We reg­u­lar­ly write about SAP prod­ucts and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to share some of the research data we’ve col­lect­ed. Typ­i­cal­ly, we tend to focus on the fea­tures and updates to the ​“build­ing” with­out talk­ing about the foun­da­tion and frame­work that makes up the IT infra­struc­ture need­ed to sup­port these advances.

Over the last year, we’ve been con­duct­ing research stud­ies about the infra­struc­ture of SAP-run busi­ness­es and how that ties into per­cep­tions or plans to run SAP HANA. Based on what we’ve learned, we have gath­ered the top sev­en insights that emerged.

Insight 1: Infra­struc­ture excel­lence starts with hav­ing the right peo­ple. Just over a quar­ter (27 per­cent) of respond­ing orga­ni­za­tions self-iden­ti­fy as indus­try lead­ers on infra­struc­ture. One thing of note about these lead­ers is that they feel bet­ter pre­pared to han­dle changes in tech­nol­o­gy. Only 35 per­cent of respon­dents believe they are ade­quate­ly staffed to adapt to changes. Yet among indus­try lead­ers, a full 58 per­cent say they have enough sup­port on hand to meet their tech­nol­o­gy needs.

Insight 2: Infra­struc­ture laggards aren’t pre­pared to deal with tech­nol­o­gy changes. On the oth­er hand, half of those who believe their com­pa­nies are behind on infra­struc­ture (50 per­cent) also feel like they can only man­age what’s cur­rent­ly on their plate. This means there’s no chance that they can take on new ini­tia­tives like cloud migra­tions or an SAP S/4HANA tran­si­tion. Devot­ing resources to infra­struc­ture may be more crit­i­cal than many deci­sion-mak­ers real­ize. And these resources may need to expand to meet the needs of spe­cial projects.

Insight 3: Secu­ri­ty is a key infra­struc­ture con­cern, while stor­age space and access are not. When asked to rank their con­cerns about infra­struc­ture, 45 per­cent of SAP users iden­ti­fy secu­ri­ty as the num­ber one issue. Despite the expo­nen­tial increase in enter­prise data that’s gen­er­at­ed, orga­ni­za­tions are telling us that the need to man­age stor­age, access, or user con­trols is not as much of a pri­or­i­ty. At least for SAP cus­tomers, safe­ty trumps availability.

Insight 4: Infra­struc­ture change is designed to increase agili­ty. When we asked about dri­vers of infra­struc­ture change, ​“new busi­ness ini­tia­tives” was the pri­ma­ry rea­son for 50 per­cent of ASUG mem­bers. It’s not sur­pris­ing many are mov­ing to SAP HANA with the hopes that it makes their busi­ness more agile and adds the flex­i­bil­i­ty to run oth­er SAP-based workloads.

Insight 5: Not every­one who has pur­chased SAP HANA is ready to run SAP HANA. Almost half (48 per­cent) of ASUG Mem­bers define them­selves as SAP HANA cus­tomers. The des­ig­nat­ed oper­at­ing sys­tem for SAP HANA is Lin­ux, yet only 35 per­cent of mem­bers say Lin­ux is the pri­ma­ry oper­at­ing sys­tem for their data­bas­es. Clear­ly those two num­bers don’t add up, mean­ing there will be more than a few migra­tions to Lin­ux from Unix- or Win­dows-based sys­tems hap­pen­ing in the next few years.

Insight 6: The moti­va­tion for an SAP HANA move is strate­gic first, not tac­ti­cal. When we asked cus­tomers about their pri­ma­ry moti­va­tor for mov­ing to SAP HANA, the top two rea­sons are ​“cor­po­rate strat­e­gy for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion” and ​“to ensure com­pli­ance with new SAP envi­ron­ment require­ments.” Ben­e­fit-dri­ven needs like faster ana­lyt­ics or trans­ac­tion­al data are not dri­ving this change. This is con­sis­tent with the dri­vers of infra­struc­ture over­all, but it also sig­nals a men­tal­i­ty that is more about keep­ing up with tech­nol­o­gy changes than it is about pri­or­i­tiz­ing tan­gi­ble benefits.

Insight 7: Future migra­tors are a bit more cer­tain about their cloud plans than their on-premise plans for SAP HANA. We learned that 26 per­cent of future SAP HANA users are plan­ning a cloud-only imple­men­ta­tion, while 32 per­cent are stay­ing exclu­sive­ly on-premise and the oth­er 41 per­cent are plan­ning a hybrid (on-premise and cloud) strat­e­gy. Yet when we asked about provider con­sid­er­a­tion, more than half — 51 per­cent — of those using on-premise in some form have yet to con­sid­er a sin­gle infra­struc­ture provider. Those who make those eval­u­a­tions now may be in a bet­ter posi­tion to get the sup­port they want and need than those who delay the search.

If these insights align with infra­struc­ture strug­gles you are fac­ing at your orga­ni­za­tion, make sure to check out the ASUG Edu­ca­tion Zone at SAP­PHIRE NOW and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence this year. We have more than 20 ses­sions avail­able that are focused on these top­ics. Join us to learn how oth­ers are approach­ing their infra­struc­ture strat­e­gy and get­ting their foun­da­tions right.