Cloud Bridge for building and using SAP hybrid cloud system environments

Numerous SAP Basis tools/additional solutions from SAP partners have either been developed as part of projects at SAP customers, as a result of an expansion of the company's own solution offerings for the SAP environment, or have emerged from the experience gained from consulting or operating projects.

Or also by the need to supplement basic tools from SAP as well as partner solutions from the hardware sector, for example. At LNW-Soft, it was a mix of the above, so to speak, years ago. The guiding principle for LNW-Soft is: "From practice for practice.

Hybrid cloud deployment needs SAP Basis tools

Of course, the SAP hybrid cloud era is not about a complete paradigm shift in SAP Basis tools. Rather, it is about linking or extending the necessities of Hana on-prem operation with those of public cloud or multicloud use.

And it does so with the aim of ensuring that the potential of hybrid cloud deployment is exploited as fully as possible. Specifically, LNW-Soft has added a module called Cloud Bridge to its suite of tools called Proactive Management Suite, which is widely used by SAP users, and which will first be made available for use with the Microsoft Azure cloud.

With the Cloud Bridge, the following in particular can be realized at the push of a button, and much more than the term bridge would suggest at first glance: With this PMS module it is possible, for example, to create (provision) a clone of an existing on-prem SAP system environment/infrastructure with all the resources (compute, storage, network, operations environment such as DNS, LDAP, etc.) and SAP-specific content (SAP Hana Database, SAP application instances, and more) necessary and required for subsequent operation and transfer it to the Azure cloud ("lift and shift").

The subsequent SAP operation is also delivered in the public cloud infrastructure through the SAP operating concept integrated in PMS: for example, essential operating disciplines such as backup/restore, monitoring, HA or Hana HA are ensured.

It is also possible to create a replica of an original according to the need (use cases) and to also operate this completely in the Azure cloud. For example, as a disaster recovery system (DR) to support and ensure business continuity processes and to minimize own data center capacities.

If additional SAP environments are required, but on-prem capacities are currently exhausted, PMS can be used to provision the SAP system environment/infrastructure in the Azure cloud in the shortest possible time and also put it into operation there. But that is not all. If necessary, and if the on-premises capacities allow it again, this SAP environment can be transferred back to the existing on-premises SAP environment quickly and easily and used again.

Users of the PMS suite benefit in a special way from the Cloud Bridge, as they are already familiar with the PMS logic and features (such as backup and restore or Hana-HA).

For example, NetApp for SAP users with Cloud Volumes Ontap who use PMS as a value-added generation solution. But also PMS users who rely on Cloud Volumes Services/Azure NetApp Files.

Cloud or on-premises is not the question here

For PMS customers, it is ensured that use cases (PMS content) already in on-prem use are also available for public cloud use. In other words, PMS users do not have to do without familiar and proven functions.

Furthermore, the Cloud Bridge allows relocations across and between cloud providers while maintaining the same functionality. In addition, cloud benefits propagated with Cloud Bridge can be verified in real terms.

For example, by comparing the cloud provider services (for example, performance or pricing) with customer-specific criteria. Of course, it is possible to use Cloud Bridge as a separate, individual PMS solution, without cloud provider/vendor lock-in.