Migrating SAP to the public cloud can be a smart move as you look to reduce infrastructure costs and increase organizational agility. After all, cloud platforms offer flexibility and the potential for long-term savings, especially when compared to on-premises infrastructure.
Post-migration, many businesses quickly discover that post-migration costs can add up. Without the right strategy, compute, storage, and networking, expenses can become unpredictable, eroding the expected return on investment.
Cloud cost optimization is a proactive solution to managing and reducing your cloud spend. In this blog, we will explore proven strategies like adopting FinOps principles, implementing cost governance frameworks, and partnering with managed cloud services providers to help enterprises control their SAP cloud environments.
Quick Takeaways:
Uncontrolled SAP cloud costs can erode the savings gained from migration without the right cost governance strategies in place.
FinOps practices like visibility, accountability, and optimization help align cloud spending with business goals for SAP workloads.
Rightsizing, tiered storage, network design, and automation are important best practices for keeping SAP cloud costs predictable.
Managed cloud services providers like Protera provide expert guidance, proactive monitoring, and operational support to maximize ROI and reduce complexity.
Many enterprises expect lower costs after moving SAP to the cloud. However, the reality can be different without proper oversight.
One issue you could run into is overprovisioned compute resources. For instance, companies may migrate systems from on-premise to the cloud without adjusting for actual usage. The result is oversized instances that waste capacity and drive up costs.
Another culprit is underutilized storage. Large volumes of logs and unused snapshots are often left unchecked, consuming expensive cloud storage tiers.
Unmonitored data egress and networking costs also add up quickly. Traffic between SAP components and third-party applications can generate high charges, especially when not carefully architected.
Finally, a lack of visibility and governance makes it hard to pinpoint where the organization is spending money. Without clear tagging or cost reporting, budgets spiral out of control.
Effective AWS, Azure, and GCP Cost Management practices can monitor these expenses. They help rein in spending and optimize SAP in cloud environments.
FinOps is a collaborative approach that brings finance, technology, and business teams together to manage cloud costs. It's about making smart, data-driven decisions that align cloud spending with your business goals.
Three key pillars of FinOps apply directly to SAP workloads:
FinOps helps businesses gain better control over cloud cost optimization and maximize the value of their cloud investments, especially within complex and resource-intensive SAP environments.
SAP on cloud management requires more than just migrating your workloads. It demands ongoing cost optimization. Here are some best practices enterprises can use to keep cloud expenses under control without sacrificing performance.
One of the most significant savings opportunities is rightsizing your cloud compute resources. You can use usage data and performance metrics to check that your SAP instances are neither overpowered nor underperforming.
Tools like AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Advisor, and GCP’s Cloud Billing Reports help analyze usage trends and suggest optimal instance types and sizes. For predictable workloads, you can also consider reserved instances or savings plans to lower long-term costs as part of your cloud environment.
Cloud storage costs can add up fast. It’s a good practice to implement tiered storage by classifying data as hot (frequently accessed), cold (infrequently accessed), or archival (rarely used).
You can also clean up outdated logs or unused snapshots and enable compression and deduplication to reduce space usage. Setting lifecycle policies to move data to lower-cost storage tiers over time can help with storage optimization, too.
Data egress and inter-region traffic can bring unexpected charges. As a result, you'll want to monitor these patterns and optimize your architecture to reduce unnecessary data movement.
You'll also want to use private endpoints or express routes to securely connect SAP systems, minimizing public internet usage and cutting network costs.
You don't want to pay for idle resources. Fortunately, it's possible to shut down non-production SAP environments during nights and weekends and use automation tools to scale resources based on workload demand.
These best practices can reduce your SAP on cloud spend while maintaining a high level of performance and reliability.
Working together with a managed cloud services provider like Protera can make a significant difference in optimizing your SAP cloud costs after migration. Managing SAP on the cloud is complex, and without the right expertise, expenses can escalate.
Protera brings the SAP and cloud experience your business needs to streamline operations and control costs.
We can evaluate your cloud setup to confirm it's right-sized and cost-efficient. Our team also provides continuous monitoring and FinOps-aligned reporting, giving you visibility into spending and usage trends.
In addition, our incident response service helps address unexpected issues that could lead to cost spikes, like runaway processes or misconfigured services, before they impact your bottom line.
Offloading your day-to-day infrastructure management to Protera reduces operational complexity. From there, internal staff can focus on strategic initiatives while we optimize performance and maximize ROI from your SAP investment.
You can optimize SAP cloud costs by putting strong governance practices in place by setting clear cloud budgets for your SAP environments and enforcing them with automated guardrails to prevent overspending.Cloud platforms offer built-in tools to track usage and generate forecasts, helping you stay within budget.
It's also important to implement a tagging strategy for SAP. Tags like environment (dev/test/prod) or cost center make monitoring and allocating costs easier. And regular architecture reviews can ensure that your compute and storage provisioning is optimized for your SAP environment.
Cost visibility isn't just an IT responsibility. FinOps encourages cross-functional collaboration, as IT and business leaders should collaborate to make informed decisions about cloud spending.This shared accountability helps you get the most value from your investment while keeping SAP cloud costs predictable and under control.
As enterprises continue to move SAP to the cloud, you should remember that migration is only the beginning. Cloud environments can become just as costly as traditional on-premise systems without a proactive approach to cloud cost governance.
Pairing best practices with the expertise of a managed cloud services provider like Protera can simplify operations and deliver meaningful cost savings.
Contact Protera today to learn how we help your enterprise manage and optimize SAP workloads in the cloud.