The digitization accelerator

Nutanix, specialist for hyperconverged infrastructure solutions and enterprise cloud computing, presents its solutions for existing SAP customers and the public sector:

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud on Primergy delivers hyperconverged infrastructure software on Fujitsu servers, bringing comprehensive cloud capabilities to enterprise and government data centers.

The offering can help existing SAP customers to migrate to S/4 faster and more cost-effectively, accelerate release cycles, reduce the total cost of ownership of their SAP landscapes and free up their budgets for more investment in innovation.

Public authorities and companies in the public sector can use the offering to consolidate, harmonize and simplify their IT environments and data centers.

Nutanix believes that e-government services and digital workplaces for civil servants and public sector employees can be provided more quickly and easily.

S/4 infrastructure issues

How, when and with what success the migration to the new SAP software generation Hana and S/4 should take place is one of the most important questions facing existing SAP customers. After all, maintenance for AnyDB (Oracle, SQL Server and IBM DB2) and the predecessor systems ERP/ECC 6.0 and Business Suite 7 will expire in 2025.

But even if Walldorf still prefers to implement S/4 in the cloud - whether in the provider's cloud or with the usual hyperscalers - the majority of SAP users do not follow this advice.

87% want to implement the new software generation on-premises, in a private or hybrid cloud environment. This is one of the results of a recent survey by the US publisher SAP Insider.

In an exclusive interview with E-3 this summer, the SAP Co-CEO explained:

"We continue to see a very high demand for S/4 Hana on-premises among many of our existing customers. That is why we will continue to invest here.

We are also well advised to provide customers with hybrid support. In the future, there will still be customers who want to run their applications in their own data center."

Furthermore, the number of existing SAP customers who have already implemented S/4 or are in the process of doing so is still in the minority at just under a third - another finding of the SAP Insider study.

The latest findings of the German SAP User Group (DSAG e. V.), according to which SAP users are making slower progress than planned with their digitization projects - the migration to S/4 is only a means to an end here.

A lack of human and financial resources was cited as the most important reason for the delay by 42 percent of the existing SAP customers surveyed.

The personnel and financial pressure is not least due to the fact that, according to the SAP Insider study, the majority of SAP users are apparently opting for a brownfield or hybrid approach to migration.

This means that they can operate their legacy SAP systems, including individual customizations, together with S/4 in the SAP process standard (hybrid approach) or map their individual processes in both the legacy systems and in S/4 and Hana. However, both approaches mean a considerable amount of additional work.

"Existing SAP customers want to accelerate the digital transformation of their companies with the help of the new software generation from Walldorf. At the same time, they want to implement SAP S/4 Hana in their own data centers"

says Peter Goldbrunner, Senior Regional Sales Director at Nutanix in Germany.

"However, it appears that too many SAP users are burdened with less value-adding tasks instead of focusing on innovative digital processes and business models.

This means that existing SAP customers lose a lot of time and money. With the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud on Primergy, we relieve the SAP teams, but also the IT budgets, so that more time and money is available for digital initiatives.

At the same time, we are bringing the cloud and the software-controlled data center to companies, enabling them to increase their flexibility, agility and scalability in the same way as hyperscalers."

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud on Primergy is certified for SAP Hana as well as NetWeaver and SAP Business One (SBO). The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud simultaneously supports transactional and analytical SAP workloads with terabytes of active data.

The certification of the Enterprise Cloud OS software from Nutanix includes the S/4 Hana application server, but also relational database management systems (RDBMS) on SAP NetWeaver.

Online Access Act and IT modernization

SAP software has been in use for many years in the federal administration and public authorities, where a release change is also - theoretically - due by 2025.

In addition, the Online Access Act (OZG) has been in force in Germany since August 2017. By 2022, citizens and companies should be able to complete all administrative processes at federal and state level online.

To achieve this, all existing portal solutions must be standardized. This requires the implementation of new standards and the modernization of the underlying infrastructures and application environments.

This is because future users expect a consistent, reliable and high-performance user experience, regardless of the number of users. However, meeting the timetable set out in the law is a challenge for those responsible in public administration.

Another project of the federal government is even more ambitious: the modernization of IT in the federal administration in order to equip its approximately 350,000 employees in around 200 authorities with a state-of-the-art infrastructure and application environment.

The aim is to eliminate the proliferation of different application environments, almost 100 data centers and more than 1,200 server rooms by 2025.

However, there are apparently problems and delays that are leading to unplanned additional expenditure. The Budget Committee of the German Bundestag is already complaining about additional costs of around 2.5 billion euros.

One of the reasons for this situation is the lack of suitable personnel (1). The members of the Bundestag therefore called on those responsible to "rethink the entire project from the ground up".

Peter Goldbrunner adds:

"Efficiency, convenience and no media disruptions - these key requirements in the current e-government initiatives are similar to the challenges of digital transformation in the private sector.

Here, as there, flexible and software-driven infrastructures are the means of choice to enable a public cloud-style user experience and a scalable, flexible and high-performance application environment for greater agility."

The appropriate approach to modernizing IT environments in ministries, authorities and public sector companies "from the ground up" is to follow the example of the well-known hyperscalers and rely on software-controlled data centers using hyperconverged infrastructures and private cloud environments.

The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud turns this vision into reality in the public sector. The hyperconverged infrastructure solution (HCI) increases the degree of automation, relieves administrators of routine tasks, allows workloads and services to be implemented quickly and easily and scaled linearly, and frees up budgets.

Online administration services for citizens and companies or digital workstations for civil servants and public sector employees can be provided and updated quickly, easily and cost-effectively.

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud on Primergy is available worldwide directly from Fujitsu or a channel partner. Prices vary depending on the configuration.

For maximum flexibility on the customer side, Fujitsu offers both appliance and period-based licenses as well as a selection of attractive financing options.