In a cloud-powered business world where agility, scalability, and innovation have become paramount to success, many organizations are turning to expert cloud managed services to guide them. SAP cloud managed services providers deliver the experience and expertise that SAP user enterprises need to take full advantage of their cloud-based SAP workloads and applications.
In this guide, we’ll take a deep dive into what SAP cloud managed services entail, six key benefits they deliver, and the importance of finding the right partner to achieve your unique business outcomes.
Quick Takeaways:
- The market for cloud managed services is expected to nearly double by 2030.
- SAP cloud managed services accelerate cloud readiness for SAP customers and help them take full advantage of S/4HANA and RISE with SAP.
- Key areas included in SAP cloud services are: cloud infrastructure and application management, security and compliance, data and analytics, scaling, and cost optimization.
- By hiring a SAP cloud managed services provider, internal IT teams can refocus on core business activities that drive innovation and growth.
- It’s important to find a cloud managed services provider with the right expertise and resources needed to support your unique business and goals.
What are Cloud Managed Services?
Cloud managed services encompass a comprehensive suite of solutions and expertise designed to help organizations manage and optimize cloud-based resources effectively. This broad spectrum of services transcends the traditional boundaries of IT support to encompass the ongoing and expert management of cloud solutions, including applications, cloud infrastructure, and critical business processes.
These services are particularly crucial for enterprises with extensive cloud architectures and that use complex systems (like SAP), where specialized knowledge and skills are required to ensure the seamless operation and optimization of their systems.
Today, businesses are taking fast notice of the significant potential that lies in working with cloud experts —the market for cloud managed services is projected to approximately double by 2030.
Some of the most important functionalities and areas of support included in cloud managed services are:
- Infrastructure Management: Overseeing cloud infrastructure, including servers, storage, and network resources, as well as handling tasks like deployment, maintenance, and monitoring
- Application Management: Specialized support for managing cloud-based applications, including application deployment, updates, performance monitoring, and alignment with business needs
- Security and Compliance: Implementation of robust cloud security measures such as data encryption, intrusion detection, and identity and access management, as well as ensuring compliance with relevant regulations and standards
- Data Analytics and Reporting: Tools and services for data analysis and reporting, helping businesses gain insights from their cloud data to inform decision-making and business strategies
- Disaster Recovery and Backup: Strategies and tools to back up data and applications in the cloud, ensuring business continuity in case of data loss, system failures, or other disruptions
- Cost Management and Optimization: Monitoring and managing cloud spending to ensure cost efficiency
- Cloud Scalability and Flexibility Services: Scaling cloud resources up or down as business demands, and ensuring cloud environment remains flexible to accommodate changing requirements
- Customized Cloud Solutions: Designing and implementing cloud solutions that are tailored to the specific needs and challenges of the business
By leveraging these comprehensive cloud managed services, enterprises can ensure that their cloud environments are not only fully functional and secure, but also strategically aligned to support business objectives and drive growth.
For enterprises running SAP, bringing on an expert SAP cloud managed services provider can be the key to executing critical digital transformation initiatives, like adopting RISE with SAP, upgrading to SAP S/4HANA, ‘friends of SAP’ application migrations and integrations, as well as efforts to continuously optimize SAP systems on the cloud .
In the next section, we’ll explore 6 important ways that SAP cloud managed services empower modern enterprises to achieve ROI from SAP-related and other IT investments.
6 Ways SAP Cloud Managed Services Empower Enterprises
As the cloud and other cloud-based assets become continually more fundamental to business operations and strategic success, cloud managed services are emerging as an indispensable resource for enterprises across sectors. These services empower internal teams to confidently navigate complex IT infrastructures and leverage cloud assets for digital transformation and competitive advantage.
SAP organizations can leverage the managed services model to get the highest possible value from their SAP systems without having to manage the minutiae of system maintenance—a time-consuming process that often takes away from effort that could be spent on growth-driving activities.
Let’s dive deeper into 6 key ways SAP cloud managed services power success:
1) Enabling Focus on Core Business Priorities
Time is the most valuable resource your employees can offer. They’re the experts on your business and your customers, and they should be able to focus on both. When you offload the time-consuming task of active cloud and SAP solutions management to a services provider, your teams can refocus on the core business activities that drive innovation and growth up the stack.
2) Providing Deep SAP Expertise
SAP systems are complex and comprehensive and it’s nearly impossible for organizations to maintain the SAP knowledge they need in-house consistently. SAP cloud managed services providers grant you access to a bench of diverse experts who have deep SAP expertise and can guide you through a wide range of complex scenarios.
In addition, SAP cloud managed services providers maintain SAP and cloud partner specific certifications and close partnerships with SAP itself to ensure they’re always up-to-date on SAP system updates, new capabilities, and other advancements so you never miss an opportunity to improve.
This is a significant advantage over relying on internal IT teams, who often have broad knowledge but not detailed experience or expertise in specific areas. This expertise is invaluable for any business seeking to leverage the cloud and related technology assets to their fullest potential.
Enterprise executives admit it’s hard to maintain this kind of knowledge on their own—the most recent PwC Cloud Business Survey found that while 78% of executives say their company has adopted the cloud in most or all parts of their business, more than half had not yet realized their expected outcomes.
Investing in SAP cloud managed services can be the key to unlocking this elusive potential and meeting your strategic business goals.
3) Modernizing with SAP S/4HANA and RISE with SAP
SAP S/4HANA and RISE with SAP have transformed the way enterprises use SAP systems and accelerated the migration and modernization progress for many. SAP cloud managed services providers can help you streamline and optimize these efforts, ensuring you implement best practices to accelerate adoption.
They also help you evaluate your cloud options, as well as take advantage of powerful SAP offerings (like SAP BTP and other popular products), so your cloud environment is truly designed for your specific business and transformation goals.
This service is timelier than ever as SAP sticks to its deadline of phasing out maintenance service for Business Suite 7 by 2027. While most organizations are taking strides toward cloud modernization, recent research found that only 14% of original SAP ECC customers are fully live on S/4HANA as of 2023, indicating that SAP cloud managed services could fill critical gaps related to cloud readiness and realizing transformation objectives.
Expert SAP managed services providers deliver tailored solutions and strategies designed for your unique business needs and objectives so that you get the most from what SAP has to offer. Further, they maintain, secure and optimize your systems well after the transformation journey so that you can improve long-term.
4) Designing Effective SAP Cloud Security Strategies
As cloud technology advances, cyber adversaries and potential threats become more sophisticated as well. At the same time, complex SAP environments are more vulnerable to gaps and open endpoints that can be exploited.
SAP cloud managed services providers play a critical role in ensuring the security and compliance of an enterprise's SAP systems on the cloud and entire cloud infrastructures. They know how to implement advanced security measures and compliance protocols to protect data and transactions, fortifying your business against potential cyber threats and regulatory issues.
For almost every enterprise, this is a critical gap that exists within their own organization. It’s estimated that today, lack of security visibility and lack of internal knowledge and expertise on cloud security best practices are two primary causes of cloud misconfigurations.
The takeaway: Even the best intentions and commitment to cloud security cannot keep enterprises protected if they’re missing expertise and resources. Cloud managed service providers can reliably fill this critical gap.
5) Powering Seamless Scalability and Flexibility
In today’s fast-changing business landscape, agility is key. To optimize cost savings, efficiency, and other resources, your cloud infrastructure must be both scalable and flexible by nature. SAP cloud managed service providers help organizations effectively scale SAP applications and cloud resources in response to changing demands, ensuring resource allocation and budgets stay aligned with business needs.
This type of agility isn’t just about saving money, either. It’s also a key enabler for responding quickly to evolving market dynamics, changing trends, and new opportunities, ensuring your organization is at the forefront of your industry and a step ahead of competitors in your space.
6) Delivering Actionable Data Insights
Visibility is critical. Enhanced data management and analytics capabilities is one of the biggest benefits of moving your SAP systems to the cloud with a trusted provider. Managed services providers can deliver frameworks, expertise, and seamless access to products you need to analyze vast amounts of data, uncover key trends, identify opportunities, and provide robust reports that guide strategic action and facilitate innovation.
These advanced data management and analytics capabilities allow you to execute data-driven strategies and decision-making across your enterprise to drive competitive advantage and growth.
Finding the Right SAP Cloud Managed Services Provider
Not all SAP cloud managed services partners are created equally. As with any business, some have higher levels of experience, expertise, and network power than others. Protera is a leader in all of these areas, delivering the highest levels of SAP expertise while leveraging a vast network of industry partners to help clients succeed.
With automation backed by expertise, Protera can deliver next-generation management of your SAP systems and your entire cloud landscape, with modern work engagements to run better, work smarter, and innovate faster to meet business objectives.
Our comprehensive managed services include:
- Full SAP software lifecycle management
- Cloud migration services
- Modernization roadmap analysis
- RISE with SAP integration and infrastructure management
- 24x7x365 proactive monitoring and incident response
- Data replication, backups, disaster recovery, etc.
- AWS Well Architected Review-SAP Lens (SAP Lens, Security Lens)
- Microsoft Azure migration assessment and adoption accelerators
- Comprehensive security and compliance management
Schedule time to talk to our team and learn firsthand how Protera can help your business transform.