The RISE evolution with IBM

Adil Zafar is an Associate Partner and Global Leader for RISE with SAP at IBM

I’ve been pretty quiet over the last 2 months and I didn’t even do my usual ‘End of Year Musing’. So I’m hoping to share my thoughts on what has been my experience in 2021 and how I see things moving forward in 2022, with the backdrop of a game changing announcement from IBM and SAP.

I think its fair to say when RISE with SAP was launched by Christian Klein we held our breath some were overly critical of ‘…oh no not another change in GTM for S/4HANA Move..’, ‘…not another product offering…’.

Its arrived…

For those of you who are familiar with what I do at IBM I’ve been nursing RISE with SAP’s predecessor S/4HANA Cloud Extended Edition. When the announcement was made it was a huge relief to me because now we have an offering which really does address what the customers want. I’m not referring to the TCO or the simplified model of the commercials I think these qualities speak for themselves but I’m referring to is we now have a clear message that it’s about our customers journey to adopting the new digital enterprise on cloud. That’s it! Grasp that! Understand it! And don’t over complicate what RISE with SAP is all about.

The IBM revolution continues…

During 2021 IBM Global Business Services became IBM Consulting to reflect the ever changing focus of IBM to become a Hybrid Cloud and AI company. With that we launched our flagship offering BREAKTHROUGH with IBM for RISE with SAP, in October. When considering our focus in helping customers move to S/4HANA it wasn’t about delivering yet another upgrade or migration but it was about delivering value based outcomes to organisations which spanned across all market segmentation, whether Small to Medium organisations or Large Enterprise. We delivered over 60% of our BREAKTHROUGH with IBM offering to Small to Medium Enterprises. That again speak volumes that IBM is laser focused on delivering for its customers. The numbers speak for themselves.

So now I’m coming to why I’ve been so quiet. I, along with many IBMer’s have been working to develop several offerings on RISE with SAP which add that value our customers are expecting. I’m not referring to TCO reduction or how quickly and cheaply we can deliver a migration, that’s now an expectation. What I’m referring to is the End to End offering to deliver a simplified journey to S/4HANA with a unified accountability.

The RISE evolution with IBM

Today we launched, BREAKTHROUGH with IBM for RISE with SAP premium supplier option with IBM.

Simplifying the journey, Unifying accountability

For far too long customers have been promised accountability but when the building blocks of a solution is broken up into smaller parts it’s hard to pinpoint who is accountable it causes more effort to manage those constituent parts compared to a unified point of accountability. Why is this so important? As I mentioned from the outset customers are looking for a value driven outcome the focus is on how the digital transformation can make them unique, competitive, agile, a leader in their market whether its through User Experience, streamlined supply chain, delivering new products and services when and how they choose, the ability to evolve from one LoB to another, to capture new markets in new regions…the list is endless.

• When RISE with SAP was launched it provided a simplified commercial construct on select Hyperscalers (Figure 1).
• As we launch RISE with SAP premium supplier option with IBM it provides the same commercial construct on IBM Cloud with Technical Managed Services delivery by IBM Consulting (Figure 2).
• But there’s more, today IBM is the only Partner that can deliver an end-to-end unique delivery construct which truly unifies its capabilities for our customers. It removes the complexities of a multi-vendor engagement and thereby providing the customer a unified accountability (Figure 3).

Inside the Donut

As metaphors go I think this one is a stroke of genius. Back at base we are lovingly calling our end-to-end delivery model the The Donut and it delivers what customers are asking for:?

• Simplicity enabled through a unified point of accountability for a more simplified engagement
• ?Reduced client risks enabled through an IBM/SAP Integrated Delivery Framework which optimizes business processes and delivery, eliminates inefficiencies, and reduces cost.?
• ?Accelerated, secure migration of clients’ mission-critical on-premise SAP workloads to the IBM Cloud, backed by industry-leading security capabilities and an IBM Cloud infrastructure enterprise-ready platform to meet clients’ needs with the largest and most powerful SAP-certified servers in the cloud.
• Innovation with outcomes leveraging intelligent workflows and Industry Cloud packaged solutions for exponential growth at pace,
• ?Value-driven advisory services and an adoption approach tailored to clients’ needs, combined with next-generation, Gartner #1 ranked SAP Managed Services for AI-enabled maintenance and continuous innovation at scale.

With the evolution of RISE with IBM and the revolution of IBM to deliver for its customers I cannot be more excited by what lays ahead. Whether you are a Fortune 5000 or a Fortune 100 company, within a niche industry, local or multinational, BREAKTHROUGH with IBM for RISE with SAP premium supplier option delivers a world-class service, leveraging a unique delivery approach with a focus on strategic outcomes and unlocking exponential value.

Please see joint SAP and IBM Press Release: https://ibm.biz/BdfUvD

If you would like to know more, please visit us at https://www.ibm.com/services/sap/rise-with-sap or contact me at [email protected]

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