For most organizations, migrating to SAP Cloud is a hugely complex process, not least because SAP itself has had a long and complicated journey to the cloud.
SAP’s own cloud chapter began in 2012, with the acquisitions of Concur, SuccessFactors and Ariba. In parallel, SAP has developed and evolved its own cloud platforms. These started with HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) and Cloud ERP for large enterprises, which was later replaced by the Essentials Edition, which was itself superseded by an extended edition followed by a private edition.
More recently, we have seen the introduction of RISE with SAP, a single contract covering SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, business transformation and application services. SAP has also made it possible for ERP solutions to be hosted in other clouds, via bring-your-own-licenses (BYOL). To add to the mix, there has been the re-naming and re-bundling of offerings, most notably with S/4 HANA.
Confused by SAP’s scope of cloud-based solutions? You are not alone.
For teams responsible for procuring and managing SAP Cloud services, it’s a veritable minefield. All of these solutions offer varying levels of control and flexibility, and carry different pricing tiers, nuanced rules around indirect use, as well as a multitude of other variables. Yet, without the full picture of how SAP’s licensing works, organizations making the move to the cloud could easily find themselves at risk of spiralling costs and/or non-compliance.
Demystify SAP Cloud with our new whitepaper
At Livingstone Group, it is our objective to arm organizations with the intelligence and advice required to ensure that their migration to the SAP Cloud is good for their bottom line.
Our latest whitepaper, ‘A Guide to SAP Cloud Transformation’ provides an overview of SAP’s long and meandering shift to delivering cloud-based solutions, explaining the impact of this journey from an enterprise licensing perspective. Even more importantly, it includes a number of key steps organizations should follow to ensure a successful transformation to the SAP Cloud.
Please download our paper from free here or please visit our dedicated SAP pages.
About the Author
Alex Meijer, Senior Consultant SAP Licensing
Alex has extensive experience in the field of SAP Software Licensing, Software Asset Management and Compliance:
- 12 years SAP experience of which 7 years working as a license auditor at SAP
- Technical head and delivery responsible at JNC Consultancy for 4 years
- Successfully lead and supported 55 consultancy projects world-wide across various industries; includes several very large multi-nationals
- Broad expertise including SAP Indirect Access, S/4HANA Conversions, Contract Benchmarking, Commercial Engagement Strategy, Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures, Audit Preparation and Defense