Transformation and Innovations with SAP & Hyperscaler Cloud: Part-1

In Part-1, I will focus on big picture what is Transformation and Innovation Opportunity and How Cloud enable the same

Transformation and Innovation are the hot topics and big opportunities for IT and consulting industry today.

Nearly every Organization in different industries are now looking how to transform and continuously innovate their #BusinessProcesses across LoBs (Line of Business) to make positive impact on their top-line (#revenue), bottom-line (#profit), #BrandValue and avoid being disrupted by competition or digital-first startups (by cutting cost, #Automation, increasing #EmployeeEfficiency & #Collaboration, improving #CustomerExperience, better/new #BusinessModels and improving #CustomerService etc.)

Nearly every company in IT and consulting industry (e.g., Hyperscalers like #AWS, #MicrosoftAzure and #GoogleCloudPlatform; Business/Technology software companies like SAP , Salesforce , 微软 , 甲骨文 ; and GSIs like 维布络 ) is providing Products and services touching #Transformation and #Innovation requirements of these organizations in different industries today.

These companies use terms like #DigitalTransformation (DX), #BusinessTransformation (BT) and #Innovation interchangeably. So, are these same or different?

BT is about making fundamental changes in how?business?is conducted in order to help cope with shifts in?market environment (ref. WIKI).

If you make these changes by adopting Digital Technologies (e.g. #CloudComputing, #BigData, #Analytics, #IoT, #AI #MachineLearning, #Automation, #RPA, #Cybersecurity, #SocialMedia, #Mobility etc.) then it is called DX which would be part of BT.

BT is typically led by CEO and DX is led by CDO/ CIO/ CTO / CISO in the organization.

Transformation (shift from status A to B) is normally long term and takes few months to few years based on the complexity of the organization.

Innovation refers to implementation of multiple or continuous small/large ideas which impacts organization in positive ways by inventing new or improving products and services to customers. Typically, Innovation refers to ideas implemented from Transformed Organization (e.g. SAP refers to #IntelligentEnterprise). It is important for an organization to keep innovating to stay relevant in the market. Innovation leveraging digital technologies is called #DigitalInnovation

DX is big opportunity for IT and consulting industry. As per Statista, DX spending in 2021 was around 1.5 Trillion USD.

Cloud is big enabler for DX. According to Gartner , Cloud spending was 38% (451 B$) in 2021 of the total IT spending. This is going to increase to more than 50% by 2025.

Now why you need #CLOUD for DX? Let’s understand by few examples below

• #Agility (#TimetoMarket) – Think of an innovation idea where you need digital technologies to implement. In On-premises scenario, you need to calculate your procurement cycles to buy software and additional Hardware which is normally minimum few weeks to months. Innovation can not wait for the same. In Cloud, you can buy (or Pay-As-You-Go) immediately and implement in hours/days.
• #Scalability / #Elasticity – Think of a scenario where your organization is generating few PBs of data and you want to create Bigdata around and need large amount of compute to run Analytics on the same for 1-hour/day OR 1-day in a month. It would be very expensive scenario in On-premises where in cloud you can scale-up/scale-out as required and scale-down/scale-in when not required (and not pay when not using)

Now, let's see how an organization move to cloud (#Migrate, #Modernize) , #Transform and #Innovate

You can typically divide the journey in 4 phases (in different R’s), but customer can jump to any phase directly depending on the requirements

1. Migration (#IaaS)

• Re-Host : - (No change in Application or Platform (OS/DB)) referred to as Lift-and-shift OR AS-IS Migration
• e.g., moving any Application on-premises on Windows/MSSQL to AS-IS on AWS/AZURE/GCP
• Re-Platform: - (No change in Application, but change in Platform (OS/DB)) referred to as Lift-and-Migrate
• e.g., moving SAP CRM application on-premises on AIX/DB2 to Windows/MSSQL on AWS/AZURE/GCP

2. Modernization (#CaaS, #FaaS, #PaaS and #SaaS)

• Re-Factor: - Minimal change at Application level so it can leverage cloud benefits
• e.g., moving Application from on-premises to #AKS / #EKS on AZURE/AWS
• e.g., moving Application on MySQL DB on-premises to PaaS services on AZURE (AZURE Database for MySQL)/ AWS (Amazon RDS for MySQL)
• Re-Architect: - significant change to application architecture adoption towards #cloudnative
• e.g., moving #monolithic on-premises application to #cloudnative #microservices based Architecture
• e.g., moving SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA on AWS/AZURE/GCP
• Re-Build: - Developing the application from scratch on cloud using cloud native and digital technologies
• e.g., developing application from scratch on SAP ’s PaaS platform BTP #BusinessTechnology #platform)
• Re-Place / Re-Purchase / Re-Tire: - You can Re-Place some of the on-premise Application with SaaS application on cloud or include the same functionality in other cloud applications build from scratch and Re-Tire On-premises Application
• e.g., moving SAP CRM application to SAP CX (SALES, SERVICE, MARKETING Cloud) or SALESFORCE or MS Dynamics 365
• e.g., moving custom development App to App readily available on SAP BTP
• e.g., moving on-premises ERP application to SAP S/4HANA public cloud (SaaS)

3. Transform

• Transform business processes leveraging Cloud digital technologies

4. Innovate

• Innovate continuously leveraging Cloud digital technologies on transformed platform

Thank you for your interest. In part-2, I will focus on how SAP and relevant technologies along with Hyperscalers can enable the Transformation and Innovation for SAP Customers