Gartner says hold onto your wallets as SAP's cloud pitch trades control for convenience

Updated One of SAP's preferred methods for migrating systems to nan unreality risks IT departments losing power of operational moving costs, Gartner has warned.

The world IT investigation and advisory patient said that to mitigate nan risks, personification organizations request to understand nan different variants of RISE pinch SAP, nan German package giant's lift-shift-and-transform programme designed to move their implementations to nan cloud.

Users of bequest applications specified arsenic nan communal ECC level tin astatine nan aforesaid clip migrate to SAP's latest S/4HANA. As portion of nan deal, SAP promises to beryllium "one manus to shake," avoiding users having to straight negociate systems integrators and unreality infrastructure providers themselves. But nan downside tin beryllium a nonaccomplishment of power successful IT spending, Gartner said.

The endeavor tech soothsayer pointed retired that though launched arsenic 1 program, RISE pinch SAP contained variants successful nan nationalist cloud, backstage cloud, and a measurement to "bring your ain model."

Addressing nan risks wrong nan backstage unreality version successful a investigation note, Gartner said nan measurement organizations relationship for and study their IT spending is group to alteration pinch nan RISE subscription model.

"The full costs of ownership of an ERP strategy becomes nan full costs of cognition pinch RISE services," it said. "Several costs components antecedently nether nan user's power will move to SAP, reducing customer power connected moving costs from an IT operations perspective.

"This tin person an effect connected nan IT section and impact early budgets, power and yet IT power arsenic walk shifts from a accepted superior expenditure (capex) exemplary to an operating expenditure (opex) one."

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In this scenario, nan backstage version strategy is afloat managed by SAP, but "users person much power of their applications, customization, and nan testing and scheduling of strategy updates" compared wrong nan nationalist cloud, wherever infrastructure is shared betwixt users.

Gartner advised that users considering nan action should estimate RISE pinch SAP subscription fees by getting nan choices wrong nan programme successful statement pinch nan full costs of cognition expectations arsenic good arsenic work operational needs. "Given nary scenery ownership, location are nary residual authorities connected statement exit truthful see viable options, should an statement nary longer require RISE pinch SAP," Gartner said.

RISE pinch SAP was launched successful 2021, and has since gone done respective changes "including caller SKUs, merchandise variants and licence entitlements," Gartner said.

With its Q2 results successful July, SAP said customers astir nan globe continued to take RISE pinch SAP to "drive their end-to-end business transformations." New customers included Bacardi-Martini, Bayer, and UK retailer McBride.

However, German-speaking personification group DSAG has complained that SAP's attraction connected nan unreality leaves down users who upgraded to S/4HANA on-prem aft receiving assurances of nan platform's longevity. ®

Updated astatine 15.41 UTC connected September 5 2023 to add:

In a statement, an SAP spokesperson said: "Cloud is nan future, and take is basal for delivering ongoing invention to customers. Our cloud-first attack is accordant pinch manufacture trends worldwide and is nan clear penchant of a increasing number of SAP customers crossed our suite of endeavor solutions. There are galore advantages of this exemplary including financial flexibility, moving from capex to opex, which person been good documented.

"SAP's figures show that our customers person appetite for our unreality offerings including RISE pinch SAP. In 2022, unreality has go our astir important gross stream, and RISE pinch SAP pinch S/4HANA Cloud astatine nan centre continues to spot precocious maturation rates. S/4HANA Cloud gross was up 79 percent astatine changeless currencies successful Q2/2023."