Before exploring the benefits of SAP HANA, let us list the options a customer have from SAP cloud solutions:
IAAS (Infrastructure as a service): This option is sometimes referred as Private Manged cloud. Customers running on premise SAP and want maximum customisation, SAP HANA enterprise cloud, a private cloud is best option. Customers can bring their already licensed SAP applications in Enterprise cloud.
PAAS (Platform as a service): Through SAP Cloud platform, customers can build new cloud apps. They can also extend on premise and cloud apps. As SAP rightly says: SCP is “One Platform for every need”
SAP Cloud Platform provides ready-made services for:
• SAP Cloud platform Predictive Analytics
• SAP Cloud platform Digital Assistant
• SAP Cloud platform Machine Learning
• SAP Cloud platform IOT
• SAP Cloud platform Artificial Intelligence
• Cloud Foundry environment
• Spatial Data Processing
• Text Analytics and Search
• Blockchain powered by HANA
Public Cloud (Software As a service): This is sometimes termed as SAP S4 HANA Cloud. SAP offers a variety of solutions in different areas for example: Ariba(Supplier Relationship Management product), Fieldglass (External talent management and services procurement product), Hybris(Customer Relationship Management Product), Success Factor(Human Capital Management product), Concur(Travel Management product)
The advantages of Cloud based IT services:
• Faster implementation
• Hardware and software are cloud solution provider responsibility
• Flexibility due to subscription-based model: Pay what you use
• High Availability
• Scalability
We would like to broadly classify SAP HANA Cloud ROI under following categories:
1. Cost Benefits:
By leveraging the right SAP HANA cloud partner, you can actually have good saving when implementing or migrating to SAP HANA cloud. A recent cost-based analysis conducted by analyst group Forrester shows that migrating an SAP implementation to SAP HANA cloud can save 37% on the TCO over just 3 years – and that doesn’t even factor in the real time business benefits that SAP HANA cloud provides.
2. Business Benefits:
Quicker implementation times -The overall project duration is reduced due to the Cloud principles. Time saving will be during build phase, testing phase. The reduction in the implementation times will reduce the overall effort of external consultants and the customer’s project team, which in turn will reduce the overall cost of the implementation.
Reduction of support costs – Moving to SAPHANA cloud will mean a new type of contract will be in place. An Annual subscription is used, and included in this are the core licences, the hosting of the solution and the box level support. Further to this, as the core SAP HANA Cloud solution is not as customisable as a traditional SAP ECC on premise solutions,theapplication support costs will reduce.
Revert back to standard – For many SAP ECC customers with a mature SAP ECC system the level of complexity would have grown over time. Some of the complexity maybe required, some will not be required. Being able to start from a clean and simple solution, based on SAP best practice will provide a number of customers the ability to work in a more lean and efficient manner.
SAP’s strategic direction – The clear direction of SAP is for the product to be a Cloud first tool. This means all of the new functionality will be released first within the Cloud editions (a new release is planned 4 times a year for the Cloud version and only once for the on-premise solution) and therefore before the on-premise edition.
Flexibility of integration – SAP HANA Cloud edition is not a one stop shop for all enterprise tools. Within the product, a number of API’s are available to link to other systems such as Success Factors, Hybris and others. HANA Cloud integration will be used for all your Integration needs.
