Over the past year, SAP has made a concentrated effort to accelerate its customers’ migration to SAP S/4HANA and the cloud (crucial components of the software company’s notion of the “intelligent enterprise”).
The good news for SAP is that its customers are implementing SAP S/4HANA or are planning to begin these projects. In a recent survey that ASUG completed in collaboration with DSAG, our research team found that 24% of responding ASUG members are already live with SAP S/4HANA, 21% are in the process of migrating, and 30% have plans to implement the ERP solution.
The Complexities of Migrating
These projects require a significant amount of time, resources, and staff hours to complete. Migrating to SAP S/4HANA and moving an IT environment from on premises to the cloud are complex undertakings, often requiring customers to partner with SAP and third-party system integrators and hyperscalers to accomplish these projects.
“Many IT leaders wish to capture the benefits of migrating to the cloud, implementing SAP S/4HANA, and becoming ‘intelligent enterprises,’” said Snehanshu Shah, managing director of SAP Solution Engineering at Google Cloud. “Yet, many of these leaders also struggle with the complexity associated with SAP migration journeys. We are committed to helping our customers achieve success and have a clear, predictable, and risk-free path to the cloud."
Given these complexities, many ASUG members have been planning on extended SAP S/4HANA implementation project rollout times. Our research shows that 64% of surveyed ASUG members expect their implementation of SAP S/4HANA to take place in the next one to five years (36% indicated that this will happen in one to two years, while 28% said their migration will likely take place within three to five years). While these implementation projects are complicated processes that could present several organizational hurdles, SAP is working with organizations like Google to help its customers facilitate their implementation projects.
Overcoming Implementation Hurdles
SAP is attuned to the challenges its customers face. Earlier this year, the software company released RISE with SAP, a subscription-based “business transformation as a service” offering. RISE with SAP will not only help customers migrate to SAP S/4HANA and the cloud, but also will give customers insights on how to improve their work processes, in addition to letting customers pick their hyperscaler provider of choice. All of this, including hyperscaler services, falls under a single contract managed by SAP.
“SAP customers need a solution that delivers on the promise of the cloud, while also giving access to secure cloud infrastructure necessary to run SAP workloads along with cutting-edge intelligence, analytics, and data-driven insights that will give them a significant competitive advantage in today’s business climate,” said Snehanshu. “RISE with SAP and Google Cloud can help customers achieve these goals.”
Nonetheless, many SAP customers are trying to determine if RISE with SAP is right for their business. Later this year, Google Cloud will be hosting a RISE with SAP on GCP webinar later this year, which is designed to help ASUG members answer some of their questions on RISE with SAP, implementing SAP S/4HANA, and migrating to the cloud. Featuring experts from SAP, Managecore, and GCP Applied Technologies, the event will examine how customers can leverage RISE with SAP and use partners during this implementation process. It will also offer attendees an example of how an SAP and Google Cloud customer leveraged RISE with SAP during an implementation project.
“I am looking forward to this event not only because we can demonstrate the strong partnership between SAP and Google Cloud, but also so that we can help customers understand how to effectively leverage RISE with SAP and make the most out of their SAP investments,” said Damien Johnson, chief architect at SAP. “Collaborations and partnerships like this are crucial to helping our customers achieve their goals and become ‘intelligent enterprises.’”
The event will help customers learn the ways that RISE with SAP can impact their business and IT processes; the perks of using Google Cloud as a hyperscaler; the work that partners are doing to prepare customers for this journey; and learn how a customer—GCP Applied Technologies—went about migrating to the cloud.