Journey to the Cloud: How Organizations can redefine the Future of their SAP systems on the Cloud

Cloud services are booming in the present day and many organizations have either migrated or are migrating their existing systems to the cloud platforms. Cloud vendors are revolutionizing the way it is consumed and a lot of business applications from HR to ERP run as SaaS applications on the cloud.

SAP systems are widely used across many large organizations. Migrating these systems to the cloud results in a number of business and technical implications that need to be considered. Fortunately, SAP has been investing a lot in bringing innovation to their customers on the cloud with their cloud-first strategy.

We will evaluate some of the options at an organization’s disposal, to build a strategic roadmap for the migration of their SAP systems to the Cloud.

SAP ERP

SAP S/4HANA Cloud is the flagship complete enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that helps companies innovate and adopt new business models. It allows one to harness the power of AI, which provides native integration between business processes, built with the power of the cloud. The product is in a constant cycle of update and improvement, with new features, functionality, and modules being added. S/4HANA can run hybrid on a private cloud or a complete SaaS model. SAP has provided an upgrade guide and release schedule that helps customers access and plan their upgrades.

SAP has other ERPs in the cloud, specific to business processes or industries. SAP Business ByDesign is a pre-configured, cloud ERP solution for medium-sized businesses with common functional areas like finance, human resources, procurement, etc. It also comes with industry-specific functionality.

SAP Cloud Solutions

SAP has other solutions in the cloud that are bespoke to a particular industry or business process. Some of the solutions have existed for a long time and are acquired by SAP. There is continuous innovation to improve these, so customers can continue to use them for their growing business. Some of these include:

SAP Ariba is a very well-known cloud-based end-to-end procurement tool that organizations can use for their procurement.

SAP Intelligent Asset Management is a cloud-based enterprise asset management suite that simplifies asset management with integrated predictive maintenance.

SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud is a collection of applications, built to extend digital manufacturing portfolios to the cloud to support Industry 4.0.

SAP Concur is a travel and expense management application on the cloud, commonly used by organizations to manage their travel and other expenses.

SAP SuccessFactors is a complete suite of HRMS and Talent Management Systems that helps organizations scale and manage their human resource processes.

SAP Fieldglass is a customized application, focused on finding and hiring contingent workers such as temps or contract workers.

SAP Customer Experience (CX) is SAP’s flagship customer relationship management (CRM) solution and successor to SAP CRM that consists of Customer Data, Marketing, Commerce, Sales, and Service Cloud modules.

Integrated Business Planning

SAP Integrated Business Planning is a collection of supply chain planning applications that is based on the SAP HANA Cloud platform. It consists of IBP for sales and operations, inventory, Supply Chain Control Tower, demand, response and supply, and demand-driven replenishment. It is the successor to SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization.

SAP HANA Database

SAP HANA Data Enterprise Cloud is a fully managed, in-memory, cloud database as a service (DBaaS) for customers, to utilize SAP HANA in a cloud hosted by SAP or one of its strategic suppliers. It harnesses the cutting-edge HANA database that is fully managed by SAP on the Cloud.

SAP Analytics Cloud

SAP Analytics Cloud is a SaaS Business Intelligence (BI) solution that combines planning, BI, and predictive analytics capabilities. It has great features such as powerful analytics, visualization stores, data connectivity, advanced data blending, smart features powered by AI, seamless collaboration, and simplified pricing.

Advantages of SAP Cloud

There are numerous reasons why a company may want to take advantage of a cloud solution. Companies can save even more time and money by utilizing software-as-a-service solutions as they lower the time to value with a different implementation timeframe than on-premise versions. Some of the business benefits of SAP Cloud solutions are

  • Faster Deployment
  • Access to Innovation
  • Agile delivery
  • Lower TCO and Faster time to value

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