by Tobias Kutning and Bernd F. Lober, SAP AG
Originally introduced to boost quality assurance, SAP standard application benchmarks are also used to test and verify the scalability, concurrency, power efficiency, and multi-user behavior of system software components, relational database management systems (RDBMSs), and business applications. This article takes a closer look at these benchmarks and explores some of the record-breaking results achieved this year.
For those companies looking to make major technology investments, SAP standard application benchmarks are a huge boon. Originally introduced to boost quality assurance, these benchmarks are also used to test and verify the scalability, concurrency, power efficiency, and multi-user behavior of system software components, relational database management systems (RDBMSs), and business applications.
Customers can use the results of these tests to find the appropriate hardware configurations for their IT solutions and determine if certain hardware technologies will be able to handle their estimated workloads. Another benefit of the benchmarks is the competitive spirit they create, which drives technology providers to work harder to beat their competition. As a result, customers are seeing more and more improvements in the products being benchmarked.
About 50 SAP standard application benchmarks are performed on average each year. In 2011, SAP saw major investments from its technology partners in the area of benchmarking — and several companies overtook previous SAP benchmarking records.1 Also in 2011, a partner recorded the first results in SAP’s newest power benchmarks category.
About SAP’s Benchmarking Program
SAP, working together with its hardware and technology partners, developed the SAP standard application benchmarks to test the hardware and database performance of partners’ applications and components. The benchmarking procedure is standardized, defined, and monitored by the SAP Benchmark Council (made up of representatives from SAP as well as hardware and technology partners). This process standardization assures customers of the benchmarking tests’ rigors and fairness. Acting as an auditing organization, SAP also checks the benchmarking results for completeness and correctness before officially certifying and publishing them on www.sap.com/benchmark.
The most popular and well-known of these benchmarks is the sales and distribution (SD) benchmark, which has been around since 1993 and is designed to simulate a core business process (selling, shipping, and delivery). The SD benchmark plays an important role in the SAP system sizing process.
SAP has a range of benchmarks that cover a variety of other topics as well (see Figure 1).
While two of the year’s four record-breaking benchmarks fall under the SD benchmark heading, the other two are from some of these lesser-known categories, demonstrating that these non-SD benchmarks are also quite active.