As busi­ness­es nav­i­gate scope and bud­get­ing issues asso­ci­at­ed with mov­ing to the cloud, SAP recent­ly announced an expan­sion of its RISE with SAP pro­gram, pro­vid­ing a com­pre­hen­sive set of resources, ser­vices, and finan­cial incen­tives to reduce bar­ri­ers to cloud migra­tion for its on-premis­es customers.

Cus­tomers with on-premis­es imple­men­ta­tions of SAP S/4HANA and SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent (ECC) can reduce the cost of their cloud migra­tions by up to 50% and short­en their time-to-val­ue through the RISE with SAP Migra­tion and Mod­ern­iza­tion Pro­gram, accord­ing to SAP. 

Until the end of 2024, the pro­gram will give these on-premis­es cus­tomers access to cred­its that can be applied to off­set the costs of main­te­nance, cloud ser­vices, or cloud sub­scrip­tions. These cred­its can be used, for exam­ple, to buy SAP S/4HANA Cloud and line-of-busi­ness solu­tions such as sup­ply chain, human resources, spend man­age­ment, busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion tools, and SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) for extensibility. 

Offer­ing a ​“self-guid­ed dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence and assist­ed ser­vices” from prepa­ra­tion through go-live, the new RISE pro­gram will also give cus­tomers access to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Safe­keep­er ser­vice. Cus­tomers run­ning old­er releas­es of SAP S/4HANA falling into cus­tomer-spe­cif­ic main­te­nance as they upgrade to the lat­est ver­sion of SAP S/4HANA can opt for the ser­vice, which offers upgrade ser­vices, sand­box infra­struc­ture, and busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity for cus­tomers’ cur­rent sys­tems via updates and patch­es for two more years, giv­ing them more time to upgrade, says SAP.

To stan­dard­ize cus­tomers’ cloud migra­tion projects and estab­lish pre­dictable time­lines for imple­men­ta­tion, the pro­gram will fol­low a defined RISE method­ol­o­gy, with mile­stone checks and report­ing sup­port­ed by SAP ser­vices and spe­cial­ists. SAP says it will also train and cer­ti­fy part­ners to use the method­ol­o­gy, to reduce imple­men­ta­tion costs and dri­ve con­sis­ten­cy and quality. 

SAP has empha­sized the impor­tance of elim­i­nat­ing cus­tom code as cus­tomers pre­pare to move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion, its stan­dard­ized cloud ERP sys­tem. For cus­tomers mov­ing to the cloud, cus­tom code writ­ten for on-premis­es ver­sions of SAP ECC or SAP S/4HANA needs to be trans­lat­ed so that its busi­ness log­ic runs out­side of their core, in SAP BTP. With the new RISE method­ol­o­gy, dash­boards track­ing this process will ensure that cus­tom code is rewrit­ten to SAP’s standards.

“Every­one in the SAP ecosys­tem should know about this pro­gram and con­sid­er it for the future of their busi­ness­es,” said Geoff Scott, CEO & Chief Com­mu­ni­ty Cham­pi­on at ASUG. 

“To inno­vate faster and har­ness the trans­for­ma­tive pos­si­bil­i­ties SAP has promised, it is crit­i­cal that you be in the cloud,” he added. ​“This new RISE migra­tion and mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram proves that SAP is lis­ten­ing to feed­back from user groups, users, and part­ners, and that SAP is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing cus­tomers on every step of that jour­ney. With its assist­ed ser­vices, report­ing tools, and finan­cial incen­tives, this method­ol­o­gy will help cur­rent SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA on-premis­es cus­tomers make the busi­ness case for mov­ing to the cloud.”

‘Every Com­pa­ny Needs a Cloud-First Busi­ness Strategy’ 

In 2023, as SAP encour­aged cus­tomers to take their ERP sys­tems to the cloud and pre­pare their land­scapes to embrace cloud-cen­tric solu­tions, the impor­tance of stream­lin­ing process­es and break­ing down data silos took cen­ter stage. 

“Every com­pa­ny needs a cloud-first busi­ness strat­e­gy,” said Eric van Rossum, Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer for Cloud ERP, SAP, in an offi­cial state­ment. ​“It’s more impor­tant than ever for cus­tomers to start their migra­tion and mod­ern­iza­tion jour­ney, so they can har­ness the poten­tial of the lat­est cloud inno­va­tions, includ­ing AI and sus­tain­abil­i­ty solutions.”

The company’s rec­om­mend­ed path­way for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, RISE with SAP, has been a core com­po­nent of its efforts to bring cus­tomers to the cloud. Last year, SAP debuted the 2023 release of SAP S/4HANA and a ​“pre­mi­um plus” RISE pack­age. This pre­mi­um plus pack­age, which embeds gen­er­a­tive-AI capa­bil­i­ties and gives cus­tomers access to SAP sus­tain­abil­i­ty solu­tions, promis­es to make it eas­i­er for cus­tomers to opti­mize sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ESG report­ing. It will also give them the abil­i­ty to lever­age SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP BTP, and SAP Sig­navio to dri­ve exten­si­bil­i­ty and stan­dard­iza­tion of busi­ness processes. 

Now, with the RISE with SAP Migra­tion and Mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram, SAP is empha­siz­ing a more ful­ly guid­ed process for cus­tomers’ cloud migra­tions. ​“We’re con­nect­ing a dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence with the depth of our tech­ni­cal tools and method­olo­gies, and also adding finan­cial incen­tives,” Mau­ra Hameroff, SVP of ERP Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing at SAP, told ASUG. ​“This pro­gram is an evo­lu­tion and brings var­i­ous ele­ments together.” 

In Q4 of 2023, SAP saw suc­cess on a case-by-case basis by offer­ing select on-premis­es cus­tomers dis­counts to start their cloud migra­tion jour­neys with RISE. This ini­tial strat­e­gy gave the com­pa­ny time to eval­u­ate what its cus­tomer base required in terms of finan­cial incen­tives. Now that all on-premis­es ECC and S/4HANA cus­tomers are being extend­ed the same lim­it­ed-time offer through the end of 2024, Hameroff sees the poten­tial use of such incen­tives as falling into three main camps:

• Main­te­nance costs. As on-premis­es cus­tomers move to the cloud, many won’t be able to shift their entire estate imme­di­ate­ly, mean­ing that they’ll be run­ning cer­tain sys­tems on-premis­es as oth­ers run in the cloud. ​“Part of the incen­tives can be applied to main­te­nance costs, which bur­den cus­tomers in cas­es where they’re run­ning par­al­lel sys­tems,” Hameroff said.
• Cloud ser­vices. ​“To lift-and-shift and start oper­at­ing in the cloud with­out the prop­er busi­ness process trans­for­ma­tion and evo­lu­tion of your frame­work for oper­at­ing in the cloud, it doesn’t hap­pen auto­mat­i­cal­ly,” Hameroff added. ​“Cus­tomers gen­er­al­ly need help with services.”
• Cloud sub­scrip­tions. ​“The more cus­tomers start to devel­op their exten­si­bil­i­ty in the cloud, the more they con­sid­er CPE cred­its or addi­tion­al line-of-busi­ness appli­ca­tions,” Hameroff said. ​“The more cus­tomers get to the cloud, the more they want to do in the cloud, so we’re adding that next layer.”

ASUG will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the roll­out of SAP’s RISE with SAP Migra­tion and Mod­ern­iza­tion Pro­gram to com­mu­ni­cate and clar­i­fy its details for our mem­bers as more infor­ma­tion is made available.