Lessons Learned with S/4HANA and Azure

A short whip-around some of the lessons learned by the SoftwareONE team from delivering SAP S/4HANA migrations and conversions with public cloud infrastructure. These slides cover topics across the technology stack — from infrastructure to security and data management — as well as some less technical aspects which leaders should consider while planning their transition to S/4HANA and the cloud.

This is an abridged deck for a 30-minute presentation slot at Mastering SAP South Africa 2022.

Transcript

1. Contact Number Email LinkedIn Twitter Lessons Learned Migrating to S/4HANA and Azure Sascha Wenninger Director, SAP on Azure Centre of Excellence
2. Many Different Paths to S/4HANA 2 Process change is not desirable The business is focused on cost efficiency and stability IT is the main driver of the project You are laying the foundations for future changes You want to redefine business processes across the company The business wants a cutting-edge system The CEO/CFO is actively involved and removes obstacles The business is looking for transformative change
3. Projection S/4HANA by 2027 Source: SAP public data releases, internal modelling 3 1,620 1,670 1,550 1,560 1,980 1,295 1,140 6,198 6,198 6,198 6,198 6,198 6,198 - 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 Projected S/4HANA adoption needed for 100% ECC conversion Annual Conversion Cumulative Annual Conversion Cumulative
4. Lessons Learned
5. Consider Licensing 01 5
6. Licensing Impacts S/4HANA is a new product in SAP’s price book, not an automatic upgrade. This affects many other items in SAP’s portfolio, e.g.: 6 Traditional Product S/4HANA version 7011491 SAP Enterprise Master Data Governance 7018852 SAP Enterprise Master Data Governance for SAP S/4HANA 7011620 SAP Access Control 7018703 SAP Access Control for SAP S/4HANA 7017273 SAP Portfolio and Project Management 7018997 SAP Portfolio and Project Management for SAP S/4HANA 7017278 SAP Commercial Project Management 7018669 SAP S/4HANA for Commercial Project Management 7009903 SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management by OpenText 7018891 SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management by OpenText for SAP S/4HANA
7. S/4HANA Conversion Options 7 Product Conversion Contract Conversion • Retain existing contract • Retain user licenses • Convert relevant ‘Engine’ licenses to S/4HANA replacements • Greater ability to mix & match • Replaces existing contract with new • Named User licenses are replaced by new Professional/Functional/Productivity blended user licenses. • Run “original” licenses in parallel until 2027 • More flexibility, but also more uncertainty HANA Licensing Cloud Extension Policy
8. HANA Enterprise vs. HANA Runtime? Options for Shelfware? Don’t forget Linux licenses for HANA Is RISE the best option for my company? Licensing Impacts
9. Plan your Region Strategy 02 9
10. Plan your Region Strategy • Where are your Users? • Legal & Privacy • Regulatory Topics • IaaS Feature Availability • Cost of Compute, Network, Storage • Disaster Recovery Case Study: Global Resources Company 10
11. Leverage Native Cloud Capabilities 03 11
12. Azure Backup 3rd Party Backup Solution Leverage Cloud-Native: Backups • Potential cost savings; simpler architecture • Native platform features: deletion protection, ransomware protection, geo-replication, WORM • Third-party tools usually do not support all of the IaaS features • Trade-off: not all database workloads are supported Case Study: Global Manufacturing Company 12 Geo-Replication Off-Site Tape Storage
13. Leverage Cloud-Native: Reverse Proxy Case Study: Global Manufacturing Company 13 3rd-Party Product • Replaced 3rd-party Reverse Proxy with Azure AD Application Proxy • Azure PaaS service; nothing to maintain • Included in most Enterprise-class Microsoft365 licenses (e.g. E3, E5, F3) • Secure: integrated into Azure AD: MFA, WAF features, etc.
14. Reduce the Cost of Disaster Recovery Case Study: Biotech Company in Singapore 14 DB Replication Storage Replication HANA System Replication Azure Site Recovery • Azure Site Recovery for cross-region replication of application servers • Async replication of disks attached to the VM. • RPO of ~10 minutes sufficient for application servers • HANA System Replication without preload to smaller-sized HANA DR system. • DR system can be much smaller than primary • RPO of <1 minute achievable • In case of Disaster, the DR HANA system must be scaled up.
15. Consolidate & Simplify 04 16
16. Greater Visibility Across Technology Silos 17 • Azure provides a true ‘single pane of glass’ across the stack • Replaces disparate specialist tools with single, integrated Azure Portal • “All bugs are shallow given enough eyeballs” – Lower coordination overhead è More agility, higher employee empowerment è Upskilling needed! Network Storage Backup Servers Firewall SAP
17. Start Early with Code Remediation for HANA 19 • Analyse code for HANA DB Readiness • Resolve basic HANA compatibility & performance issues early • Leverage automated tooling for simple code fixes • Consider code usage in Production to focus effort, deprecate unused code à Much can be done before moving to HANA Case Study: Energy company in North America
18. Start Early with Code Remediation for S/4HANA Case Study: Healthcare services company in Asia 20 Use automated tooling to scan your ECC system for impact from S/4HANA Simplification Notes • Has functionality been removed by SAP? • Has support ended? • Does the underlying data model change? • Is your code using standard functions that have been changed by SAP? • Is the code even used in production? Impacts can occur to third-party systems that are integrated to SAP.
19. Master Data 05 21
20. Business Partner Conversion • Business Partner is a key master data object in S/4HANA • The CVI process converts Customer and Vendor objects to BP before S/4HANA migration 22 ECC S/4HANA
21. Business Partner Conversion 23 ECC S/4HANA Watch out for: - Data quality - Configuration inconsistencies - Interfaces with other systems - High data volumes Goal: De-risk the system conversion
22. Archive Obsolete Data Case Study: Healthcare services company in Asia 24 0 200,000 400,000 600,000 800,000 1,000,000 ECC S/4HANA Customer Records 0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000 ECC S/4HANA Vendor Records • Significant reduction through analysis and archiving • Executed in parallel to CVI synchronization and data enrichment • Reduces effort for data cleansing and enrichment • Pilot Conversion provided visibility of underlying problems
23. Plan, Prepare, Practice 06 25
24. Plan, Prepare, Practice • Start sooner than you think you need to • Plan the journey to S/4HANA, inc. prerequisite projects • Run a trial conversion as soon as possible & adjust the plan 26 SAP ECC on AnyDB SAP ECC on AnyDB SAP S/4HANA Copy Convert to S/4HANA
25. Summary Consider licensing Consciously choose regions Leverage native cloud capabilities Update practices for the cloud Data cleansing: Look out for Master Data Plan, prepare, practice – start today! 27
26. Contact Number Email LinkedIn Twitter Sascha Wenninger Director, SAP Centre of Excellence SoftwareONE ✉ sascha.wenninger@softwareone.com ☎ +65 8799 1446 💻 https://about.sufw.me