Enter­prise resource plan­ning used to be just ERP. To be more spe­cif­ic, ERP soft­ware used to be main­ly asso­ci­at­ed with account­ing soft­ware and was per­haps only spiced up with a pep­per­ing of pro­cure­ment, sales plan­ning, and busi­ness fore­cast­ing functionality. 

That time has passed. 

Now, we think of ERP as a com­plete tool set of func­tions encom­pass­ing every­thing from HR to cor­po­rate gov­er­nance and com­pli­ance man­age­ment, plus sales and account­ing. It’s even moved onward to func­tions relat­ed to enter­prise asset man­age­ment (EAM) and sup­ply chain man­age­ment (SCM).

Under­stand­ing the New Era of ERP 

Because the scope of ERP has increased, SAP describes SAP S/4HANA as a com­plete suite of ERP appli­ca­tions that are all capa­ble of work­ing on a sin­gle, uni­fied frame­work. The use of in-mem­o­ry pro­cess­ing has allowed SAP to engi­neer near-real-time per­for­mance on busi­ness data run­ning through SAP S/4HANA.

So, this is not just ERP — this is ERP that extends across the wider realms of busi­ness intel­li­gence (BI) itself.

Many peo­ple have already become used to talk­ing about SAP S/4HANA with­out stop­ping to ask what the ​“S” stands for. SAP S/4HANA is in fact a short­en­ing of SAP Busi­ness Suite 4 SAP HANA. But beyond just know­ing why it’s called what it’s called, you should also know the dif­fer­ent ways you can imple­ment it.

What Is SAP S/4HANA Cloud? 

SAP S/4HANA Cloud is exact­ly as it sounds — a cloud-opti­mized, cloud-deliv­ered ver­sion of the SAP soft­ware. It comes in three edi­tions: cloud mar­ket­ing edi­tion for mar­ket­ing line of busi­ness func­tions; cloud project ser­vices edi­tion for pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices spe­cial­ists; and cloud enter­prise edi­tion — a ver­sion of the soft­ware that presents the full scope of ERP functions.

In terms of use, SAP S/4HANA Cloud is like­ly to suit orga­ni­za­tions that wish to run two-tier busi­ness mod­els (or more) where some resources are run on-premise (see below). Some lines of busi­ness or entire depart­ments can ben­e­fit from a more ser­vice-based approach to IT delivery.

In terms of cadence, SAP S/4HANA Cloud ben­e­fits from quar­ter­ly releas­es, so ASUG mem­bers want­i­ng the lat­est func­tions (some options of which may even be in test/​trial for­mat) can grav­i­tate toward this ver­sion. It also is pre­con­fig­ured for spe­cif­ic process­es in spe­cif­ic lines of business.

This mod­el has a soft­ware as a ser­vice (SaaS) licens­ing mod­el. It is gov­erned by SAP, adapt­ed through con­fig­u­ra­tion, and runs on the SAP Cloud Plat­form. SAP S/4HANA Cloud has the low­est TCO, plus it offers speed of inno­va­tion and stan­dard­iza­tion. It’s easy to repli­cate and deploy, as well as to scale. 

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What Is SAP S/4HANA On-Premise?

SAP S/4HANA on-premise is designed for enter­pris­es across indus­tries that need a deep and broad lev­el of ERP suite func­tion­al­i­ty, com­bined with a high degree of flex­i­bil­i­ty in terms of both con­fig­u­ra­tion and customization.

This is best suit­ed for com­pa­nies that want to man­age every­thing includ­ing deploy­ment and main­te­nance with their own ded­i­cat­ed IT staff as well as for those more inter­est­ed in a tra­di­tion­al licens­ing mod­el. The plat­form is gov­erned by the cus­tomer and runs on-premise, so it has the high­est TCO. But it is still easy to repli­cate, deploy, and scale. 

The on-premise edi­tion comes in an annu­al release and is pro­vid­ed with five years of main­stream main­te­nance. It fea­tures the SAP Busi­ness Sce­nario Rec­om­men­da­tions tool to ana­lyze an organization’s cur­rent SAP soft­ware usage infor­ma­tion. This tool gen­er­ates a per­son­al­ized report that rec­om­mends imple­men­ta­tion and devel­op­ment guide­lines. When and how often to upgrade is com­plete­ly up to the customer. 

What Is SAP S/4HANA Cloud Sin­gle Tenant?

Also avail­able in the mix is SAP S/4HANA Cloud, sin­gle ten­ant edi­tion. As many ASUG mem­bers will know, sin­gle-ten­ant cloud soft­ware is sup­plied so that each cus­tomer gets an inde­pen­dent instance of a soft­ware stack, which is not shared with any oth­er source. This ver­sion also fol­lows a SaaS licens­ing mod­el and adapts through configuration.

If you’re search­ing for more infor­ma­tion on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, sin­gle ten­ant, it’s worth bear­ing in mind that this offer­ing used to be known as SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pri­vate edi­tion. For rea­sons of data gov­er­nance and com­pli­ance, this ded­i­cat­ed cloud land­scape is some­times needed.

With the full pub­lic cloud offer­ing greater over­all flex­i­bil­i­ty, the trade-off with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, sin­gle ten­ant comes in its high­er over­all TCO. But the con­trol ele­ment (and the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state) is a price worth pay­ing for some use cases.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, sin­gle ten­ant edi­tion is con­fig­urable and cus­tomiz­able to a defined degree for appli­ca­tions in finance, HR, pro­cure­ment, sales, and oth­ers. As with all the dif­fer­ent options shown here, SAP changes the num­ber of upgrades offered inside dif­fer­ent con­tract peri­ods. The sav­ing grace in this area is that cus­tomers can define their upgrade win­dow and are able to dic­tate when this happens.

What Is SAP HANA Enter­prise Cloud?

SAP HANA Enter­prise Cloud (HEC) is the pri­vate man­aged cloud from SAP that can be used to run SAP S/4HANA. It match­es a customer’s on-premise envi­ron­ment in a cloud mod­el, essen­tial­ly work­ing as infra­struc­ture as a ser­vice (IaaS) com­bined with man­aged ser­vices for SAP software. 

It is ful­ly scal­able, pri­vate­ly man­aged, and adapt­able through code mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Using SAP HEC pro­vides a con­trolled path to stan­dard­iza­tion and inno­va­tion, which allows cus­tomers to inno­vate at their own pace. 

SAP pro­vides the com­plete sys­tem land­scape, which includes appli­ca­tions based on SAP ref­er­ence archi­tec­ture. SAP will also man­age patch­ing, enhance­ments, and updates on SAP HEC.

What About SAP S/4HANA with Hyperscalers? 

Run­ning SAP S/4HANA with hyper­scalers—Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Ama­zon Web Ser­vices (AWS) to name a few — is like run­ning it on-premise in that the plat­form is gov­erned by the cus­tomer and it’s adapt­ed through code mod­i­fi­ca­tion. The dif­fer­ence, how­ev­er, is that it runs on the hyperscaler’s pub­lic cloud and has either a tra­di­tion­al licens­ing mod­el or an IaaS licens­ing mod­el. This allows com­pa­nies to run por­tions of their SAP work­loads on the host provider and still main­tain gov­er­nance over their platforms.

Dur­ing SAP­PHIRE NOW and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence 2019, SAP announced project Embrace, which aims to put any move to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud in the lan­guage and con­text of the user’s pri­ma­ry indus­try. It rec­om­mends the plat­form, soft­ware, ser­vices, and infra­struc­ture from SAP as well as its pre­ferred hyper­scaler and pre­ferred ser­vice partner.

More recent­ly, SAP announced Microsoft Azure as its pre­ferred part­ner in an effort to pro­vide cus­tomers with uni­fied ref­er­ence archi­tec­tures, road maps, and mar­ket-approved jour­neys for a clear path to the cloud. 

Even still, SAP will con­tin­ue to sup­port cus­tomers in the pub­lic cloud of their choice, includ­ing GCP and AWS. 

Learn how SAP S/4HANA becomes intel­li­gent and changes user engage­ment to help you reimag­ine your busi­ness. Reg­is­ter for the on-demand ASUG web­cast ​“SAP S/4HANA: Road Map, Overview, and Strat­e­gy for SAP S/4HANA.”