SAP migration: Good ICT providers bear part of the risk

In November 2015, SAP launched S/4 Hana, the next generation of its Business Suite. Maintenance of the old suite expires in 2025.

More than 50,000 companies must have made the switch to S/4 Hana by then if they want to remain with SAP. And that's not as easy as it sounds.

Switching from the current Business Suite to S/4 Hana is about as complex as migrating from R/2 to R/3, which is why SAP refers to it as a conversion rather than an upgrade.

According to SAP, more than 400 million lines of code were rewritten or completely rewritten for the new suite. Business customers are expected to benefit noticeably from this:

Since S/4 Hana does not use batch processing, companies can use it to simplify their processes and execute them in real time. The in-memory database makes it possible.

The "transaction" and "analysis" building blocks are no longer separate, but integrated into one system. The user interface of S/4 Hana is also more "intuitive" than that of the old Business Suite and enables mobile use on smartphones and tablets.

This gives users insights into data for planning, executing and simulating business processes from anywhere.

Advantages cloud variant

Companies that opt for the cloud variant of S/4 Hana enjoy a number of other benefits in the short term and without a large initial investment: lower maintenance costs, easier as well as faster scalability, greater flexibility and regular, automated updates.

But despite these advantages, many companies are still hesitant about cloud computing. According to a recent study by KPMG and the Berlin University of Applied Sciences, two-thirds of respondents are "conservative" to "very conservative" about moving to the cloud.

Why is that?

Many companies have reservations about the cloud due to the supposedly high integration effort and cost uncertainty. From the point of view of company leaders, who are often breaking new ground when it comes to cloud computing, these concerns are perfectly understandable.

However, an experienced partner with relevant expertise in this discipline can alleviate these concerns.

IT transformation at a fixed price

T-Systems has ten years of experience in cloud computing and has already successfully implemented more than 250 transformation projects for companies. We orchestrate an ecosystem of renowned providers and develop solutions from a single source - from the private cloud to the public cloud to the hybrid cloud, all operated from our own data centers and elaborately secured.

Today, we manage the world's largest cloud platform for SAP. This was determined by the analysts at PAC in a global comparison:

"With over 40 million SAPS (SAP Application Performance Standard) and more than 2.6 million productive SAP users, T-Systems provides the basic operation and the world's largest cloud hosting platform for SAP landscapes."

We are also the only SAP-certified end-to-end service provider in the world.

Thanks to our extensive experience, we can now offer complex IT transformations for SAP at a fixed price. The advantage for customers: T-Systems thus assumes part of the transformation risk.

This so-called "Cloudifier" offer consists of various end-to-end service packages in T-shirt sizes from S to XL. It is aimed at companies of all sizes and follows a consistently standardized factory approach.

The "Cloudifier" thus simplifies the outsourcing of applications to the cloud and - thanks to its fixed price model - eases companies' concerns about incalculable costs.

SAP systematically migrates to the cloud

But how does an SAP migration with the help of the "Cloudifier" work in concrete terms? The IT transformation consists of three phases:

The first step involves analyzing the extent to which S/4 Hana can improve business processes, how existing applications can be cloud-enabled, and which cloud - public, private, hybrid, or multi - is actually the right one.

This is followed by a detailed analysis of the IT architecture:

• What data is located where?
• Which customizations are really still needed?
• How are business processes changing?
• What new business processes are enabled by S/4 Hana?

We then create a binding transformation roadmap and calculate the expected transformation and operating costs. Finally, in the third phase, the existing SAP landscape is transformed to S/4 Hana and migrated to the cloud - if desired, also to the customer's enterprise cloud.

The offering also includes SAP Application Management for maintenance, support, further development and user support. Fixed prices apply for the individual modules, depending on the size of the respective SAP landscape and the associated migration effort. For companies that do not want to move to the cloud, T-Systems supports the introduction of an on-premise solution.

The Experton Group analysts recently confirmed that our offering for smooth cloud transformation delivers what it promises. They awarded T-Systems the title "Leader Germany" for the "Cloudifier" in the "Cloud Vendor Benchmark 2016".

T-Systems was also recognized for its expertise in migrating SAP applications to the cloud: In the "Hana Vendor Benchmark 2017", the Telekom subsidiary achieved a top position in all five categories.

Conclusion

The fact that many companies lack transformation experience is not unusual. Valuable support is provided by experienced outsourcing partners who have extensive industry and technology know-how.

They also offer a highly secure infrastructure and proven transformation expertise. In this way, they reliably handle the change from SAP Business Suite to S/4 Hana - and with a cloud transformation at a fixed price, even calculable for the customer at any time. One of the few offerings of this kind on the market is the "Cloudifier".