Is multi cloud a way forward for all SAP enterprises?

The concept of multi cloud environment has gained significant momentum with SAP since the coining of the term “Business Transformation as a service”.?To?facilitate and accelerate multi cloud deployment, SAP is moving towards openness that was once considered closed ERP product. SAP’s Integration suite running on BTP is the backbone of SAP’s current hybrid multi cloud strategy. It empowers developers and customers with out-of-the-box, open, holistic AI driven integration that acts as a modular set of services that are required for cloud and hybrid landscapes. SAP has released innumerable open APIs via SAP API business hub using which cloud peering with 3rd party cloud providers is made possible,?thus unleashing the true power of multi cloud within SAP landscape.?

SAP’s journey to cloud computing started with the release of SAP?HANA?in early 2010 along with acquisitions like?Ariba,?Success factors,?& Concur etc.?Since then, SAP’s cloud strategy has considerably evolved through?HANA Cloud platform(HCP), HANA?Enterprise Cloud(HEC), NetWeaver cloud(Neo), SAP Cloud Platform(SCP) and now Business Transformation Platform(BTP).?In similar fashion the usage of cloud for customer SAP landscapes have various models like hybrid landscape(On-premise & cloud), hybrid cloud,?multi cloud and “hybrid multi cloud”.?

Hybrid model is one of the prominently used model across many customers where, one or more systems in a landscape are hosted on any IaaS provider cloud environment while the others are operated from on-premise. Many customers use this model for storing their on-premises backups for higher durability while others host their DR environment or non-production environment or project landscape in cloud. The rest of their landscape continue to run on-premise. Other cases of hybrid setup involve the usage of built-in cloud integration runtime of PI/PO on BTP (from SAP Integration Suite) to replace on-premise PI/PO environment. With the increasing usage of SAP Cloud Connectors (part of integration suite), SAP cloud applications can now access or extend on-premise software in a secure and reliable fashion, thus accelerating the adoption of this hybrid set-up.

Multi cloud environment involves multiple cloud vendors which empowers customer to leverage the benefits of best of both worlds. In this model, apart from other benefits, ?customers can avoid vendor lock-in and better pricing. ?We have also seen customers choosing multi cloud providers for storing their backups mainly for higher reliability over cyber-attacks. Some customers run Systems of Records on one cloud and Systems of Engagement on another cloud to leverage the benefits of respective cloud native services. To enhance the usage of this model, SAP?is providing pre-built , feature rich SAP open connectors (part of SAP Integration suite) that provides unified API layer?to developers,?simplifying the connectivity and integration with over 160 non-SAP cloud applications. Cloud providers who are pioneers in this model have already well-established cloud-agnostic?and vendor neutral products. AWS has products like AWS EKS and Amazon MQ despite having its own native services like ECS and SQS for similar functionality respectively. Similar trend is also seen with GCP and Azure.

Another model that is gaining popularity in recent times under RISE with SAP program is “hybrid multi cloud”. While?“hybrid cloud” denotes the usage of a combination of public and private clouds for an SAP landscape, “multi cloud” refers to involvement of more than one IaaS provider (AWS, GCP, SAP,?Azure, IBM?etc.), a combination of these two models result in “hybrid multi cloud”. This type of scenario is common whenever a selective data transition leads to 2-tier ERP deployment (headquarter and subsidiary model,?central services model or ecosystem model). In?this model,?one of the ERPs could be running on a highly customizable on-premise or private cloud ERP and subsidiary could be running on a standardized public cloud ERP with a specific scope. There?can also be cases where organization has a line of business (e.g.?Finance) running on a standardized public cloud ERP with the rest of the business running on a highly customizable on-premise or private cloud ERP. To facilitate these type of combinations, SAP’s integration suite provides Cloud Integration services which consists of more than 1400 prebuilt integrations that helps the customers to realize a truly “hybrid multi cloud” environment.?

The key benefits of cloud transformation range from business, technical, strategic benefits to operational benefits. However, cloud transformation journey for a customer is not an easy and simple decision. Many customers are struggling to make this paradigm shift despite the numerous competitive-edge and value additions that a cloud transformation could result in. The underlying reasons could vary from compliance, operational challenges, reduced flexibility,?incompatible architecture, fear of losing on the current investment, high level of customization, lacking underlying skill set?and so on. Choosing the right infrastructure cloud provider is also not an easy decision. Even?if the customer managed to decide on shifting to cloud there are still operational and monitoring management concerns and complications involved. There is also a basic need of change in the current mindset of the customer to the “Cloud mindset”

There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

·????????Customer that are ready to reinvent their current business process with cloud mind-set could give up on their current investment and start from scratch in cloud.

·????????Customers that are looking for a reduced TCO and management overhead,?RISE with SAP might be a better solution.

·????????Customers that are involved in carve-out and mergers, 2-Tier ERP model will be a better choice

·????????Customers with legacy systems which are still critical, but are not compatible in cloud could continue their usage in on-premise.

Hence,?making these key decisions could be daunting without proper guidance, planning and experience.?Predicting and tying the loose ends with prior experience is also a key to successful journey to cloud.?

Partners play a vital role in helping the customers in making the right decisions on the digital transformation path starting from choosing the suitable cloud provider & cloud strategy, realizing the true benefits of cloud and stay competitive.?