SAP Cloud Migration: Path to Becoming an Intelligent Enterprise

Cloud adoption has been seeing a steady uptake and 2020 has only hastened the process. Very few businesses today can dispute the importance, urgency and need to move to the cloud. At the same time, there is significant apprehension over the imminent challenges in making the transition.

Organizations fear it could be painful transition leading to downtimes and disruptions, some are not sure of how to navigate through the process or the strategy to be followed and still others with legacy systems worry that they may not be ready to deal with the change on their own.

These fears are not unfounded but not unsurmountable either.

A well thought out strategy, a clear roadmap, and a partnership with an experienced team of experts will ensure a migration with minimal pain. The ensuing advantages will only justify the decision to migrate to the cloud.

The benefits of migrating SAP to the cloud are manifold and the transition will be worth it.

Organizations that implement a cloud migration in SAP gain from savings in infrastructure, hardware, and maintenance costs. They also gain the competitive edge that cloud-based solutions offer, such as better performance, security and improved ROI.

“Ultimately, the cloud is the latest example of Schumpeterian creative destruction: creating wealth for those who exploit it; and leading to the demise of those that don’t.”
– Joe Weinman, Senior VP, Telx; author of Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing

Migrating to a cloud-based environment involves the transition of data, applications, and technology from a local deployment to a remote cloud platform. Such migration has distinct advantages in terms of performance, scalability, security, and ease of development, helping businesses achieve greater productivity and efficiency.

Accelerated Digital Transformation. The cloud lends itself to support and enable digitization. Application and implementation of emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning are now native to cloud services. It is now the enabler of the intelligent enterprise. Migrating to the cloud is the first step in preparing your enterprise for the future.

Insightful Analytics. The anytime-anywhere access to data is a powerful tool in the hands of any businesses. The cloud ensures a winning combination of easy availability of real time data with powerful analytics. This is a potent addition to the arsenal of business intelligence insights for organizations looking to gain the competitive edge.

Flexible resources. The fluctuations in demand create challenges in managing workloads. Easy scalability of cloud resources in real time eliminates the need to invest in capex. Agility and flexibility in managing workloads ensures work is done at optimal performance levels and cost management becomes simpler.

Workflow improvements. Process streamlining and performance optimization are a direct outcome of a SAP migration to the cloud. The SAP HANA in-memory database further contributes by minimizing the data footprint.

Security and resilience. Built-in access control, extensive data encryption, and continuous support ensure that your cloud implementation is up to date with the latest security practices, securing your data and connectivity. Built-in disaster recovery systems and replicated data storage in the cloud make the systems more resilient when compared to on-prem implementation, providing higher availability and business continuity.

Cost Savings. For any business one of the most important outcomes of any decision is the impact on finances. The move to the cloud doesn’t disappoint. The TCO decreases as a result of multiple factors such as the savings from reduced infrastructure costs, need for fewer support and maintenance staff and optimization of data storage.

The flexible pay-per-use model works well to meet varying market demand by allowing the business to increase or decrease services.

The cloud offers tools that help businesses manage and maintain the systems themselves or with minimal IT support teams and freeing up IT experts to focus on business and strategic initiatives.

The reduced dependence on large IT teams, the reduced data center costs, the flexibility of provisioning in addition to the improved performance together create a harmonized model that add up to significant cost savings for an organization. Cloud enabled provisioning facilitates deployment across even geographically scattered locations in record times.

Looming EOS announcements. Over and beyond all these reasons, business owners using SAP must also keep in mind the recent announcements to end support for SAP’s Business Suite 7 software suite by 2025(now extended to 2027). The migration to S/4 HANA is for all practical purposes inevitable. In such a scenario it makes good sense to make the transition to the cloud as early as possible. Delays can only cause costs to rise further.

With the overarching reasons to make the transition to the cloud coupled with the reduced TCO that you can expect and other advantages such as rapid provisioning and enhanced agility, making the transition to the cloud is now a business imperative.

To know more, contact us on info@microexcel.com