Many companies on the verge of starting their S/4 journey are looking at their master data at an early stage. At the same time, many companies are taking steps to move their applications to the cloud. While often smaller, functionally dedicated applications are moved to the cloud early, a number of companies are taking a mid to long term approach to go to the cloud with their core ERP applications. There are preparation projects to harmonize processes, consolidate the landscape, ongoing complexities like mergers & acquisitions or resource constraints, which make the S/4 transformation take longer.
The good thing is, that so many companies take the master data topic seriously by planning and launching activities to better understand their master data, taking quality improvement action, and designing future-proof governance to proactively address master data quality in the to-be application landscape. Of course, paired with the necessary organizational changes to shape roles and responsibilities and empower the organization to execute on data governance.
In their target landscapes, and now looking at those companies deciding for usage of SAP Master Data Governance, there are (at least) two key decisions to take:
- Do they want to move their ERP processes and their master data management into the cloud at the same time?
- Do they want to have a separate master data hub to be independent of the rest of the ERP landscape, mainly in terms of timeline of S/4 transformation, number of systems or dependencies to other transformational activities?
With SAP Master Data Governance, private cloud edition (PCE) there has been already a good option for those companies who are also planning to use other S/4 processes in PCE. They get their PCE/RISE system sized according to their ERP processes plus the planned MDG usage, and work with MDG embedded in their S/4 PCE system. However, there are obvious and significant reasons for deploying a separate MDG hub in the private cloud, which are e.g.:
- not planning to use S/4 in PCE near- or midterm,
- planning with a separate MDG hub in PCE anyway
- especially wanting to start right away with a new MDG deployment in PCE without actively addressing the RISE scope yet.
For these demands we have now released a new MDG deployment, the
SAP S/4HANA Cloud for master data governance, private edition, extra stack. This is a stand-alone MDG in PCE that doesn’t have RISE prerequisites and may obviously then only be used for MDG purposes. It contains a full 3-tier S/4 landscape in PCE and the complete MDG on S/4 software stack like on-premise or in RISE. There is a minimum MDG volume set to 50 blocks, equaling 250.000 master data objects. The system sizing itself is automatically associated with the number of subscribed objects along the pricing tiers – from an XS system for up to 100 blocks to an L system for volumes beyond 1000 blocks.
Summary: For companies looking to apply SAP Master Data Governance in the cloud, independent of their S/4 or other transformation timelines, and wanting to address the S/4 (or ECC) scope of master data, can now choose the new SAP MDG PCE Extra Stack deployment as a standalone master data hub in PCE – offering same flexibility and configuration capabilities like on-premise, while benefiting from core cloud advantages in setup and operations, as well as the subscription-based price model.
