Beyond Monitoring: x1F Achieves True SAP Automation with Avantra

x1F, a leading provider of integrated solutions, with a particular focus on the financial
services industry, faced mounting challenges in scaling and managing its SAP Basis
operations. With over 125 SAP systems under management and a team of 16, x1F
needed a way to reduce the cost and risk of manual monitoring while delivering
enterprise-grade service to its 15+ customers.
They turned to Avantra, the intelligent observability and automation platform
purpose-built for SAP landscapes.

The Challenge: Manual Effort, Limited Visibility, Rising Risk

By 2021, x1F’s SAP operations team was under pressure:

• Conventional monitoring limitations: Using Icinga for SAP system checks,
  the team could only track very basic system health.
• Reactive operations: Missing proactive monitoring, such as for expiring
  licenses or certificates, lead to late discovery already affecting operations.
• No automation: Daily manual checks across 20–30 SAP transactions per
  system consumed huge amounts of time and resources.
• Onboarding bottlenecks: Adding new systems required repeated manual
  setup across SAP, DB, and OS layers.

The result was a lack of predictive monitoring, high operational cost, and growing
risk exposure.

x1F’s leaders knew they needed to modernize with a platform purpose-built for SAP.

The Solution: Automation and Observability in One Platform

x1F chose Avantra in 2022 after evaluating alternatives. Key drivers included:

• Comprehensive SAP checks: 250+ Out-of-the-box health and compliance
  monitoring checks.
• Automated workflows: From onboarding to daily SAP user creation,
  processes were streamlined based on the built-in workflows templates.
• Predictive monitoring: Early warnings on issues prevented critical outages.
• Fast system onboarding: Leveraging Avantra’s package distribution, x1F
  developed scripts to automate user and agent deployment. Today,
  onboarding a new system takes just 15–20 minutes.
• Custom integration: Using workflows and business services, x1F integrated
  Avantra with Ansible to enable secure, end-to-end automation of SAP
  patching and restarts without Basis engineers staying up late.

Avantra was deployed incrementally, starting with observed automation and deep integration into the existing system, before expanding to full automation of internal processes.

The Impact: Proactive SAP Operations at Scale

x1F quickly realized measurable improvements:

• End-to-end automation: Leveraging the automation engine and integrated workflows, x1F achieved complete automation from end-to-end.
• Immediate time savings: Daily manual checks were eliminated, freeing Basis experts to focus on strategic projects.
• Predictive monitoring: A seasonal customer’s December production outage was prevented when Avantra flagged a file system saturation 20 minutes
  before failure.
• System reliability: Integrated on-call monitoring ensured recurring Saturday night outages were diagnosed and resolved permanently.
• Audit and compliance: Custom checks enabled automated user lifecycle management and role monitoring for audit compliance.
• Happier, more productive team: Internal studies (including a scientific study as part of a bachelor’s thesis by the team lead) showed engineers were more motivated when freed from repetitive tasks.

Perhaps most importantly, Avantra empowered x1F to grow its managed services team and customer base without increasing risk.

The Takeaway: From Monitoring to Strategic Transformation

What began as a search for better monitoring has become the foundation of x1F’s
SAP managed service strategy. With Avantra:

• Operations shifted from reactive to proactive.
• Automation accelerated SAP lifecycle management.
• Integration enabled end-to-end workflows across teams.

As x1F continues to expand, it sees opportunities to leverage Avantra AIR for advanced system analysis and integrate enterprise password management into automated workflows. x1F already makes use of the Avantra BTP integration internally and are offering advanced BTP solutions using Avantra to all their customers.

At a Glance

Challenges

• Basic monitoring with Icinga lacked depth and automation
• No predictive alerts—issues only visible after failure
• Manual health checks consuming hundreds of hours
• Onboarding new systems required manual setup

Benefits with Avantra

• Real-time observability across 125+ SAP systems
• 60–80% reduction in manual time for system refreshes
• System onboarding reduced from hours to minutes
• Predictive monitoring prevents costly outages
• End-to-end automation integrated with Ansible
• Team growth redirected to higher-value SAP projects