Some things are great alone, but even better when combined. For instance, take a basic meal such as spaghetti. Spaghetti is a great and filling entrée that boasts positive health benefits. Add its counterpart, meatballs, and you have something that is even more fulfilling, and a resulting entrée that tastes better, has added nutrients, and brings the positive health benefits up a notch.
Through real-time access to massive amounts of data and insight, SAP HANA, by itself, allows customers to do what was once unimaginable. But, what if you could prove those possibilities and realize the benefits faster than ever before? That’s a great combination, right?
Yes – you got it. SAP HANA plus Cloud is the spaghetti and the meatballs, with all the added benefits.
Let’s look at SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud from a business challenge standpoint, and explore some scenarios to understand why our customers are looking to deploy SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.
Three Business Challenges Companies are Encountering
1. Innovation Delays Due to IT Department Capacity – Innovation delays can occur when a customer has limited IT project team members available to devote to projects, and many of those members are often involved in the basis and infrastructure requirements around the project. Recently I heard from one of the CIOs I met that his staff spends approx. 80% of their time on maintaining the existing environment and only 20% of their time on driving innovation. If a company can free up some of that staff to focus on innovation capabilities and put the basis and infrastructure in the hands of SAP with a managed cloud offering, then the internal IT team can further innovate for the business Overall, the IT organization can innovate and adapt to changes much faster by using those resources in a different capacity, and that scenario is an optimal environment for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.
2. The Challenge of Long Hardware Lead Times – A company may want to implement a SAP HANA environment, but may have wait months for the hardware environment to be stood up on-premise due to procurement and setup time. Due to the delay, there may be a negative impact on time-to-market and time-to-value. Because of this impact, the business may ask IT what they can do to speed up their environment to be up and running faster. They want to know which options SAP has to offer that can address this problem, and that scenario is an optimal environment for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.
3. CAPEX to OPEX Discussion – A big consideration and business challenge facing many companies is the ongoing CAPEX/OPEX discussion, which includes determining budget allocations for an initiative. Companies can look at the cost of the capital expenditure on hardware for the SAP HANA environment along with the asset depreciation over a period of years, and compare that to the cost of infrastructure as a service in an OPEX scenario and potentially change the budget allocation. The SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud environment and reduction of hardware costs make a better case for the OPEX expenditure, and that scenario is an optimal environment for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.
One additional challenge that SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is addressing is the CIO and his/her trust in cloud technology. Many CIOs, when queried about how many enterprise (strategic enterprise or mission critical) applications they are running in the cloud respond that they, “just aren’t there yet.” Although they aren’t running many of their current mission critical processes in the cloud, I think the maturity level of trust within the enterprise has reached critical mass where CIOs are beginning to gain a higher comfort level as evidenced by the overwhelming demand we’re seeing for HEC. This is something that will continue to evolve as cloud is integrated and more widely used and accepted.
We [and the future of technology] are in the cloud.
For more blogs about SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, click here.
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