After the announcement of SAP S/4HANA, short for SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA, we are seeing a lot of positive reactions. Sure, questions still remain, and always will. So we thought starting a FAQ series might be very helpful.
But let us first recap some essentials:
Much has been published on the launch on February 3rd, so lets skip that one. Great interactions with customers, partners and influencers have helped to prioritize, because we are at the start of a significant transformation, I mean the industry as such. Whoever underestimates the impact of Digital Transformation might be caught by surprise. We are convinced a big positive contribution to tackle the tasks at hand is to change the core of companies business backbone - the SAP Business Suite. And this is what we are doing.
Time for a series with further details. And keep the feedback coming, we appreciate it, we need it. Here are my current favorites:
SAP S/4HANA is a new product fully built on the most advanced in-memory platform - SAP HANA - and modern design principles with SAP Fiori User Experience (UX). SAP S/4HANA delivers massive simplifications (customer adoption, data model, user experience, decision making, business processes and models) and innovations (Internet of Things, Big Data, business networks, and mobile-first) to help businesses run simple in a digital and networked economy.
And if there are doubts that it is new - we did split the codeline of the SAP Business Suite early 2014 (rough and tough 400 million lines of code), and since then we are massively simplifying the solution - keeping what is helpful, leaving away what not longer is needed AND building new parts. The priorities are driven by market input - not by technical desire alone. But it is amazing what the new technology, the platform we are architecting towards can help. And also clear - we are keeping the semantic data model in tact, so migration for existing customers is simple (pun intended).
The on-premise edition of SAP S/4HANA is already available today for customers in all industries and regions. The first public cloud edition is intended to be made available early in 2015, followed by the managed cloud edition later in 2015.
The on-premise edition is intended to offer a yearly innovation cycle through simplification and innovation packages. The next simplification and innovation package is planned for the end of 2015.
SAP S/4HANA shall also be made available with public cloud and managed cloud editions. However, SAP S/4HANA will not replace our existing portfolio of line-of-business cloud solutions; it will integrate with and expand it. Our comprehensive offering is planned to allow SAP S/4HANA customers to build hybrid scenarios between SAP S/4HANA and cloud solutions from SAP, including those from SuccessFactors and Ariba as well as integration with SAP hybris Marketing. This way customers can leverage the cloud at their own pace, based on their needs, while keeping all the integration and business benefits of their existing SAP solutions. In addition, SAP S/4HANA is designed to easily connect with global business networks such as, for example, the Ariba Network and Concur.
How does the SAP HANA Cloud Platform relate to SAP S/4HANA?
In the context of SAP S/4HANA, SAP HANA Cloud Platform serves as an extension platform and agility layer. It is possible to build specific capabilities extending the scope of SAP S/4HANA by either integrating non-SAP functions or building your own capabilities. The cloud platform not only serves as the development platform but also as the runtime foundation for the developed solutions. The extensions built on the cloud platform can run against both cloud and on-premise deployments of SAP S/4HANA.
Yes. SAP remains committed to protect our customers’ investments. We recently announced that we are extending our maintenance commitment until at least 2025. This is an unprecedented commitment to customers in the IT industry. We will also continue to deliver innovations without disruption (through enhancement packages for example) to SAP Business Suite customers on anyDB and on SAP HANA.
However, transformational business and IT simplifications require a transformational platform and this is why as of today SAP S/4HANA runs only on SAP HANA. It is the logical next step for our installed base customers and the biggest step forward for 10+ years with full compatibility with SAP ERP 6.0
With SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, SAP was the only software vendor in the market to allow SAP Business Suite customers bring together transactions and analysis into a single in-memory platform. This innovation has been extremely successful in the market as 1,850+ customers (existing and new) acquired SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA - in less than two years - to run their business in real time, making it one of the fastest-growing product in SAP’s history.
With SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, our product approach has been focused primarily on porting the applications on the SAP HANA platform and optimizing the code to allow customers gain significant performance in their mission-critical business processes and reporting activities. In other words, the applications remained unchanged and primarily optimized to run on SAP HANA in a non-disruptive way for customers – SAP HANA representing a new database alternative for existing customers, with a simple database migration required to drive the entire business in real-time.
SAP S/4HANA is a new product. With SAP S/4HANA, we are building on the success of the SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA with a completely new and reimagined suite:
In addition, SAP HANA Cloud Platform serves as open extension, agility layer for SAP S/4HANA. The extensions built on the cloud platform can run against either deployment of SAP S/4HANA: in the cloud and on-premise.
Now working on part 2. As said above, keep the feedback and your questions coming, we will prioritize accordingly and update our FAQ for you. Also check frequently sap.com/s4hana.
Part2: SAP S/4HANA Frequently Asked Questions - Part 2 - the value
Part3:SAP S/4HANA Frequently Asked Questions - Part 3 - the path to get there
Lets stay connected @SDenecken
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