This blog post is for organizations across the globe considering in moving into S/4 HANA, there are still many open ended questions about how to plan the deployment and key things to be considered during the course of deployment. This blog gives an overview about available options for deployment of S/4 HANA cloud and important aspects to consider. Each of the topic mentioned below requires in depth understanding accessible using individual links given below
1. What are my SAP S/4HANA Cloud Deployment Options and how RISE with SAP offering addresses the same
2. What are possible SAP S/4HANA Cloud Business Scope
3. How do I prepare for my Implementation
4. List of Implementation Tools available for deployment
5. Security & System Operations to be considered
Let us review each of topics shown above in detail
1. What are my SAP S/4HANA Cloud Deployment Options
As of today (June 2022), SAP provides 2 Cloud deployment options for S/4 HANA - Public Cloud and Private Cloud
SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Deployment options
Transition scenarios to S/4 HANA Cloud - SAP provides 3 transition scenarios as shown below
Components of SAP S/4 HANA Cloud - famous Burger example
Components of SAP S/4 HANA Cloud
RISE with SAP : Core Offering - Rise with SAP is a comprehensive package offered by SAP for Cloud implementations. One single contract with SAP for all of the components involved in the package
RISE with SAP Packages: Core Offering
SAP S/4 HANA Cloud Deployment of choice
Private Cloud or Public Cloud
Infrastructure provider of choice
Hyperscaler Data Center (AWS or Azure or GCP or Alibaba Cloud) or SAP Data Center or Customer Data Center
Business process intelligence
- Process Discovery Summary and Process Discovery Solution (SAP’s Business Process Intelligence (BPI) portfolio has been enhanced by the recent acquisition of Signavio, a leader in enterprise BPI)
- Signavio Process Manager & Collaboration Hub
- Digital Discovery Assessment (DDA) - Quick qualification/Detailed Discovery/DDA report
- SAP Best Practices Explorer for standard best practices
Tools & Services
- Cloud ALM (CALM) for Implementation and Operations - CALM can be used as a compliment to Solution Manager because their functionality differs in some areas, but SolMan is NOT part of RISE with SAP and therefore require a separate license
- Readiness Check & Simplification Item Catalog - Holistic system analysis and technical guidance on moving to SAP S/4HANA (Private cloud only)
- Custom Code Migration App - Analyzes custom code in your on premise SAP system for compatibility with SAP S/4 HANA (Private Cloud only)
- Learning & Adoption - SAP Learning Hub and SAP Enable now - Build and maintain your SAP knowledge and skills with digital e-learning content & collaboration in SAP Learning Rooms. SAP Enable now is an embedded application help, business process tutorials and other resources
- SAP Launchpad Service & Mobile Start App - Mobile Start app is to access SAP Business applications from your Mobile Device. Currently works only with iOS, configurable via SAP launchpad service.
SAP Business network starter pack
Ariba Network - Digitalize and simplify your spend management processes on a single, integrated platform in the cloud
SAP Asset Intelligence Network - Collect and track equipment usage information in a central repository
Logistics Business Network - Improve freight logistics collaboration, goods tracking and material traceability with an open logistics network
SAP Business Technology Platform - Cloud Platform Enterprise Agreement (CPEA) Credits
Application development and Integration (Integration/Extension/Process Orchestration)
Database and Data Management
Analytics
Intelligent Technologies (RPA/AI/IOT/RUUM)
2. What are possible SAP S/4HANA Cloud Business Scope
Public Cloud
SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Localization Coverage - 43 country versions and 27 languages
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Scope Highlights
Private Cloud
SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Localization Coverage - 64 country versions and 39 languages
SAP S/4 HANA Cloud, Private Edition Scope Highlights
SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition Scope
3. How do I prepare for my Implementation
Digital Discovery Assessment - Quick Qualification
This is the first set of tools in the S/4 HANA Journey used by SAP Presales team during the discovery phase to assess Customer's current system landscape and evaluate if S/4HANA Cloud is a good fit for Customer's organization business priorities.
Digital Discovery Assessment - Detailed Discovery
After initial qualification, SAP qualifies the customer further with Known integration requirements, pre-configured Enterprise Management Layer (EML) scope, Localization and Legal Entities requirements, Business scenarios grouped by LOB/Industry requirements, Document priority,
phase roll-out, questions and notes for individual business scenarios. This detailed analysis helps to nail down to correct deployment model and scope
Digital Discovery Assessment - Report
Based on Quick qualification and Detailed discovery assessment by SAP/Partners, Customer will view the DDA report to review the findings and path for deployment
4. List of Implementation Tools available for deployment
5.Security & System Operations to be considered
Four Pillars of the SAP Cloud Secure Strategy
- Security Standards Management
- Comprehensive Contracts
- Independent Validation
- Secure Architecture
SAP Trust Center & My Trust Center
SAP Global Security Team
- Physical Security Team
- Security Risk and Compliance Team
- Cyber Defense & Design Team
- Product & Application Security Team
- Security Enablement & Communications Team
Data Protection & Privacy - Implemented to protect data controlled by SAP and Customers
- Line of Business Data protection guidelines
- Internal Data Protection
- Data protection management system certificate
Data Center Security - Physical security of Data center with help of security cameras, extinguishing gas, turbo-cooling units, transformers, heat exchanger, diesel generators, cooling towers etc
Customer, SAP and Hyper scalers
- Customer - Business process configuration, Managing instance-specific settings and configurations, user & role administration
- Hyper-scalers - Data center Security, Hardware, Network Availability
- SAP - Implementation of resilient architecture, Backup and restoration of the instance, Configuration of virtual machines used to host the solution, Securing the Infrastructure, OS, container images, networking and applications, Operational and Security monitoring, Managing security incidents, Operating cloud resources, providing patches and solution support
Summary/Conclusion :
In a nutshell, the discover phase is the key where strategies are planned by the key stakeholders with the outcome from DDA tool. Organizations should involve their right experts/resources/partners (Functional/Technical/Cloud Architects/SME's/Basis) in this phase to analyze various SAP offerings (as laid in the above blog post) that matches to their Organization/Business goals to make an informed/suitable decision. SAP has provided abundant amount of resources to customers/customer partners to help them make informed decision in meeting their organization needs, organization's moving into SAP S/4 HANA should make every time/effort to go through these SAP resources for a successful digital transformation journey.
References
SAP Cloud Implementation learning rooms and live sessions hosted by SAP for Planning Strategies.
Pls feel free to use below community resources for more information on SAP S/4 HANA
https://community.sap.com/topics/s4hana