SAP On Premise to Cloud Migration: 7 Reasons Why the Time is Now
Patrick Osterhaus
Many SAP customers have been running SAP on premise for decades and have been reluctant to harness the benefits of the public cloud. But as the public cloud has transformed IT and businesses, on premise hosting has become harder to justify.
While the traditional benefits of the cloud — superior scalability and lower costs — have only become more apparent as the technology has matured, SAP on public cloud has also overtaken on premise hosting in areas like security, historically used to justify staying on site.
Here’s why the time is right for your SAP on premise to cloud migration.
Public Cloud SAP Benefits
The major advantages of using the public cloud can be remembered with the mnemonic device, CAESARS.
CAESARS benefits are:
- Cost Savings
- Agility
- Efficiency
- Scalability
- Abstraction
- Resiliency
- Security
1. Cost Savings
Resource pooling has drastically cut the costs of public cloud operation. By operating at hyperscale, public cloud providers can keep the cost of compute low, passing the savings on to tenants.
SAP on premise to cloud migration also moves you from large CapEx on hardware updates to stable OpEx, where you only have to pay for the compute you actually use.
2. Agility
Cloud computing makes SAP more agile and flexible. With on premise servers, you’re limited to the resources you’ve installed, and unforeseen growth in resource demand can impact system performance.
In the cloud, there’s no need to plan hardware upgrades to meet growing demand — you can provision resources instantly. The cloud also incorporates built-in lifecycle activities like system copy and snapshot.
3. Efficiency
The cloud allows you to meter and automate resource usage to maximize efficiency. Resources can be spun up during times of high demand, then turned off again to control spend and reduce waste.
4. Scalability
Moving SAP to cloud gives you access to virtually unlimited resources, with multiple data centers available in each region. This allows you to size the systems for their current workloads and add to scale the capacity as it is needed for new demands such as IoT projects, or business needs like mergers or moving into new markets.
5. Abstraction
Abstraction converts the physical assets your landscape relies on to digital processes. In the cloud, your SAP landscape is no longer dependent on one particular set of hardware systems, which have to be carefully monitored and tuned to ensure proper system functioning.
Additionally, running SAP on public cloud enables your business to benefit from a Software Defined Everything (SDE) environment. This provides a foundation for orchestration and automation of all cloud services, makes your landscape more robust and significantly reduces the cost of maintenance.
6. Resiliency
The cloud greatly improves disaster recovery, availability and business continuity. With replicated storage, and the ability to harness multiple network providers, you can avoid the risks that come with running your landscape out of a single private data center. High availability is built-in, and users can meet arbitrary resiliency requirements at a much lower cost.
7. Security
SAP on-premise hosting can be very secure if done properly, but very few companies have the resources. The modern public cloud is designed around security, with extensive network hardening and testing, standard encryption and built-in access control. Third-party security certification and support for a wide range of compliance regimes greatly reduces the risks of breaches and data theft.
Public Cloud Computing: The Future of SAP
Protera has been running systems in the public cloud since 2008. In 2011, we were part of the team which created the first SAP public cloud certification.
Over the last seven years we’ve learned first-hand the many benefits SAP customers gain running compute in public cloud. At first customers were interested mostly in TCO. Now, it’s often overshadowed by the substantial strategic benefits of cloud migration.
To learn more, watch our free webinars on how to boost your migration path to Azure or AWS.
