At the beginning of this year, SAP SE experts acknowledged the competence of BCC to maintain SAP systems based on the SAP HANA data processing platform in a comprehensive manner by granting BCC the SAP Certified in SAP HANA Operations Services certification, which is unique in the Polish market. This is another confirmation, following the renewed the SAP Certified Hosting Services certification, that the BCC Data Centers is a recommended place for comprehensive maintenance of SAP customers’ systems.
In the first quarter of 2016, the BCC Outsourcing Center was audited once again by SAP SE as part of the cyclical recertification process of BCC as a recommended service partner for SAP solutions. The audit was carried out by two auditors from SAP SE headquarters in Walldorf.
During the audit in the BCC Outsourcing Center, the representatives of SAP SE made a comprehensive review of the processes, procedures, tools and standards implemented in the organization as well as competence of consultants to provide outsourcing services for SAP systems, especially SAP HANA. The infrastructure of BCC Data Centers – two independent but connected data centers located in Złotniki near Poznań – was also verified in detail. It is worth noting that one of the key elements of the audit was also a verification of services for SAP HANA customers and systems supported currently.
The SAP Certified in SAP HANA Operations Services certification is a significant distinction. In Poland, BCC is the first and so far the only SAP partner (excluding the companies that are certified globally) to have this status. In addition, we are very pleased with the fact that the BCC certification level is Advanced. This is of course a source of pride, but also a commitment to further improvement of services provided to customers.
Both statuses: SAP Certified in Hosting Services and SAP Certified in SAP HANA Operations Services, together with the active SAP Partner Center of Expertise (PCoE) certification confirming the quality of SAP Enterprise maintenance services strengthen the leadership of BCC in the Polish market of SAP system outsourcing.
The certifications granted by SAP are not the only confirmation of the high level of BCC services by external organizations. The BCC Outsourcing Center undergoes audits on a cyclical basis, which guarantee that it operates in accordance with good practices regarding the operation of service organizations, and the implemented security procedures meet global standards in this area. The statuses held by BCC include ISO 27001 (Information Security Management System), ISO 20000/ITIL (IT Service Management System) and ISO 9001 (Quality Assurance System).
A professional partner in SAP outsourcing
The certification audit was preceded by collecting extensive information on the functioning of the BCC Outsourcing Center. Detailed checklists gathered data on the performance potential, the team, competence, training attended and certificates held by individual consultants. A separate area of information referred to the infrastructure of the BCC Data Centers, with a special focus on data security, solutions for backups and disaster recovery.
Due to SAP HANA solutions, which are increasingly often implemented by SAP, and the resulting very specific requirements for the hardware and software platform, a lot of questions in the audit questionnaires concerned the specific issues related to the provision of maintenance services for SAP HANA. The SAP HANA systems maintained at the BCC Data Centers use the platform defined by SAP as Tailored Datacenter Integration (TDI). TDI is a guarantee of SAP that the hardware infrastructure resources used by BCC data centers meet stringent requirements for performance, availability and security in the context of the maintenance of SAP HANA systems.
The information sent to SAP enabled auditors to prepare for the audit days, during which they verified the fulfillment of SAP requirements by the BCC Outsourcing Center. During this year's session, BCC was certified for the first time in the field of the SAP HANA outsourcing. The obtained SAP HANA Operations Services status provides customers with a guarantee that BCC fulfils the stringent requirements of SAP in this area, and thus, their systems will be safe at BCC – and all this while maintaining high parameters of performance, scalability and availability.
BCC provides a wide range of services for SAP systems – from support of administrators at the customer’s site through remote administration to managed hosting. For customers expecting support for users in functional modules, BCC also has a flexible offering of SAP application support. The set of services is complemented by the manufacturer's maintenance SAP Enterprise Support (SAP Maintenance). The access to this full range of SAP maintenance services is provided in accordance with the Single Point of Contact principle – regardless of the reported problem.
Tomasz Wawrzonek, IT Deputy Director for BCC Data Centers underlines: "For the first time, we obtained the SAP Hosting Partner status in 2008. Since then, we have expanded significantly the range of services related to the IT/SAP outsourcing in its broad sense and solutions in the cloud model. With two data centers in two different locations, we are able to provide a very high level of services for demanding customers. SAP HANA solutions are becoming increasingly popular in the market, so we decided to undergo a separate audit in this area and we gained the SAP Certified in SAP HANA Operations Services status. Thus we still maintain our position of the only SAP partner whose competence in SAP outsourcing and support has been acknowledged with a comprehensive certification, obtained locally, in Poland. Our success is also the success of our customers, who have entrusted us with their systems and find a reliable partner in us.”
