This part­ner insight was authored by Duane Blanchette, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment & Part­ner Alliances Man­ag­er at SEI­DOR North America.

Thou­sands of SAP cus­tomers cur­rent­ly run ECC sys­tems on-premise while con­sid­er­ing their inevitable migra­tion to S/4HANA and cloud envi­ron­ments. SAP’s recent des­ig­na­tion of IBM Pow­er Vir­tu­al Serv­er as a hyper­scaler for the RISE with SAP jour­ney marks a sig­nif­i­cant break­through, par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fit­ing orga­ni­za­tions with exist­ing IBM infrastructure. 

For mid-mar­ket orga­ni­za­tions with rev­enues between $300 mil­lion and $1 bil­lion, who often face chal­lenges with com­plex SAP sys­tems and resource con­straints, the col­lab­o­ra­tion between SEI­DOR and IBM offers com­pelling advan­tages in this new hyper­scaler environment. 

SEI­DOR’s proven SAP migra­tion exper­tise meets IBM’s mature cloud plat­form pre­cise­ly where mid-mar­ket firms need it most, cre­at­ing unique tech­ni­cal advan­tages and cost effi­cien­cies that make S/4HANA tran­si­tions sim­pler, more afford­able, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly less dis­rup­tive than con­ven­tion­al approaches.

Lever­ag­ing IBM’s Hyper­scaler Strength for SAP Migrations

IBM’s recent des­ig­na­tion as a hyper­scaler for the RISE with SAP jour­ney builds upon its decades of expe­ri­ence per­fect­ing infra­struc­ture for SAP sys­tems, con­sis­tent­ly top­ping bench­marks in crit­i­cal areas such as secu­ri­ty, per­for­mance, avail­abil­i­ty, and scal­a­bil­i­ty. IBM has suc­cess­ful­ly trans­ferred its trust­ed on-premis­es capa­bil­i­ties to the cloud, mak­ing these robust fea­tures read­i­ly acces­si­ble in cloud environments.

IBM Pow­er Vir­tu­al Serv­er pro­vides an excep­tion­al­ly smooth migra­tion path — a cru­cial advan­tage for com­pa­nies that have already invest­ed in IBM infra­struc­ture. For these com­pa­nies, this rep­re­sents a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion that min­i­mizes tech­ni­cal dis­rup­tion by main­tain­ing the proven IBM Pow­er archi­tec­ture while embrac­ing cloud deploy­ment models. 

Notably, IBM stands out as the only SAP-cer­ti­fied infra­struc­ture-as-a-ser­vice provider offer­ing Pow­er servers on the cloud, pro­vid­ing an archi­tec­tur­al con­sis­ten­cy unmatched by oth­er hyperscalers.

SEI­DOR brings excep­tion­al and proven cre­den­tials to SAP imple­men­ta­tions and migra­tions. As an SAP Plat­inum Part­ner for over 35 years, SEI­DOR has a glob­al track record of com­plet­ing more than 150 SAP migra­tions, demon­strat­ing a lev­el of hands-on expe­ri­ence that sur­pass­es many oth­er SAP partners. 

Beyond mere tech­ni­cal know-how, SEI­DOR demon­strates a deep exper­tise in busi­ness oper­a­tions, orga­ni­za­tion­al dynam­ics, and the essen­tial change man­age­ment strate­gies that dri­ve suc­cess­ful implementations.

A part­ner­ship span­ning more than four decades fur­ther enhances the nat­ur­al syn­er­gy between SEI­DOR and IBM. Over four decades as an IBM Plat­inum Part­ner have yield­ed deep pro­fes­sion­al con­nec­tions and a wealth of joint SAP project suc­cess­es. These col­lab­o­ra­tions con­sis­tent­ly deliv­er faster sys­tems, few­er down­times, and tighter secu­ri­ty across all client environments. 

Clients enjoy stream­lined project expe­ri­ences thanks to aligned approach­es in tech­ni­cal exe­cu­tion, val­ue cre­ation, and ser­vice deliv­ery. For com­pa­nies already run­ning IBM Pow­er servers, this archi­tec­tur­al famil­iar­i­ty makes tran­si­tion­ing to IBM Pow­er Vir­tu­al Serv­er faster and tech­ni­cal­ly safer.

Run­ning sophis­ti­cat­ed SAP sys­tems with lim­it­ed tech­ni­cal staff and tight bud­gets cre­ates unique chal­lenges for mid-mar­ket com­pa­nies. The SEI­DOR-IBM col­lab­o­ra­tion specif­i­cal­ly tar­gets these obsta­cles, offer­ing tai­lored solu­tions for con­strained envi­ron­ments. Through count­less focused imple­men­ta­tions, SEI­DOR has refined its approach­es and tools while build­ing an arse­nal of indus­try-spe­cif­ic insights that help clients avoid typ­i­cal migra­tion traps.

Part­ner­ing with these sea­soned experts dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­ers migra­tion risks for mid-mar­ket com­pa­nies. While SEI­DOR con­tributes bat­tle-test­ed migra­tion strate­gies from its exten­sive project his­to­ry, IBM deliv­ers rock-sol­id tech­ni­cal cloud infrastructure.

Unlock­ing Finan­cial Advan­tages Through RISE with SAP and IBM’s Invest­ment Program

Cost con­sid­er­a­tions fre­quent­ly deter­mine whether orga­ni­za­tions move for­ward with S/4HANA migra­tion. Through clever inte­gra­tion of SAP’s RISE pro­gram and IBM’s unique invest­ment ini­tia­tives, the SEI­DOR-IBM col­lab­o­ra­tion offers per­sua­sive finan­cial advan­tages. RISE with SAP offers sub­scrip­tion mod­els, migra­tion cred­its, and var­i­ous invest­ments to accel­er­ate cloud adoption.

IBM’s invest­ment pro­gram offers sub­stan­tial finan­cial sup­port through­out the entire migra­tion life­cy­cle. This pro­gram includes sev­er­al key ele­ments designed to ease the finan­cial bur­den of migration:

• Assess­ment phase invest­ments: IBM invest­ment pro­gram can be lever­aged to per­form a migra­tion assess­ment, which can include dis­cov­ery, rec­om­men­da­tion of a migra­tion strat­e­gy, and con­cep­tu­al archi­tec­ture to sup­port the busi­ness case and timeline. 
• Buy­back pro­gram: IBM offers orga­ni­za­tions to recov­er val­ue from exist­ing infra­struc­ture invest­ments, cut­ting tran­si­tion expens­es even further.
• Pre-engage­ment invest­ments: Cov­ers spe­cial­ized SEI­DOR assess­ments to define opti­mal migra­tion strate­gies, address­ing upfront costs before for­mal project initiation.

The strate­gic com­bi­na­tion of SAP’s RISE invest­ments with IBM’s pro­gram can lead to sig­nif­i­cant cost reduc­tions, fre­quent­ly in the range of 30 – 50% sav­ings com­pared to stan­dard migra­tion approach­es. The most com­plex SAP envi­ron­ments typ­i­cal­ly cap­ture the high­est per­cent­age sav­ings from these com­bined invest­ments. Pre­vi­ous­ly unaf­ford­able trans­for­ma­tions sud­den­ly become eco­nom­i­cal­ly feasible.

Each SAP sys­tem receives a tai­lored approach from SEI­DOR through imple­men­ta­tion pack­ages built specif­i­cal­ly around unique tech­ni­cal require­ments. These solu­tions account for crit­i­cal com­plex­i­ty fac­tors — cus­tom code quan­ti­ty, num­ber of mod­ules, indus­try-spe­cif­ic fea­tures — while main­tain­ing bud­get clar­i­ty and adaptability.

AI tech­nol­o­gy pow­ers SEI­DOR’s con­tem­po­rary migra­tion strat­e­gy. Code reme­di­a­tion becomes more effi­cient through AI analy­sis tools; data migra­tion plan­ning improves with auto­mat­ed pat­tern detec­tion; and test­ing pro­ce­dures advance through machine learn­ing, cut­ting imple­men­ta­tion time­lines substantially. 

Fur­ther cost advan­tages are real­ized through SEI­DOR’s glob­al tal­ent dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el. Spe­cial­ized SAP resources in Latin Amer­i­ca pro­vide sup­port for tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion tasks with­in glob­al deliv­ery mod­els, main­tain­ing high qual­i­ty stan­dards while offer­ing more com­pet­i­tive resource costs com­pared to tra­di­tion­al staffing approaches. 

The inte­gra­tion of SEI­DOR’s effi­cient method­ol­o­gy with IBM’s invest­ment frame­work deliv­ers com­pre­hen­sive eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits, encom­pass­ing reduced imple­men­ta­tion expens­es, low­er infra­struc­ture costs, and improved ongo­ing oper­a­tional expen­di­tures through plat­form optimization.

Your Path to S/4HANA Starts Here

The SEI­DOR-IBM col­lab­o­ra­tion offers a dis­tinct and com­pelling com­bi­na­tion of deep SAP imple­men­ta­tion exper­tise, robust IBM Cloud infra­struc­ture capa­bil­i­ties as a new­ly des­ig­nat­ed hyper­scaler, and sub­stan­tial finan­cial invest­ments unique­ly focused on facil­i­tat­ing suc­cess­ful S/4HANA migrations. 

With SEI­DOR’s exten­sive migra­tion expe­ri­ence and IBM’s proven reli­a­bil­i­ty and inno­v­a­tive invest­ment pro­gram, orga­ni­za­tions gain sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages through­out every stage of their trans­for­ma­tion initiatives.

SEI­DOR’s method­olog­i­cal exper­tise helps pre­vent sur­pris­es dur­ing migra­tion. The company’s com­pre­hen­sive finan­cial approach tack­les both upfront project expens­es and future oper­a­tional needs. Addi­tion­al­ly, SAP-spe­cif­ic per­for­mance tun­ing deliv­ers last­ing advan­tages that con­tin­ue long after migra­tion completion.

Mid-mar­ket orga­ni­za­tions fac­ing resource con­straints, bud­getary lim­i­ta­tions, and com­pet­i­tive pres­sures will find the SEI­DOR-IBM col­lab­o­ra­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly valu­able. Togeth­er, SEI­DOR and IBM pro­vide reli­able and effi­cient path­ways to achieve suc­cess­ful S/4HANA migra­tion, even with­in chal­leng­ing busi­ness envi­ron­ments, allow­ing them to focus on inno­va­tion and growth.

To learn how SEI­DOR can help nav­i­gate your SAP S/4HANA migra­tion jour­ney, con­tact their team for a free migra­tion assess­ment.

Duane Blanchette is Busi­ness Devel­op­ment & Part­ner Alliances Man­ag­er at SEI­DOR North America.