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We live in a world dominated by new and emerging technologies. The threats and challenges businesses faced two decades back drastically differ from what they are experiencing today. Given this new reality, maintaining efficient supply chains or satisfying changing customer expectations is not as easy as some years ago.
Businesses need to embrace technological changes to help them tackle the challenges and problems that the modern world presents. RISE with SAP is an intelligent enterprise solution that seeks to help businesses take a proud and ambitious step with digital transformation.
This resource article will look at RISE with SAP’s core offering, which is the SAP S/4HANA ERP system. Businesses have two options – Private Cloud Edition and Public Cloud. This article focuses on understanding the Public Cloud infrastructure that is being provided on RISE with SAP.
RISE with SAP: S/4HANA Cloud- What you should know
S/4HANA Cloud is the successor to SAP’s highly successful SAP ECC. Powered and driven by real-time data, analytics and insights, S/4HANA Cloud is SAP’s answer to the world’s most powerful, efficient, and secure ERP system that businesses can run and deploy.
The best part about SAP S/4HANA Cloud is that it can help engineer digital transformation in a business organization. Thanks to business intelligence processes, you can run complex business processes from any part of the world (as S/4HANA is on the cloud).
Let us now look at listing some of the main benefits of using SAP S/4HANA Cloud for businesses-
- The software runs on the latest technology. This means that it is industry ready to not only meet the needs and requirements of present times but also cater to any future demands that the industry throws up.
- Businesses can expect and optimize their end-to-end solutions with SAP S/4HANA Cloud. This is all thanks to Business Process Intelligence (BPI), which helps complete the automation process and streamline efficiency.
- Every business has a set of different requirements. With S/4HANA, you can work with increased personalization options. This helps you with digital transformation at the level at which you are. You can get insights and help anywhere you want.
- SAP S/4HANA has various detailed security layers that offer administrative controls, technical overviews, and physical inputs. Every customer tenant gets a virtual ABAP application server. In simple words, it forms a ‘Security Group’ for communication between different software applications that are being used by the tenant.
- Data encryption is another key facet of SAP S/4HANA. You get both ‘data in rest’ and ‘data in transit’ with encryption. It goes without saying that there are cryptographic keys that work through KMS or Keys Management System.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud: Difference Between Private Edition and Public Cloud
At the very outset, we mentioned how SAP’s S/4HANA Cloud ERP could be run using both the Private and Public Clouds.
In this section, we will briefly elaborate on the same and then present a set of differences between them.
There are two deployment options-
1. Public Cloud-
Customers will have to reimagine or redesign their entire business processes with the public cloud. They will enjoy the benefits of a standardized set of processes. The complexity factor is pretty low, and you will be able to innovate immediately. Using a public cloud for S/4HANA running and deployment helps you with the lowest TCO.
2. Private Cloud-
A private cloud is flexible. If you have an existing SAP ERP running, you can execute a Brownfield Conversion and move to the S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition. You can carry over the business processes and will not be forced to redesign them. Customers can also select their infrastructure providers like Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.
Now, let us turn our attention to listing down the significant differences between the Public and Private Cloud Editions for S/4HANA Cloud-
| Sr No: 1 | Point of Difference: Cloud Basics |
| S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition | S/4 HANA Public Cloud Edition |
| The first thing that you should know about Private Clouds is that it runs on a single tenant environment or ecosystem. On the Private Edition, services are carried out by a private network that is protected by firewalls in a dedicated environment. | The main aim of public clouds is to offer a higher sense of affordability and efficiency to the customers. Public clouds are often multi-tenanted in nature. This simply means that the provider offers the services in a shared ecosystem. |
| Sr No: 2 | Point of Difference:Who Should Use It? |
| S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition | S/4 HANA Public Cloud Edition |
| If you are a business that is currently using the SAP ERP and want to move to the cloud, you can do so by choosing the private edition. You are going to avoid the entire business process redesign hassles and carry over the investment that you had earlier made to the SAP ERP. | Businesses that want to have a fresh and lean start and are not worried about having the need to redesign their business processes should look at the public cloud. This is perfectly suited for new companies that want to start exploring the future of ERP systems and want to frame new implementation processes. |
| Sr No: 3 | Point of Difference: Customization Options on offer |
| S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition | S/4 HANA Public Cloud Edition |
| Customers are free to make structural changes and can even alter the SAP source code under Private Edition. Additionally, they even have access to the backend of the entire system through the SAP GUI. You should note that the operating model runs on a subscription. | Firstly, with the public cloud, customers do not get access to the backend GUI. Additionally, they are not permitted to alter the SAP source code. If you are looking for customizations, you need to use the SAP Fiori Apps. |
| Sr No: 4 | Point of Difference: Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) |
| S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition | S/4 HANA Public Cloud Edition |
| This is where it starts to get interesting. Experts point out that the host of customization options that are on offer make the TCO of the Private Edition quite high. However, it all depends on the specific needs and requirements of the business. If they feel that this is something that will help their ROIs, then the perspective changes. | Public clouds have been rated highly for having the lowest total cost of ownership and delivering the highest ROIs. Since everything is standardized, it brings down the costs. In terms of financial management, it gives businesses a certain sense of certainty as far as the costs are concerned. ROI wise, the public cloud promises to deliver the highest ones. |
The Bottom Line
The best bit about using the Public Cloud is that it has been shown to demonstrate the highest ROIs and the lowest TCOs. With fewer customization options, the Public Cloud can be a good option for businesses looking to find out whether new business processes are likely to succeed.
The SAP S/4HANA offers a multi-tenant landscape that is not only cost-effective and affordable but also pretty scalable and offers complete security at multiple levels. With SAP handling everything from architecture to security monitoring, threat assessments, vulnerabilities, and audits, the customer is left to concentrate on the nature of their business and how they should be using the processes to grow.
The customers of SAP S/4HANA can leave a majority of the work to SAP and focus on improving business processes, managing and learning from their data, and ensuring that they are able to get a faster launch time to the markets.
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