娇色导航

Enterprises running S/4HANA on IBM Power Systems will soon have access to SAP’s RISE managed application offering, which has previously focused on those running the ERP suite on x86 servers.

RISE is an offering under which SAP partners with cloud providers to deliver application hosting and management under a single contract. IBM became one of those cloud partners for RISE with SAP in 2022, but not, initially, for enterprises running S/4HANA on its own Power processor architecture.

Those enterprises are a small minority of SAP‘s overall customer basis — according to IBM, fewer than 10,000 of the 437,000 customers SAP boasts, but some of them could have been running SAP on IBM Power or its predecessors for almost 30 years.

Starting in the second quarter, IBM will offer “RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server” to help enterprises migrate their SAP applications from Power servers on-premises into the cloud in as little as 90 days, working with its own IBM Consulting or other SAP partners. To further speed things along, it will make its new IBM Transformation Suite for SAP Applications available to other SAP partners. This includes a bundle of software and services for assessing existing IT environments, migrating data, and automating testing.

The new offering provides “another option for SAP customers who want to move to the cloud and run S/4HANA to utilize the IBM Power Virtual Server,“ said Scott Bickley, advisory practice lead at Info-Tech Research.

‘Unique advantage’ says IBM

According to a from IBM, RISE with SAP “brings together outcome-driven services, Cloud ERP with SAP S/4HANA, and additional platforms to rethink the enterprise operating model. IBM Power Virtual Server offers a unique advantage to the enterprise that run SAP landscape on IBM Power Servers: It is designed for a faster and non-disruptive move to RISE with SAP.”

IBM is well acquainted with S4/HANA, having launched a massive internal ERP modernization initiative starting in 2021.

It stated that that project had “touched more than 150,000 users across 175 countries in 18 months. During this time, it resulted in a 30% reduction in infrastructure costs and related operations by rationalizing overall server and data footprint and increasing process automation. IBM Consulting led this transformation work end-to-end, providing the technical services, implementation and application management services expertise required to help securely move and run these complex solutions.”

A practical option, says analyst

Robert Kramer, VP and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said that modernizing is crucial for businesses with ERP systems to stay competitive, and that the new RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server offering “seems like a practical option for companies already using SAP on IBM. It provides a clear path to the cloud, promising to transition SAP S/4HANA workloads in just 90 days, with potential cost savings of 30% based on IBM’s own experience.”

It does, added Kramer, also “include extended support options, helping businesses prepare for the end of SAP support. The familiarity of SAP and IBM Power systems makes the shift less daunting, though adoption will depend on factors such as the company’s current SAP setup, budget, and readiness for cloud migration. Change management and data quality will be key areas to address during the transition.”

Bickley said the reference to IBM Consulting as a potential systems integration partner, “further allows IBM to embed themselves in the SAP partner network as an infrastructure provider. The reality is that IBM’s cloud business never quite took off, so this is really chasing the ‘tag ends.’  Most of this business will flow to Azure or AWS, with the leftovers dropping to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and now IBM.”