SAP users face a difficult decision around migrating their systems to SAP's new S/4HANA product by 2025. While most users rely on SAP and will likely need to migrate, doing so presents challenges. AWS provides an ideal platform for moving to S/4HANA due to tools that simplify migration, flexibility to use own licenses, scalability, and reduced costs compared to on-premises options. Migrating to AWS for S/4HANA allows users to innovate faster and gain business value rather than just maintaining existing systems.

1. What Does Migrating to
S/4HANA Mean for SAP
Users?
Jason Deck, Vice President, Product Management – Hyperscale Cloud

2. 2
• SAP applications are critical to enterprises.
But the forced migration to S/4HANA in 2025
is putting users in a tough position.
• SAP users must decide two things: whether
to keep using SAP, and if so, how to migrate
to S/4HANA.
• Since most users’ business rely on SAP,
switching is unlikely. For those users, AWS
serves as a quintessential platform for
S/4HANA, and makes migration far easier.
Overview

3. 3
• SAP’s biggest innovation since R/3
• Next-generation business suite and database
all-in-one, combining in-memory real-time
analytics and the simplified data model of
HANA.
• By 2025, licensing support for Oracle runtime
DBMS and other third-party databases, and
mainstream support for Business Suite 7 or
Business Suite on HANA will end.
SAP S/4HANA

4. 4
• SAP users running Business Suite on HANA,
they gain the advantages of its simplified
architecture, speed, and reduced footprint.
• Business Suite 7 users have the choice of first
migrating to HANA as an intermediate step,
then to S/4HANA, or performing a full
platform re-implementation all at once.
• Either option to move to S/4HANA will
present a number of challenges for any
business or enterprise.
Decisions, decisions…

5. 5
• SAP continued its emphasis on public cloud
earlier this year by announcing release of the
public cloud edition of S/4HANA.
• “It has to be understood that the [S/4HANA]
deployment in the cloud has a principal
advantage when it comes to the
implementation of new functionality,” states
Hasso Plattner, co-founder of SAP SE.
• As an SAP Global Technology Partner, AWS is
an ideal execution venue for S/4HANA.
SAP’s focus on public cloud

6. 6
• SAP to AWS “FAST” Migrations: Use SAP and
AWS tools to efficiently migrate of any SAP
workload to AWS, where they can be sized
and validated as a test environment.
• Flexibility: Bring your own SAP licenses, and
leverage SAP-certified HANA instances.
• Scalability: Scale memory, compute, or
storage resources up or out, automatically,
with absolutely no capacity planning.
Advantages of S/4HANA on AWS

7. 7
• Reduced TCO: Avoid costly hardware refresh
with S/4HANA supported instances and only
pay for the resources you use.
• Agility and speed: Provision infrastructure in
hours or days, not weeks or months, and
reduce time-to-value through quicker POCs.
• Accelerated innovation: With on-demand
resources and agile provisioning, AWS
enables you to test and develop solutions
faster and accelerate innovation.
Advantages of S/4HANA on AWS

8. 8
• Business leaders are placing more pressure
on IT organizations to produce change and
deliver value. S/4HANA adds to this pressure.
• For those who leverage AWS for their SAP
S/4HANA migrations, this pressure can be
replaced with innovation and value.
Conclusion

9. 9
Don’t Just “Keep the Lights On” – Modernize
Your Microsoft Workloads on AWS
The Challenges of Moving Enterprise Workloads
to the Public Cloud
Real the full blog post on this topic here
Links for further reading

10. About the Author
Jason has more than 15 years of experience and leadership in IT and
telecommunications industries. His expertise in assisting clients in their
transition from legacy systems to the cloud makes Jason an integral piece
of Ensono’s growth in the IT managed services space. Prior to joining
Ensono, Jason was the senior vice president of strategy at Logicworks, an
enterprise cloud automation and managed service provider, where he
was responsible for defining brand strategy and position in the market.
Jason played a critical role in Logicworks’ significant growth from its
Managed AWS business, and the company’s sale to Pamplona Capital
Management in 2016. Before his time at Logicworks, he held sales,
business development, marketing and alliance roles for Cisco Systems,
Brocade Communications and Equinix. Jason holds a Bachelor of Art
degree from Columbia University in New York, in addition to an M.B.A.
from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.