SAP environments have been a critical system of record for enterprises for almost 50 years. As a result, many IT teams are trying to upgrade existing SAP environments by transforming them into innovation platforms that power the business. Many businesses begin their transformation by migrating SAP workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Most businesses get caught up in the cost game when considering an SAP-to-AWS migration. What will the migration cost? How much money will the organization save by using the cloud? Will the long-term return on investment justify the initial outlay?
In most circumstances, the cloud easily wins. The cloud’s inherent design—pay only for what you use—allows businesses to reap cost savings. Cloud cost savings are undeniably significant. However, when considering a cloud migration, it is crucial to look beyond the short-term financial benefits—the cloud also plays a vital role in company optimization, transformation, and innovation. And just because we can’t measure these benefits as quickly doesn’t make them any less valuable.
According to a recent McKinsey, 75% of the cloud’s expected value stems from its ability to drive innovation.
So, whether you’re presenting the business case to senior management or you’re already running SAP on AWS and want to get more out of it, here are three ways shifting your SAP apps to AWS can help you drive business success.
1. Refocus Valuable Resources on Innovation Efforts
The current skills scarcity, combined with accelerated digital transformation plans amid COVID-19, has many IT teams needing more time, resources, and budget. As a result, most IT workers are tasked with “keeping the lights on” administration, maintenance, and management tasks, with little time to commit to higher-level projects that can produce business value. Moving SAP workloads to AWS can result in considerable cost savings that can be reassigned to r&d projects and assist IT teams in shifting this uneven balance.
Companies may use AWS’s plethora of services and features to automate many tedious, manual operational operations, such as backups and refreshes for SAP setups. This allows IT teams to spend less time on non-mission-critical duties and more time exploiting SAP’s core capabilities and processes on AWS, which may drive business growth, innovation, and transformation.
Freeing in-house resources to focus on innovation rather than “run-and-maintain” activities increases business value. It keeps employees happy and engaged because you allow them to enhance their skillset and display your investment in their career trajectories. And, in light of today’s persistent skills scarcity and the “Great Resignation,” this is incredibly beneficial for retaining and recruiting employees.
2. Bridge the S/4HANA Gap
With SAP ending support for Business Suite 7 software in 2027, many firms will be forced to migrate from SAP ECC 6.0 to SAP S/4HANA in the following years—because the latter is the final aim when it comes to realizing digital transformation and developing an intelligent enterprise. Despite the considerable possibility that S/4HANA provides for businesses, many are still waiting to make the switch anytime soon. In fact, according to a recent SAPinsider survey, the majority of respondents (61%) who have yet to begin utilizing S/4HANA still use SAP ECC. For enterprises that have yet to make the switch, transferring SAP workloads to AWS can help you bridge the gap to S/4HANA in various ways.
You will immediately have to adopt S/4HANA to use cloud services, features, and cutting-edge technologies that interact with SAP. Moving SAP workloads to AWS in incremental steps can immediately put your firm on the path to innovation while allowing you to meet your overall goal by the 2027 deadline.
Second, migrating from SAP to AWS will allow you to obtain cloud experience and confidence before beginning on the S/4HANA path. With this experience under your belt, the transition to S/4HANA will be more manageable.
3. Turn Your Data into Business Value
Intelligent data is at the heart of innovative, responsive, and agile businesses. And, with SAP on AWS, you can leverage analytics to transform your raw data into vital insights that drive business value.
During the aforementioned SAPinsider webinar, 57% of participants stated that they had previously moved SAP to the cloud and are now eager to leverage next-generation capabilities such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and analytics. This high number is unsurprising, given the importance of an efficient data analytics strategy in fuelling operations, future goals, and innovation. However, to get the most out of their data, businesses must have the right analytics platform, and SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP) on AWS provides the solution they need.
Organizations want a holistic picture of all data for accurate and actionable analysis; this is where SAP’s BTP shines. With SAP BTP on AWS, you can combine business-critical SAP data with heterogeneous data from sources other than SAP into a centralized data lake. This provides end users with a comprehensive perspective of the business, allowing them to monitor operations, problem-solve and respond to changes more quickly and effectively, identify areas for modernization, and much more. Furthermore, by incorporating one of AWS’s several analytics, AI, and ML solutions, you can stimulate innovation, foresee trends, and make data-driven decisions that result in better outcomes today and in the future.
Choose the Right SAP Transformation Partner
Whether you wish to migrate from ECC to S/4HANA or shift SAP workloads to the cloud, Navisite is ideally suited to support you through your digital transformation path. Our experts combine years of experience with in-depth technical knowledge, business process understanding, and dual competence in SAP and AWS. We are a trustworthy SAP S/4HANA, BI/analytics, and cloud partner that assists clients in achieving their business objectives. Check out the complete range of our SAP services to find the best option for your company and learn how we can assist you with migrating to the cloud and then continuously optimizing it.