SAP S/4 Power

In 2015, SAP announced its ten-year plan to migrate all customers to the Hana database. The original deadline of 2025 for ERP/ECC 6.0, SAP Business Suite 7 and AnyDB has since been postponed to 2027/2030, but the release change to Hana is more topical than ever.

For existing SAP customers, this means that a decision has to be made as to which infrastructure the Hana platform will be operated on in the future. This is primarily an architectural decision in favor of Hana as a database platform, rather than a decision regarding on-prem or cloud.

After an initial rush of various market segments that are highly competitive (or were already advanced in planning), such as retail, manufacturing, and automotive, a lag in the migration rate is becoming noticeable.

Only about 20 percent of SAP's existing customers have already taken the operational step to the Hana platform. In addition, there are naturally countless PoCs in the SAP community.

The reasons for this are manifold: On the one hand, these are long-term projects that can last from a minimum of six months to several years. Careful planning, integration into the overall business transformation plan, data consolidation, etc. are all steps that need to be thought through and take time.

On the other hand, the platform is not homogeneous enough for many customers. Voices about this have become louder and louder in user groups and forums in the recent past. In addition, high costs and fears of commitment also scare some people away.

And then there are simply customers who need time, who have already planned their migration but have not started.

SAP has probably heard and understood all this and, as already discussed in this magazine, has considerably extended the deadlines for the transition to the new Hana world - for the first time until 2027 and even beyond that until 2030, in return for a certain service contribution.

Another significant concession in this context is the commitment to the Hana and S/4 platform until at least 2040, all in order to provide customers with a reliable projection of the future and not to worry them about lengthy, complex scenarios.

Liquidity and cybercrime

All this is now compounded by the global Covid 19 recession: global trade and production almost at a standstill, desperation everywhere regarding liquidity, new challenges and/or threats such as digital bottlenecks or escalating cybercrime, lack of planning certainty, etc.

At the end of 2019, an optimistic tone actually dominated the market. Various analysts and user group speakers agreed, based on various surveys, that around 50 percent of all companies had planned investments in this area for the period 2020 to 2022.

Under the current circumstances, this is doubtful or will at least be postponed. SAP's maintenance extension probably came at the right time. All in all, this is a complex, uncertain and challenging time that requires new approaches and also new assurances.

Against this not unproblematic background, we want to take a look at the development of Hana on Power. What is the growth rate, what is the current market share, what are the future expectations and what are the new developments on the platform?

The success story continues: SAP Hana on Power's share has continued to grow, to now more than 3800 customers worldwide (of which about 600 are in Europe) and well over 25 percent market share (the gentle reader will recall last summer's reversal, when Intel claimed to have about 75 percent market share).

It is remarkable that about two thirds of the customers started their Hana projects on x86 architecture and then switched over due to the more or less unpleasant experiences.

Characteristic for Europe is the large share of enterprise customers (about 80 percent of the total customer base), which thus still accounts for about 50 percent of the global Hana-on-Power volume.

However, we also keep coming across studies that say that the majority of Hana installations are under 2 TB and can therefore rather be attributed to the midmarket. This is certainly true for the Asian business area. In Europe, it still remains "the next frontier".

In order to take this potential into account, we at IBM are also focusing more and more on so-called TSPs (Technical Solution Providers), multipliers of all kinds such as MSPs , CSPs, SIs.

While initially it was mostly on-premises installations that relied on Power as a platform, there are now also more and more cloud solutions in all variants (from private cloud to hybrid cloud to multi-cloud).

Since cloud solutions are usually only as good as the underlying infrastructure, it is not surprising that more and more existing SAP customers as well as cloud providers are relying on the benefits of Power. Even SAP now offers its HEC (Hana Enterprise Cloud) on Power and sees this as a guarantee for future growth.

In this context, the acquisition of Red Hat by IBM should also be mentioned once again. It makes IBM the top dog in the area of hybrid cloud and opens up new growth and integration opportunities.

Red Hat apps

"Built on Red Hat OpenShift, it gives users access to AI applications, blockchain and containerization. The necessary technology components are based on the Red Hat Open Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure."

explains Jochen Glaser, Global Head of SAP Business at Red Hat.

"Following the recent announcement of the transition of all IBM Cloud Pak offerings to Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, IBM has decided to also use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the platform for Hana on IBM Power.

Official SAP certifications for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 on IBM Power 9 for Hana have already occurred."

In the area of automation, Red Hat is the leader with Ansible and offers another plus point for integration on the Power Platform. No other vendor offers anywhere near as broad a portfolio as IBM.

Ansible can bring together a wide variety of playbooks and roles in a workflow. In this way, each area of IT can map its competencies in suitable playbooks, which can then be incorporated into complex workflows without influencing other areas.

The possibilities are perfectly illustrated by the automation of Hana deployments and configurations. The in-memory database Hana offers specific setup requirements that are documented in SAP Notes.

SAP defines all setup guidelines for all platforms in these notes, which include many manual steps. Thus, there is a risk that one or the other system-specific note is overlooked or misinterpreted.

In addition, SAP only provides support for production systems if the SAP Notes steps are consistently followed and documented.

Coupled with the benefits of the best virtualization on the market (built in and for free) and the already legendary security and stability benefits, Hana on Power offers itself as an option in any customer consideration.

Another guarantee for success is the flexibility and scalability of the platform. Under the pressure of the exponentially growing demands of the past few weeks, even one or the other hyperscaler has faltered - and not only because of the network bandwidth, but also because of the seamless on-demand availability, which is based on superior scalability.

We are currently living through times when the famous "good enough" is "just not good enough". In other words, the increased demands on IT are playing in our favor; now more than ever, the core advantages of the Power Architecture are coming into their own.

Since the end of 2015, Hana has been available on IBM Power Systems with IBM's innovative Power architecture and processors. IDC market researchers believe that Power Systems represent a compelling differentiator for Hana and S/4.

Designed for very data-intensive workloads like Hana, Power includes high-performance integrated virtualization that is SAP-certified and numerous features to improve reliability.

The rapidly increasing demands on security and availability are also prompting more and more customers to rely more on on-premises concepts again. It can be predicted that factors such as security and operational costs will continue to crystallize under the current circumstances.

On-premises is certainly a justifiable, secure, price-comprehensible and calculable option, but beyond that IBM is taking corporate strategies into account and is increasingly focusing on hybrid solutions that do justice to the buzzword and trend "digital transformation for cloud".

Hardly any company does not have "cloud" in its medium-term goals, and the trend towards "multi-cloud" is increasing and developing. The more complex and networked the solution approaches, the broader the contact to several (many) clouds of all kinds - and this must be prepared and enabled, seamlessly and securely.

And to come to the economic aspect: A Forrester study clearly shows where the advantages of the Hana on Power Platform lie. According to the study, the total cost of ownership advantage grows with every day of use.

Coupled with the resilience of the system and its technological advantages, this makes for a package that promises relief to many a harried CFO/CIO tandem in these difficult days.

HoP transformation

The aforementioned IDC study also correctly notes: "Switching to an SAP Hana in-memory platform has become less complicated than it was a few years ago.

IBM is in the process of positioning itself as a Hana and S/4 expert that can offer the complete package - from defining the strategy and functional specification via IBM services to implementing and deploying Power-based hardware on-premises and as a hybrid cloud.

Back in April 2016, IBM and SAP announced a digital transformation partnership to jointly create innovative solutions around cognitive enhancements, user experiences, and industry-specific capabilities with Hana and S/4.

There are several reasons that make IBM- Power systems an excellent platform for Hana, with outstanding platform flexibility, resilience and performance at the core."

Finally, it should be mentioned that the business aspects go far beyond the purely mathematical TCO approach. Timely Hana positioning and implementation often delivers a competitive advantage and helps a company position itself strategically for the future.

IBM acts here not only as an infrastructure supplier, but also as a consultant and companion on a journey that has only just begun. Because Hana is not just a database, but a constantly renewing ERP/CRM platform for S/4, BW/4 and C/4.

Of course, the competition is not sleeping and is busy upgrading. More than ever after the steep rise of the Hana-on-Power success curve. Since word has also spread about winbacks against hyperscalers and their clouds (due to costs and reliability alike), the battle is becoming increasingly fierce.

For example, there has recently been quite a bit of buzz in the market due to the persistent memory concept, but without mentioning that it requires a special and expensive Intel Optane solution during a VM reboot. (For more details on this and recent technical updates, see the section by top solutions architect Katharina Probst on the following pages).

In summary, I would like to renew IBM's commitment to our existing, but also future customers in the Hana environment. In times when top reliable solutions at affordable pricing are needed, we do not hesitate to further expand our offering to make it even more flexible, performant and easy to use. 3800 implementations to date without any incident speak for this.