Does digital transformation also mean SAP in the cloud?

Challenges that should not be underestimated, many questions - a close look at the pros and cons and the alternatives are of paramount importance in the run-up to such a decision. So what motivates companies to move their SAP systems to the cloud?

One argument: Mainstream maintenance for ERP or business suite installations ends in 2027, so companies are actively working on the migration to Hana. This is often accompanied by migration, or at least consideration, of SAP to the cloud. In addition, many companies expect a migration to optimize their operations and cost efficiency, save human resources, achieve faster value creation and be able to offer customers innovative services and products.

The fact that the administration of the company's own systems is no longer necessary and that the costs of the internal infrastructure and personnel can be reduced while still being positioned for the future is also often convincing. 

The agony of choice

However, before making a decision, you should have answers to the following questions:

• Are the costs for infrastructure, data transfer and backup retention transparent?
• Is the data located in Germany?
• Is there flexibility in scalability, performance, high availability?
• Are your SLA requirements being met?
• Is SAP support guaranteed, in terms of an SAP-certified platform and SAP-compliant sizing (CPU, RAM)?
• Do providers work with you to develop a valid K-case and disaster recovery concept?
• Do you have the freedom to make your own release strategy decisions?
• Is compatibility guaranteed for release changes to dependent systems? What are the lead times for changes? Is a fast restart guaranteed?
• Do you have a direct contact person?
• As a company, do you have the ability to administer and maintain SAP systems as well as operating systems yourself?

Not every company is the same or has the same requirements. So what are the deployment options and what are the key differences?

First option: on-premises. In our case, on-prem refers to the use of a company's own servers and IT environment. The customer buys or rents server-based software that is installed on the company's own or rented servers. The advantages here are freedom to make decisions about system design, administration, and release and patch management. However, in the case of SAP systems, 24/7 provision must be guaranteed, which also requires personnel outside of operating hours.

Second option: public cloud. The public cloud is freely available to everyone via the Internet. External companies provide services such as computing power, infrastructure, storage space and much more. The advantage here is usage-based billing for the services. Investment costs for server hardware and space requirements in the data center infrastructures are also not incurred, and personnel costs are reduced. However, there is a lack of information about SAP key figures. Cloud platforms have no insight into SAP systems, which makes reliable automatic scaling very difficult.

Third option: Private Cloud. The private cloud is not accessible to the general public. For example, it can be located in a company's local data center or hosted by third parties from certain cloud services. One of the biggest advantages here is a high level of control and security due to private servers.

We at Blue Consult clearly recommend S/4 Hana Blue Private Cloud. With it, you retain your decision-making authority, flexibility, have a fixed contact person and get an individual solution with transparent costs as well as clearly defined responsibilities and accountabilities.