Breakthrough with IBM for Rise

SAP partner IBM tries Hana and S/4 - an interview

ERP generation change

E-3: According to an announcement, IBM has decided to introduce Hana and S/4 worldwide. What does IBM hope to gain from this ERP generation change?

Tanja Scheller, IBM: IBM is undertaking one of the world's largest business transformation projects based on SAP ERP software. We will migrate our processes and SAP systems in more than 120 countries, 1,000 legal entities and numerous IBM business units for software, hardware, consulting and finance to SAP S/4 Hana. The goal is to evolve ourselves, drive our growth, and better support our customers. With the experience we are gaining with IBM's internal use of Rise with SAP, we will be even better able to assist our customers with their business transformation and their journey to the hybrid cloud. For example, we are working with Chemieanlagenbau Chemnitz, a global plant and process engineering company, to digitize its processes and accelerate its move to the cloud with the new Breakthrough with IBM for Rise with SAP offering.

Tanja Scheller, Director IBM Innovation Center for SAP Solutions, Head of IBM Branch Office Walldorf.

S/4: On-prem installation with cloud functionality

E-3: According to the announcement, S/4 is to be an on-prem installation with cloud functionality. Why not a classic private or public cloud?

Scheller: I would rather describe it the other way around: It is a cloud installation with on-prem functionality, to stay with the picture. Our Rise contract with SAP is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) contract and our licenses have been moved from on-premises to SaaS with IBM running it in the IBM public cloud. So it's a public cloud deployment in a SaaS model. The implementation here is Rise with SAP S/4 Hana Cloud, Private Edition with the IBM Premium Supplier option, with IBM Consulting acting as the Rise Premium Supplier.

Benefit from Rise

E-3: You say that the Rise program is applied. Why and for what tasks?

Scheller: We are focused on evolving our business processes through Rise with SAP S/4 Hana Cloud. As part of our business transformation, more than 300 existing SAP instances will be moved to the cloud and 500 servers will be consolidated on IBM Cloud using the Rise with SAP solution on IBM Power on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Ultimately, more than 375 TB of data on IBM Power and Red Hat Enterprise Linux will be moved to IBM Cloud. This migration to S/4 is already underway across IBM's software business, with initial deployment focused on IBM's software-as-a-service and billing system, and is already benefiting customers and IBM business partners through simplified billing and payment systems, while orders and contracts can be processed quickly.

How good or bad is Rise?

E-3: At the same time, IBM has announced that it is the world's only holistic Rise cooperation partner. After more than a year of Rise with SAP, this circumstance appears in a dubious optic: How good or bad is Rise, so that SAP has only one cooperation partner, and why does IBM sacrifice itself for this job?

Scheller: Although SAP cooperates with other partners such as hyperscalers and consulting firms in the Rise deployment, IBM is the first cloud provider to offer infrastructure, technical managed services, business transformation services as well as application management services for Rise with SAP from a single source as a premium supplier. As an SAP consulting partner worldwide, IBM can thus provide customers with holistic advice and support on the path to a decision for or against Rise, weighing up the pros and cons of switching their license model to a software-as-a-service solution and operation in the cloud. We offer Rapid Discovery Services for Rise with SAP as well as our IBM SAP S/4 Hana, Hana Impact Assessment Tool, in order to find out in a completely customer-specific and neutral manner what significance and impact the migration from SAP ERP to SAP S/4 Hana would have on our customers' business.

Effort and added value of database conversion

E-3: What effort will the database conversion from DB2 to Hana entail and what added value does IBM hope to gain by using a third-party database?

Scheller: The database conversion to Hana is a fixed prerequisite for SAP S/4 Hana and was therefore set. The migration will be carried out using the migration tools from IBM and SAP. The added value for us lies in the overall package of the new solution, which of course also enables us to retrieve data in real time and exchange it more efficiently between business units and teams.

Training and support costs

E-3: After many years of DB2 and Business Suite 7, the training and support effort for a new database technology doesn't seem insignificant, does it?

Scheller: Since we have been supporting our customers for years in migrating from SAP ERP on their previous databases such as Oracle or even DB2 to Hana, we have a lot of experience in the database conversion and operation of Hana. The support effort is covered by the SaaS licensing model, where database support is included in the SaaS agreement. 

ERP Roadmap

E-3: Is IBM unconcerned about its ERP roadmap? SAP does not yet have any plans for an S/4 successor. Accordingly, how is IBM planning its future ERP functionality?

Scheller: IBM has made significant investments in SAP over the years and the upgrade from SAP ERP to S/4 Hana leverages these investments to the fullest. With several SAP ERP systems to be upgraded over the next few years, this is our primary focus. And we see S/4 Hana as a foundational ERP base on which we will build for more than the next decade. At the same time, we also see an increasing adoption of SAP S/4 Hana in our customer base. 

More SAP products from IBM?

E-3: Will IBM introduce other SAP products besides S/4? Such as Qualtrics, Successfactors, Ariba, etc.?

Scheller: We are already using Qualtrics, Ariba, Concur, SAP CPQ and some other products today and are continuously looking at our internally deployed application landscape from SAP and other vendors to best support our internal business transformation. Our transformation to SAP S/4 Hana will also leverage other IBM products as extensions to SAP; for example, to further improve decision making through AI and automated workflows.

Cloud model for S/4?

E-3: The basis for S/4 is to be Power, Red Hat Linux and Hana. Where will these systems be operated? Is there a cloud model for this and which one?

Scheller: The SAP S/4 Hana systems are operated in the IBM Cloud. IBM Cloud has long hosted SAP clients from around the world, running SAP-certified infrastructure in our global cloud data centers in Europe, Asia and the Americas. More than 42 IBM public cloud data centers worldwide support SAP-certified workloads and our clients' environments range from single disaster recovery SAP instances to complete production environments for SAP S/4 Hana and BW/4 Hana including high availability set-up and disaster recovery scenarios. The architecture of our flexible IBM cloud platform includes the adaptation of hybrid cloud models, high security without public networks and edge network services with IBM Cloud Internet Services. This hybrid IBM cloud platform will also be used for our internal IBM deployment.

E-3: Thank you for the interview.