Remember the old FedEx package delivery slogan, “When it absolutely, positively has to get there overnight”? Well, on-time delivery is important when you’re dealing with SAP over the Internet, but distance and congestion get in the way. Not long ago we had a chance to model the effect Akamai’s Web Application Accelerator (formerly Netli) has on Web-enabled SAP applications, and the results look pretty good. You can get more information in the report we wrote, but here’s the short version.
Because SAP is usually centralized, remote users often traverse long distances before reaching the server–and these long distances bump up round-trip times. To make matters worse, congestion can starve SAP of essential bandwidth and raise user response times. When you consider that SAP users’ tolerance for long response times is low and SAP is critical to most businesses, you’ve got a problem itching for a good solution.
The Use Case Scenario
NetForecast built a model for SAP performance around a multi-step business scenario in which a production user processes 50 sales orders, each of which requires four tasks with an Apdex target time of two seconds. In addition, each sales order requires downloading a sale summary file with a target time of nine seconds.
The Results
Based on our modeling results shown here, an Akamai-enabled user up to 9,000 miles from a server generally experiences performance similar to that of non Akamai-enabled users less than 3,000 miles from the server. And an Akamai-enabled user between 9,000 and 12,000 from the server generally experiences performance similar to that of non Akamai-enabled users between 3,000 and 6,000 miles from the server.
Effects of Akamai Web Application Accelerator on SAP Performance
Without help, SAP baseline performance dives into the poor range within 6,000 miles of the server, and into the unacceptable range within 9,000 miles. With the Akamai Web Application Accelerator service turned on, however, the NetForecast model shows that Akamai stretches good performance an additional 7,000 miles from a baseline of 4,000 miles out to 11,000 miles from the server.
The Upshot
If you use SAP over the Internet and your users are outside your geographic region, you will need a solution like Akamai’s to get acceptable performance. As the adage goes, your mileage may vary from what our results show. But we can say with confidence that your mileage will improve when you apply such a solution to keep users productive regardless of where they are located in the world.
To learn more, click here to get the report.
