Do existing SAP customers who don't want to switch to one of the big hyperscalers have to forego the benefits of the cloud?

On the other hand, many customers still see the advantages of their own, individual IT. The arguments cited for this are transparency, control over their own data center, and the fact that the total costs of external solutions are sometimes difficult to plan. Consequently, users are currently discussing the extent to which it makes sense to run their own data center or whether the core IT process can and should be outsourced in whole or in part to a cloud environment. As a rule, the ERP systems from SAP are among the absolutely business-critical applications. In the meantime, the Walldorf-based company has opted for a primary cloud-based strategy, within which customers have various options for consuming SAP solutions as a service.

On the one hand, products are offered as software as a service. In this case, the customer is solely the user, who has no influence on either the application or the infrastructure. This is certainly an interesting model for newcomers who can adapt their business processes to predefined applications and are comfortable with the issue of their own data on external systems.

However, the vast majority of SAP users will not be able to do without customizations and thus without an individual SAP system. For these customer-specific application instances, SAP offers specific infrastructure services from cloud providers or services from SAP data centers. For example, with the newly announced Rise with SAP program, the customer gets a whole range of products and services tied together in one package, with the underlying IT platform always based on an infrastructure service managed from the cloud.

But what happens if the customer would like to take advantage of this cloud concept, but does not want to or cannot completely give up his own data center and thus sovereignty over his data and systems? In this case, SAP offers the on-premises cloud option S/4 Hana Cloud PE CDC instead of the off-premises cloud solutions from Google, Microsoft, AWS and others. Here, the customer receives S/4 provided in their own data center or in a co-location of their choice and operated according to all SAP rules and specifications.

A possible partner and subcontractor of SAP for this operated cloud infrastructure platform on-premises is HP Enterprise. The infrastructure service provided and operated by HPE - GreenLake - is ordered from SAP within the SAP Rise offering and is part of the overall Rise contract. SAP in turn operates the application services of the existing customer on it and acts as the overall contractor for the complete stack.

The interest in such on-premises solutions is great and is driven not least by a survey by the SAP User Group DSAG confirms. According to this survey, over 50 percent of the users surveyed do not rate the hyperscaler-based IT platform, including data storage, as their first choice.

SAP itself comes in a similar survey to almost the same results. In addition, these on-prem cloud services can also be used outside of SAP offerings and contracts, and are obviously used for other workloads. For example, HPE offers a whole range of applications, user environments and platforms as fully managed solutions in the customer data center as part of its GreenLake service portfolio. SAP Hana is just one example of this, albeit a very representative one.

With an approach like "GreenLake, the Cloud that comes to You ", the question "Do SAP customers who do not want to switch to one of the large hyperscalers have to forego the advantages of the cloud?" can consequently be answered with an unequivocal "No". On the contrary - in addition to the cloud benefits come more such as greater individuality, predictable costs and, above all, the preservation of IT sovereignty.

Invitation to the HPE Information and Discussion Session

As part of the event series, HPE will demonstrate and discuss the possibilities of GreenLake using the example of SAP S/4 Hana. The focus is on the SAP platform operated as a service (PaaS or IaaS) in the customer's own data center.

Highly automated infrastructures, where the customer retains responsibility and control or consumes them entirely as a service from the cloud, are also a topic of the round. The same applies to the differences between the solutions of hyperscalers versus GreenLake. The opinion of well-known analysts and their view of current market trends will also be heard.

Following the joint round, an individual social event (lunch) is planned together with the respective HPE account manager.

Here is the link to the registration page.