SAP S/4HANA Deployment on Hyperscalers

This blog post targets SAP solution and technical architects and explains the deployment of SAP S/4HANA on Hyperscalers

What are Hyperscalers?

Hyperscalers are the big players in the Public Cloud market. They offer Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

This blog post focus is on Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering from Hyperscalers and SAP S/4HANA deployment on Hyperscalers

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides virtual servers, networks, storage, and systems software designed to augment or replace data centers or individually networked computers. There are 24 vendors currently offering Hyperscaler services in Public Cloud market, out of that these are SAP Certified Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Platforms as of today

• Alibaba Cloud Computing Limited
• Amazon Web Services
• Google Cloud Platform
• Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd
• IBM Cloud
• Microsoft Azure
• Open Telekom Cloud

Hyperscalers – Market share Comparison

Technology Drivers for move to Hyperscaler

Adoption of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) has more than doubled over the past couple of years, with Hyperscalers offering best of breed cloud computing services to fulfill enterprise specific needs. Hyperscalers are providing range of solutions for organizations who are looking to lower the overheads by deploying and expanding into public cloud infrastructure.

Technology drivers which make Hyperscalers the most sought- after cloud option are On-demand Elasticity, Infinite Scalability, Operational Automation, Global Presence, Security & Compliance

Which facts can help to choose the right Hyperscaler (Innovation as the goal)?

Consider your options for moving into Hyperscaler infrastructure

Match your business objectives to possible deployment strategies and options

Classic lift and shift

Re-host: Lifting SAP applications/landscapes as-is from on-premise / Cloud private edition and shifting to a public cloud environment. With this approach, the target is the exact copy of the top 3 layers in the technology stack – application, database and OS platform and there is little to no architectural changes. This enables rapid migration with minimal disruption, but it prevents from harnessing any key business benefits of public cloud migration. Realised using methods such as Classic system copy and OS-DB migrations

Re-platform: It is the technical migration of SAP applications. It maintains the existing applications but upgrades the underlying OS and DB by migrating to SAP HANA and a supported OS platform in a Hyperscaler environment – Example: SAP ERP to Business Suite Powered by SAP HANA. Use established approaches for system migration, leverage the advantages of “DMO with system move” Option.

Re-Architect:  Re-imagine how the application is architected and developed using emerging application features. This is driven by a strong business need to add features, scale, or performance that would otherwise be difficult to achieve in the existing environment. Leverage the advantages of Data Migration – Landscape Transformation techniques

S/4HANA Transition Paths

Convert or migrate to SAP S/4HANA hosted on a Hyperscaler from the well-known migration paths, in this type of migration, the application layer is transformed to SAP S/4HANA along with the OS and DB following one of the 3 transition paths – new implementation, system conversion and selective data transition. With this option customers gain the benefits of cloud native features but also have a new Digital Core Platform. The benefits of transformation often outweigh the effort and costs of adapting to a new system.

SAP offers choice for the SAP S/4HANA Journey

SAP S/4HANA offers customers the choice of consumption which is a unique differentiator in the market. No matter whether we talk about SAP S/4HANA On-premise or SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, it can be run on different infrastructures, including the Hyperscaler infrastructures.

Deployment Flexibility of S/4HANA

When SAP S/4HANA is consumed as a Cloud solution, SAP owns the governance of the solution according to SaaS principles. When SAP S/4HANA is consumed as a product, the governance of the solution is with the customer, but can of course be handed over to a 3rd party (including SAP) as part of classical software application management services (AMS).

SAP offers two SAP S/4HANA Cloud flavours, which differs in areas such as upgrade cadence, functional depth, content management and extensibility. SAP introduced these flavours of the cloud as the degree of standardisation customers can adopt widely by industry and business model.

Two flavours for SAP S/4HANA Cloud: SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition comes with the highest degree of standardisation and is focused on core Finance ERP and service processes.
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition focuses on the more complex processes of other industries such as Product centric and Manufacturing Enterprises, Consumer Products and Retail and offers a comprehensive, sub-vertical tailored industry scope, support of a broad set of partner solutions and multiple ways of custom extensions.

SAP S/4HANA Editions powered by Hyperscalers

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud (SAP HEC) provides the same comprehensive SLAs for SAP HEC with AWS, Azure and GCP that customers already experience with SAP HEC in SAP data centres. SAP HEC represents best of both worlds; SAP operates and manages SAP systems in a private managed cloud with IaaS from a provider of their choice under one contract and comprehensive responsibility.

Summary

SAP S/4HANA editions can be operated on Hyperscaler infrastructure but multiple dimensions (Sizing, Operational support, SLAs, Contractual Condition, etc…) can influence the choice of the vendor. Utilise Project Embrace and SAP HEC (managed services from SAP) for guidance, best practices, or services in your SAP S/4HANA Journey.

– Brought to you by the S/4HANA RIG –