What third-party support for SAP actually covers

Scope

Independent, third-party support for SAP replaces vendor maintenance on a landscape you keep running as-is. Rimini Street's published scope covers SAP ECC and Business Suite, SAP S/4HANA, and SAP R/3, including components such as BASIS/ABAP Workbench, NetWeaver, APO, EWM, TM, PI, EP, BW, BOBJ, BPC, and MII.

• 24/7/365 coverage for the running landscape
• Support for custom code — the customizations standard SAP maintenance typically won't touch
• Support across the integrations the business depends on
• Tax, legal, and regulatory updates for the jurisdictions you operate in
• Security response and patching for the existing environment
• Independent roadmap advisory on whether, and when, to change platform

Service levels, stated precisely

Rimini Street publishes a 10-minute response SLA for P1 cases, an average response time under two minutes, and a 4-hour target resolution for critical cases, including cases involving custom code. Resolution can be a solution, a work around, or an action plan, as defined by Rimini Street.

Two things people mix up

• P1 is a case priority, not a support tier. Priorities run P1 to P4, with P1 the most critical. The 10-minute response SLA applies to P1 cases.
• L1 to L4 describe the type of support, from help desk through managed services to product support. They are a different axis entirely, and a P1 case can arise at any of them.

How long it lasts

Rimini Street's commitment is a rolling 15 years from the start of the term, with no required upgrades — deliberately expressed as a rolling period rather than a fixed calendar year, since a stated end date would understate a commitment that moves forward with you.

What it does not do

Third-party support does not deliver new SAP software releases or enhancements, and it is not a transformation programme. It holds the current landscape stable and economical so that modernization and any platform decision can happen on your business case and your timing.