Cloud ERP arrives as the new holy grail of ERP architecture: a composable, flexible and scalable collection of core business services working together to meet enterprise ERP needs. Of course, getting there for a large enterprise with significant existing complexity across legacy SAP implementations isn’t a trivial task.
Much has been written about S/4HANA migration, but less explored are the benefits of automation solutions used for the regular operations of SAP to migration projects. These solutions offer a number of accelerators and benefits to migration projects and SAP teams, so it is worth exploring.
A great many analysts have outlined the current market situation. To paraphrase a mix of Gartner, SAP Insider and others: most SAP ECC customers are yet to make a commitment to S/4HANA or RISE; the biggest driver for migration is the end of support from SAP; and over a third of customers consider the event an opportunity to do more than just migrate, including innovation, transformation, replatforming and reengineering business processes or ERP systems themselves.
The number one reported reason migration projects haven’t started is expected cost. Project length and complexity aren’t far behind and the three together tell a familiar story to SAP users: upgrades are expensive, often tricky, and take longer than expected. In fact, upgrades are difficult enough and most SAP deployments have never had one performed and are on the same version of SAP they went live with.
The challenges of upgrades and migrations are one reason many SAP users recognize the value of clean core moving forward, but many systems have decades of customizations, and greenfield migrations may be an impractical choice. And, either choice leaves customers running both legacy and destination systems for a protracted period of time – several years in most cases – and the challenges of maintaining operations across different architectures and software during the transition period.
One of the benefits of being an automation software firm is the exposure to so many SAP environments and especially high-volume customers, including major operators of ECC, S/4HANA and RISE in the form of Managed Service Providers. With this insight comes the benefit of watching different approaches and the challenges and outcomes common across migration projects.
A few observations:
With knowledge of expected project complexity, length and resource demands, one can begin to assess where solutions often already in place today can help scale the organization to support the protracted project lifecycles typical of cloud ERP migrations. Paramount for enterprise customers is protecting the existing business and operations. Ensuring SAP teams are productive and not firefighting day-to-day issues creates opportunities for project work and innovation.
Automation for SAP Operations is an essential partner, managing the daily monotony of SAP activities including change, monitoring, and common infrastructure management tasks such as system refresh. With large scale projects, SAP teams are facing regular operations in addition to specialty tasks including provisioning project landscapes, updating test data in QA systems, and managing the migration of change between multiple landscapes.
Supporting hybrid environments and operations using different tooling for each environment creates significant challenges for operational efficiency. Many customers face a complex mix of platforms during their Cloud ERP journey. Most large enterprises have multiple landscapes, and not every existing ECC or S/4HANA system will move at once. Some migrations will make more sense as new deployments in platforms such as BTP, while others – business warehouse, for example – may not make sense to migrate ever and will ultimately face decommissioning when a suitable replacement is operational.
A key observation across dozens of projects and customers is teams using a single pane-of-glass for SAP operations have better project outcomes. In practice, this means managing SAP operations across on-premise, hybrid and new Cloud ERP architectures at the same time with a single operations solution. The single point of visibility and automation reduces outages in production and project landscapes and accelerates cycle times by automating landscape management tasks. And, they are prepared for go-live as soon as the project phase completes.
SAP migration projects can be expensive, time consuming and complex. Observation of numerous migration projects with many unique requirements has resulted in a few key conclusions consistent with most projects:
For more information on SAP Ops and solutions for managing a complex mix of on-prem, hybrid and Cloud ERP, speak with one of our experts to find out how Avantra can transform your SAP operations and Cloud ERP projects.