The migration to SAP S/4HANA is accelerating. By the second quarter of 2022, SAP reported that there were over 20,000 active subscriptions for SAP S/4HANA, and with the end of support for legacy ERP installations looming in 2027, enterprises are increasingly planning their migrations. A major consideration for nearly every organization moving to SAP S/4HANA is replatforming: whether to newer on-premises infrastructure, to the public cloud or to a hybrid environment.
Before deciding on where the installation will live, consider the underlying operating system and how it will impact both migration and Day 2 operations. Modern IT infrastructure—and SAP S/4HANA—are increasingly reliant on APIs and microservices, which typically run in containerized environments like Kubernetes. A tight coupling between the operating system and container environment, such as that between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, can help accelerate deployment and ensure smooth operations during the entire API lifecycle.
Next, consider the version of SAP S/4HANA that best suits the migration:
SAP S/4HANA On-Premises Edition. This is designed for large enterprises that need highly flexible customizations and integration with a broad range of external APIs and applications. It is often deployed, as the name suggests, on premises, although this version can, of course, be deployed in the public cloud.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Edition. Targeted at midsize organizations looking for a light and flexible database platform, this version offers high performance covering core business apps, with a faster upgrade cadence. It is great for fast-growing and developing businesses that want something that can adapt with their growth.
SAP S/4HANA Hybrid. Hybrid deployments that use both cloud and on-prem editions allow many permutations, such as storing core data and applications on premises while also supporting rapid changes and adaptation of the cloud edition on a subscription basis, without additional advance charges for a full-scale software license. This provides flexibility and full control in a single package.
Again, the names can be confusing, since any version can be deployed in the cloud.
Finally, consider the reasons for choosing one platform option vs. another. The need to support an increasingly mobile, hybrid workforce that connects from virtually anywhere can influence the move to the cloud, freeing up bandwidth to remaining on-premises infrastructure without worrying about end-user connectivity. Or an organization may decide to eliminate on-premises infrastructure and get out of the business of hardware and software upgrades to focus instead on business logic and value creation. There has been no shortage of enterprises moving complex application environments to the hyperscale cloud providers and shifting from Capex to Opex models for infrastructure as well.
Tomago Aluminium Improves SAP Environment Performance, Security with Red Hat and IBM
Learn how Tomago Aluminium, Australia’s largest aluminum smelter adopted IBM hardware, managed through Red Hat Enterprise Linux, to help the company improve security for its data and systems.
Download NowMany large enterprises are conversely more focused on keeping data and applications on premises, whether for security and governance or to ensure that integration between SAP and other enterprise applications in the data center enjoys the lowest latency and highest bandwidth. For the largest enterprises, the cost equation may tip the scales toward on premises as well. Every business is different.
Whichever approach makes sense for the organization from a technology or cost perspective, there is still the challenge of actually getting from where we are today to SAP S/4HANA. And more often than not, traditional SAP teams in the past have not been focused on modernization approaches such as open source software, microservices and APIs.
Red Hat is available every step of the way in an SAP migration and replatforming. Red Hat’s decades of experience providing a Linux environment tuned to SAP’s needs has created a partnership that champions innovation in the enterprise data center, in the cloud and beyond.
The Red Hat portfolio reduces migration complexity, offers a common environment for both cloud and on-premises deployments that simplifies migration and ongoing management, and helps make IT simple. These advantages power the intelligent enterprise and enable new insights from the edge, from APIs and from other applications connected to the SAP S/4HANA digital core.
Red Hat Insights provides management, proactive monitoring and automated remediation out of the box for on-prem, cloud or hybrid SAP environments. Further, Red Hat Integration enables seamless integration of APIs and third-party applications to SAP S/4HANA regardless of where the applications or microservices reside. And Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform lets enterprises build end-to-end business processes across hybrid clouds that can scale automatically as business needs evolve. Multiple clouds? No problem.
There are a number of resources available for enterprises considering this migration now that Red Hat can ease the transition and reduce the burden on IT’s shoulders.
Red Hat solutions for SAP workloads
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions
IDC Analyst Materials - Red Hat for SAP workloads
