Strategy versus cloud

The example of SAP's existing customer Hars und Hagebauer on page 65 of this issue shows a company that, despite a small number of SAP users, has risen to the cloud challenge and set about modernizing its infrastructure.

As a digitalization and value partner of Hars and Hagebauer, we have taken up the company's requirements and secured them with our concept. The focus is not only on cost efficiency, but on all optimization potentials and integrated business processes. At Hars and Hagebauer, the optimization possibilities in the area of network infrastructure and performance were considered in order to serve customer-specific focal points and drivers in the best possible way and to round off the end-to-end journey in the areas of integration, innovation and data aggregation from a wide variety of sources in the customer's cloud ecosystem.

Our managed cloud service portfolio is essential for the next few years in order to leverage the added value of the cloud across the board and thus further expand the path to the cloud or hybrid landscapes. In the end, the goal is not architecture or technology, but to enable the customer to transform their vision and strategy into sustainable processes enabled by technology and carried through the entire organization.

In this case, we worked with our customer to determine that an immediate switch to S/4 Hana did not yet make sense, but decided to lay the groundwork now. It takes our customers to trust us - this example shows how we conceptualize the step lengths so that it fits individually and the customer finds himself.

In our view, there is no "one fits all" for the pace of digitization. As a partner, we currently see ourselves as having a strong obligation to allay supposed fears and concerns and to give clarity and transparency to the construct of SAP and Azure as well as cloud in general. For many customers, we see a need for reappraisal or clarification here in order to prepare their own company for the cloud in a trusting and self-confident manner, and then to go down this path safely.

In this context, we recognized the importance of adoption and change management at an early stage and always recommend this to our customers, because this is the only way to ensure sustainable and successful implementation in the long term.