with handover to Attenda to also manage these layers overnight and at weekends.

The solution provides a single view of the system and management standards. A dedicated Princes support portal provides a single point of management with Princes retaining overall ownership of the systems. Standard operating procedures are fully documented and routine daily morning and evening handovers take place. Video conferencing can take place if required, in addition to routine monthly review meetings.

Attenda was selected as a specialist company whose core business is managing business-critical systems and with a UK based support operation. As an accredited SAP Hosting Partner, Attenda had the proven credibility and technical ability to manage an IT system that was critical to the day to day operations of Princes in all parts of its business. This credibility was further enhanced by Attenda's impressive client list and focus on managing business critical applications as opposed to purely server management.

The fact that Attenda had adopted ITIL as its operational methodology gave further peace of mind to the Princes evaluation team believing this demonstrated a process driven approach that would drive repeatable and predictable operational behaviour.

Attenda's operation offers complete resilience and its approach to security could also benefit other non-SAP projects within Princes business. The relationship provides Princes with SAP support through Certified SAP consultants contracted to provide out of hours support, together with Certified Microsoft Engineers providing 24x7 Windows operating system support.

Importantly too, Attenda and Princes shared the same vision of managing SAP and Attenda already had Internet technology experience in line with SAP's Netweaver roadmap.

Crew adds, "The partnership with Attenda had given us the opportunity to focus our own internal IT resource into projects and activities that add value to the business, knowing that our core SAP system are in safe and trusted hands. The key to this is that we engage on a day-to-day basis as colleagues, rather than supplier and customer. They add to our knowledge of SAP, and occasionally we like to think that we add to theirs."

The partnership with Attenda to outsource the operational management and support of mySAP ERP solution is bringing Princes significant business benefit.

Operationally, there are improvements in system resilience, availability and scalability. The Attenda SAP Managed Service takes on the operational responsibility and management of Princes SAP systems in a secure and robust environment at a fixed price, leaving Princes with more time to move the business forward.

Resilience is guaranteed with no single points of failure in the Data Centre and throughout the entire solution stack. Availability is measured through a fully accountable Service Level Agreement including annual DR tests. Finally the system infrastructure is designed for full scalability to absorb future growth of the business.

Neil Crew concludes, "The partnership with Attenda enables us to take advantage of its proven expertise and operational delivery, accelerating the pace of development of our SAP systems, which in turn enables our business to be more agile, whilst reducing the risk of change."