SAP ON THE CLOUD

The cloud is the future. Anyone who doesn’t realize this fact will miss out on the biggest IT revolution in decades. That’s why SAP has heavily invested in R&D and other resources to bring to the cloud the very same qualities that their on-premise solutions are known for — data integrity, data consistency, rigorous compliance, and unification of business processes across the company.

3 Layers of the Cloud

Many industry experts agree that cloud computing can be broken down into three distinct layers: infrastructure, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and consumption.

Cloud as Infrastructure

Many customers have already deployed systems on private cloud landscapes.  With both private and public clouds many firms have taken advantage of this technology to deploy and manage applications on virtualized and cloud-based infrastructures.

One of the biggest cloud participants is SAP itself; estimates state that SAP has approximately 1,000 systems running on a third-party web service. The future lies in your ability to reliably move any SAP system to the cloud and operate it there, regardless of whether you are using internal, private cloud technology, such as a virtualized data center, or external, public cloud technology hosted by a third party.

Cloud as SaaS

On the software-as-a-service front, SAP has been building their own SaaS applications and working with partners to develop additional on-demand applications. Their on-demand solution for small businesses and midsize companies, SAP Business ByDesign, has been purchased and implemented at several thousand companies across the globe.   SAP has also done a good job  ensuring that their on-demand applications are seamlessly integrated with SAP on-premise applications so that they share master data or business processes that go across both on-demand and on-premise solutions.  Of course, there are other levels of sharing, as well. There are applications and data that reach outside of the enterprise, enabling interaction and collaboration with individuals or organizations around the world. This could extend to known customers or companies or even unknown individuals that you want to engage in some fashion, like consumers. You want to give them access to data and functionality, but you can’t do so in any meaningful way with an on-premise solution.  In the not-too-distant future, expect to see a variety of hybrid solutions from SAP with some on-premise and on-demand components that all allow the customer to select the deployment model that best fits their business scenario. In addition, SAP is enabling an open ecosystem in the on-demand space, facilitated by an open platform and corresponding partner programs, including partners that provide SaaS solutions.

Cloud as Consumption

The way people consume and interact with applications is a dynamic playing field. Today, emphasis is on making applications for the mobile consumer. But new user interface technologies pop up constantly.  Of cloud computing’s three layers — infrastructure, SaaS applications, and consumption — the last is the most mature. There are dozens of different mobile devices currently running some form of an SAP application or some functionality that interacts with an SAP system.

Readying Your SAP Landscape to Enter the Cloud

Within each of these three layers, there are exciting possibilities that create the promise of cloud computing for customers. But when that promise is delivered, will you be ready?   SAP customers should really think about what exactly they want to achieve before they start looking at cloud technology solutions. They should consider how they want to attain these objectives within all three layers of cloud computing; otherwise, they may not be happy with the results.  With more than 10 years of Mobile and Cloud based experience, M10 is uniquely qualified to help you assess and deploy these exciting technologies.

The Cloud Outlook: Today and Tomorrow

While many flavors of cloud computing are now available to SAP customers, the future presents an even wider variety of ripening opportunities.  There are several steps customers can take today to prepare for a future on the cloud:

• At the infrastructure level, use virtualization technologies provided by SAP and certified SAP partners like M10.
• Take advantage of SAP lifecycle management tools, including the SAP NetWeaver Adaptive Computing Controller tool and SAP Solution Manager
• Ensure that organizational changes are flexible enough to accommodate later cloud usage. The CIO, for example, may move into the role of more of a service broker than a service provider and, as such, should begin developing metrics, skill sets, and a budget mix based on that transition rather than the traditional service provider model.
• Reassess necessary administration skills currently available in your organization; managing virtualized and cloud environments is fundamentally different from managing more traditional landscapes and will require different skill sets.
• Understand the concepts behind security in the cloud and the risks and benefits it provides.
• Standardize all non-differentiating processes across your organization and make sure they are uniformly supported by SAP applications.

The Cloud on the Horizon

Cloud computing is coming — for your company, it’s likely only a question of how quickly.  Across our organization, we’re making extensive investments to support our customers Cloud based needs and we are embedding best practices protocols so that you can manage your SAP landscape from any device.

The growing opportunities to leverage the cloud, combined with the real innovation it will bring, make cloud computing an important channel to deliver new value to our customers. We personally believe that cloud computing is the biggest change in our industry in the past 20 years, probably since the adoption of the client/server architecture. It’s fundamentally changing the way we build applications, the way our customers use them, and how the entire world interacts.

M10 SAP Helpdesk in the Cloud

SAP Business ByDesign

SAP NetWeaver Cloud Based Solutions

SAP BI On Demand

SAP “Big Data” in the Cloud