Customer-Specific Maintenance

"Support never ends" - customers receive support services even after the mainstream and extended maintenance phases for a release have ended. This third phase is called customer-specific maintenance.

Customer-specific maintenance applies to all SAP applications, such as SAP R/3, SAP CRM, or SAP Enterprise Portal, and does not have an expiry date. During customer-specific maintenance, the customer continues to pay the annual SAP Standard Support or SAP Enterprise Support fee. Customer-specific maintenance does not have to be ordered explicitly, but begins automatically.

There are three possible points in time when a release enters into customer-specific maintenance:

• The extended maintenance period ends.
• The mainstream maintenance period ends and no extended maintenance is offered.
• The mainstream maintenance period ends and the customer does not take advantage of the extended maintenance offering.

In customer-specific maintenance, customers receive similar services as in mainstream maintenance, however, there are some restrictions in the scope of SAP Standard Support and SAP Enterprise Support (see below for detailed information).

Customer-Specific Maintenance and SAP Standard Support

During customer-specific maintenance, customers still receive the following services from SAP Standard Support:

• Delivery of new releases of the licensed software, as well as upgrade tools
• Limited problem resolution (only for known problems)
• Tools for administration and automation of tests
• Tools for monitoring of the system and of the important business processes
• Proactive Remote Services
• Implementation tools and methodologies
• Access to Best Practices
• Support for CCCs
• Available ABAP source code
• Tools and methodologies for Software Change Management

During customer-specific maintenance, the following restrictions apply to the scope of SAP Standard Support:

• No Support Packages: SAP no longer provides new Support Packages
• No legal changes: SAP no longer provides legal changes to implement changed legal requirements in areas such as HR or FI/LO into the software. For releases in extended maintenance, customers can obtain legal changes only as part of extended maintenance.
• Limited technology upgrades
  • No guaranteed new Kernel versions or patches (e.g. to support new OS/DB combinations)
  • One-step upgrade to latest release: May not be available
    As a rule, SAP does not provide new or additional upgrade paths for a start release in customer-specific maintenance. Upgrade paths that were available during mainstream maintenance or during the period when extended maintenance was offered are still available during customer-specific maintenance. Available upgrade paths can be used independently of whether a customer has ordered extended maintenance or not.
  • Interfaces to new functionality in new application releases may not exist but can be developed (extra cost)
• Customer-specific problem resolution
  • Maintenance covers resolution of problems only in case of known solutions or workarounds
  • Resolutions for problems not yet known to SAP are typically charged based on time and material.
  • No guaranteed problem resolutions for third-party software (such as OS/DB) that are not maintained by the vendor anymore

Please note

1. In general, SAP cannot support software from third-party providers (for example, operating systems, databases or other components), which is no longer maintained by the vendor. The customer must therefore possibly carry out an upgrade to more current versions of this software. These more current versions are possibly not supported for releases that are in customer-specific maintenance. In this case, the customer has the responsibility to decide whether to carry out an upgrade or to continue using the old, no longer supported version of the software.
2. Being on an outdated Support Package level could have a negative impact especially when the system enters customer-specific maintenance: You could encounter errors that in the meantime have been fixed in the latest Support Packages. Furthermore, the process of creating individual corrections may be more difficult and time-intensive, or, in exceptional cases, impossible.

During customer-specific maintenance problems are processed according to the following rules:

• Primary Support and downstream institutions accept and process problem messages. The reported error is analyzed.
• If the error is already known, a note in status "released for customers" exists for the respective release documenting the problem. An existing solution is made available for the customer.
• If no note in status "released for customers" exists to document the problem for the relevant release, the error is regarded as a new, as yet unknown error. In this case, the processing is a consulting service subject to charge (for more information about procedures and costs, see the country-specific notes on Remote Consulting under XX-RC and XX-SER-GEN). At the start of customer-specific maintenance of a release, SAP deconstructs the internal system landscapes for this release. Because of this, corrections of unknown errors can only be made as single correction in the customer system. In the customer system, SAP acts as a developer of the customer and has no further rights. The provision of corrections for software components whose source code is not accessible to the customer may therefore not be possible.

Customer-Specific Maintenance and SAP Enterprise Support

During customer-specific maintenance, the following restrictions apply to the scope of SAP Enterprise Support:

• The SLAs on initial reaction time and corrective action are no longer delivered

 

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Detailed information on individual deliverables

Support Packages, Support Package Stacks and Kernel Patches

Existing Support Packages for releases currently in customer-specific maintenance are available in the Software Download Center Archive (example for SAP R/3 4.6B):
http://service.sap.com/swdc
-> Download
-> Support Packages and Patches
-> Archive for Support Packages and Patches
-> My Company's Application Components
-> SAP R/3
-> SAP R/3 4.6B

Once a release enters customer-specific maintenance, Support Package Stacks that were provided during mainstream maintenance are no longer visible in the Software Download Center. Customers can only access the Support Packages via the Software Download Center Archive.

You can find the available Kernel patches for Kernel versions that are in mainstream or extended maintenance via the following path:
http://service.sap.com/swdc
-> Download
-> Support Packages and Patches
-> Entry by Application Group
-> Additional Components
-> SAP Kernel

Installations and Upgrades

New installations of or upgrades to releases in customer-specific maintenance are generally not supported. If you need e.g. an installation in the context of a database or operating system migration, please create a customer message under component XX-SER-SWFL-SHIP.

Sources of Information

Releases in customer-specific maintenance are not displayed in the Product Availability Matrix (PAM). If you need information on these releases, navigate to http://service.sap.com/pam -> Box "Quick Search for Product Versions" -> Product Versions in Customer-Specific Maintenance since Jan 07.

Information about availability for Support Packages is available at http://service.sap.com/hrsp (for SAP HR Support Packages) and http://service.sap.com/ocs-schedules (for Support Packages for other software components).