Cobol meets SaaS - Unleashed by the hardware

Why should a customer go to the IaaS cloud at all? The current operating model, on-premise or with the outsourcer, works after all!

Hinrich Mielke: SAP customers are facing a large number of changes: If necessary, they will switch to Hana, the first pilot projects for S/4 are in the pipeline, and Fiori is being evaluated and tested.

Temporary systems are needed for all these activities, and for that you don't want to buy hardware (and sizen it beforehand), but simply pay for its use - like leasing the company car.

Unlike the company car, however, I can always opt for a smaller, larger or even no model at all.

In summary: Complete untethering from hardware, both in terms of capacity and runtime of use, facilitates the agile approach to the project.

As an example, we have a customer who simply has his two data centers full of hardware. Another one is not approved by management.

There, the first training systems are now being moved externally to the cloud - this allows trust to be built up and the pay-as-you-go principle works particularly well here. Another example:

A PoC of one of our customers on S/4 Hana took much longer than planned. Not because of the adjustments on the business side, as one would assume, but because of the outsourcer, who showed his inflexible and slow side. In such a case, established certainties are often questioned...

Why the Azure Cloud? Other mothers also have beautiful daughters...

Mielke: If Office 365 is already in use, the formal barrier to entry is low: data protection officers and the works council are already familiar with Azure and the concepts.

The technical hurdle to entry is also low: Identity management is quickly done with an extension of the existing Active Directory to Azure. This facilitates integration with the on-premise world.

What innovations are there in Azure, to the Sapphire was much announced?

Mielke: The choice of infrastructure has increased decisively: A wide range of virtual machines have now been released by SAP for Hana. This means that the hardware equipment can now be selected between 192 GB RAM and 3800 GB RAM, in seven levels.

Up to 12 TB will be announced in the short term. If that is not enough, certified Hana Large Instances up to 20 TB (announced 24 TB) can be used for scale-up.

And what does the customer get out of it?

Mielke: On the one hand, it is now possible to scale excellently with virtual machines. Such hardware is not available on-premise or from the outsourcer at short notice - and is also not so easy to decommission. This means that the customer is now completely untethered from the hardware in his projects.

Sizing a priori is no longer necessary, certainly not for three years in advance. This is not trivial, especially with Hana, and a miscalculation can quickly prove costly.

Once the preliminary project is finished or in a project pause, the hardware can be decommissioned in a cost-neutral manner. Thus, S/4 preparation projects lose their horror in terms of infrastructure.

It is advisable to start the conversion to S/4 in order to be able to use all the innovations under the Leonardo branding in a meaningful way at an early stage. See also the article in the last E-3 issue on the leonardo.report. (E-3 June 2018, page 57).

But there were more innovations for Azure - and what customer benefits do they bring?

Mielke: There are interesting developments on the integration of ERP systems and Azure, also on Sapphire: there is now the "Abap SDK for Azure", so you can consume services from Abap out of ERP in Azure: "Cobol meets SaaS!"

So a direct integration of ERP and services in Azure is now possible. Currently this is a 1.0 release and only a few services are available, but a direct connection to the Azure Event Hub via SM59 has something!

Last but not least: The SAP Cloud Platform (SCP) is available on or in Azure, which means that the SCP environment runs on Azure as IaaS. An SCP application can therefore run on the same technical infrastructure as the ERP system at the customer's request, with the associated technical advantages:

Data streams remain within Azure, and latency is low. This is interesting because SAP is strongly promoting SCP as an integration and innovation platform.

For many customers, however, this is still a long way off.

Mielke: However, you should definitely be prepared for this future - and prepare the switch to Hana and S/4 Hana immediately. The switch to S/4 Hana will take some time, so you should start soon.

With the use of S/4 Hana, such interesting integrations can also be used profitably - right in the "System of Records", where invoices are generated and sales are realized.

So how does the customer get to the cloud?

Mielke: Easier than often thought. Two principles apply: "Think big, start small", and: first, take a brief inventory of services and their status. Then manifest the foreseeable changes in the near future. This often results in the project plan "by itself".

With an experienced partner at your side, this can be done in a structured manner and in a very short time - then the first PoC starts. Now, experience is also gained internally and trust is built up. Once the business has also been involved, the project plan can be worked through.

Then the fruits of flexibility and cost are reaped, innovations can then be realized on a highly flexible environment.

The concern of many is that costs will run away: In the past, servers had to be ordered; with the outsourcer, there are well-defined ordering processes. How is this here?

Mielke: Many existing processes will change and accelerate due to IaaS, you have to adapt them: A "service creation process" still makes sense, including BANF and release process.

But then you are freed from the shackles of the hardware and can get started at short notice - as long as the other processes are prepared for this: Classic tasks such as IP assignment and user creation must also be prepared for the use of the cloud and the possible speeds.

This is an often overlooked aspect of change, but it is also necessary for a successful transformation toward cloud services.

The complete transparency of costs is also an interesting point: the costs for individual systems, storage and other components of the infrastructure can now be determined and displayed to the day.

This means that special requests from the business department can not only be implemented immediately, but the resulting costs can be presented in a comprehensible way. This makes the discussion about price/performance more objective and accelerates it immensely, which is a great experience for many a CIO [laughs].

The discussion of overhead costs is also reduced, because components such as emergency power supply, air conditioning including maintenance and new purchases, and electricity no longer have to be considered individually, but are already included in the costs on a pro rata basis.

What are the disadvantages of running SAP on Azure?

Mielke: Without an experienced partner, you have to take care of the entire technical architecture yourself, from hardware to network and storage design. This can cost time and cause detours.

The possibilities with IaaS are enormous, and a structured approach is required here. To avoid avoidable costs, an experienced partner is recommended. This partner will design and create the technical architecture according to specifications and best practices.

However, the advantages are worth listing again: IaaS means that one can make use of globally distributed data centers (RZ). This means that if your business expands internationally, the data center is already there, perfectly connected and can be used via the familiar portal.

The technical standards achieved by cloud providers are extremely high and also certified in a large number as well as consistently. This is not easy to achieve on-premise.

Last, but not least: Why should I talk to Alegri about SAP on Azure?

Mielke [laughs]: Quite simply, we have the know-how, years of experience and the network to Microsoft, Suse and SAP. Alegri has implemented S/4 on Azure and has been running SAP on Azure since 2015.

Our employees have an excellent wealth of experience, captured in concepts, checklists and software solutions for the efficient operation of SAP systems in Azure.

In addition: We are neutral and independent, because we do not sell software from Microsoft or SAP. Our consulting serves the customer alone.

Cloud expert talk to read, among others with Hinrich Mielke, Alegri, and Holger Bruchelt, Microsoft on e-3.de/e-3-specials

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