The Surprising Catalyst for Your Digital Transformation

SAP has made it clear that the future lies in its cloud ERP strategy, making it increasingly difficult for clients to purchase on-premises software licenses. While SAP's cloud strategy focuses heavily on S/4HANA, they also offer a cloud solution for ECC called ERP Private Cloud Edition (PCE). Moving your SAP systems to this platform can serve as a stepping stone to S/4HANA and RISE, while also facilitating software renewals and access to SAP's cloud services via their Business Technology Platform (BTP).

The hyperscale cloud providers supporting this deployment offer generous migration packages to reduce migration and transition costs when you are migrating to ERP PCE. In some cases, these packages cover the entire cost of migrating AND upgrading your SAP. This assistance is offered through various programs such as AWS' MAP (Migration Acceleration Program), Microsoft's AMMP (Azure Migration Modernization Program), and Google's CAP Program (Cloud Acceleration Program). These programs are typically a mix of cash funding and credits to help fund different phases of the migration process — like an initial assessment, the mobilization, and/or the migration itself.

 SAP also provides a percentage of committed annual cloud revenue (ACR) as credit when selecting platforms. According to recent news, SAP is offering on-premises S/4HANA users a credit of 60% of their first year's fees as credits if they migrate to its all-in-one cloud-based offering. This credit, which can be used for SAP services, can offset around half of the overall cost of a typical migration, as stated by Jan Gilg, the company's chief product officer for Cloud ERP. Moreover, as recently reported, during the first quarter of 2024, businesses migrating from ECC to RISE with SAP received up to a 67.5% incentive, capped at 3 million EUR.

The cloud can also provide a significant business case to leverage into your overall transformation. For example, the CIO of Cintas referenced how they used the savings from moving ECC to cloud to enable investment in their wider transformation. He was quoted as saying: "This is a notable achievement for Cintas in our cloud journey. Due to this migration, Cintas will be able to significantly accelerate our AI and analytics journey with SAP.” 

Another benefit is that legacy ECC systems might need to linger around for a considerable period of time for compliance reasons. If these systems are already in the cloud, they can be shut down completely using cloud automation capabilities — so there is virtually no cost for the archived platform — then instantly rehydrated if needed for a compliance/audit requirement. 

Once your SAP is on the cloud, the ability to leverage cloud services becomes much easier. The ability to extract value from your SAP estate is simplified and the ability to extract data easily into cloud capabilities with SAP Datasphere and Data Services such as BQ, Fabric, Redshift, and Snowflake becomes easier. From there, the possibilities accelerate with the variety of ML/AI capabilities that can be harnessed for these data sets. 

Finally, if you're thinking that moving your ECC environment to the cloud during an EHP upgrade might just be too much, many companies do this with very minimal business disruption — no more significant than a plain EHP upgrade.