Microsoft has begun migrating its inner SAP programs to S/4HANA beneath the RISE with SAP umbrella.
In selecting RISE, Microsoft is making SAP liable for the licensing, technical administration, internet hosting and help of its SAP purposes beneath a single SLA — though finally Microsoft will host its S/4HANA cases in its personal Azure cloud, and a few of the migration work will probably be carried out by third events.
The migration to S/4HANA will serve a twin goal for Microsoft: modernizing its legacy SAP programs earlier than the finish of mainstream help in 2027 and demonstrating to clients that it’s able to internet hosting and operating one of many largest and most complicated SAP installations on this planet throughout the RISE framework.
All three main cloud suppliers host SAP purposes for his or her clients, and all three run at the least a few of their inner monetary programs on SAP. Microsoft has run SAP internally since at the least 1995; Amazon.com is reported to have turned to SAP for its funds in 2008, whereas Google guardian Alphabet changed a few of its Oracle monetary programs with SAP in April 2021. Microsoft, although, is the primary to undertake the RISE with SAP providing.
Microsoft’s engineering crew is not any stranger to complicated SAP tasks: Final yr, it accomplished the migration of inner legacy SAP programs from devoted servers to its Azure cloud, a stepwise course of that now gives it with a mannequin for managing the S/4HANA migration.
“It helped us to tune our Microsoft cloud to run SAP environments, extremely complicated, large-scale environments, the biggest on this planet,” mentioned João Couto, vice-president of the SAP enterprise unit at Microsoft.
Couto is extra used to serving to joint clients of SAP and Microsoft transfer their purposes into the Azure cloud however has been closely concerned in discussions along with his colleagues at Microsoft Digital, the corporate’s inner IT providers group, in regards to the S/4HANA migration.
Though the businesses are solely now asserting the deal, work on the migration has already begun.
“We began a number of months in the past,” mentioned Couto. “We’re within the planning and evaluation section. In some components we’re already going right into a deep dive and understanding how we are able to modify our personal inner operations and the way the providers will probably be provisioned, how the SLA will probably be delivered.”
Among the many inquiries to be answered, he mentioned, are who will ship which providers, and the way will integrations be made to surrounding Microsoft programs that aren’t a part of the RISE providing.
Understanding the lie of the land earlier than shifting something is necessary, as Microsoft has one of many largest and most complicated SAP installations on this planet, serving a number of enterprise items and likewise managing its core funds. The programs should address gross sales of merchandise, providers, and subscriptions to companies and to shoppers.
“We’ve a full portfolio of core finance and operations programs of report anchored on SAP programs, however we even have many different purposes from SAP operating at Microsoft, from SuccessFactors to Built-in Enterprise Planning,” mentioned Couto.
It’s not simply the size of Microsoft’s SAP surroundings that makes migration a problem, but in addition the diploma of customization.
“Just like the overwhelming majority of huge SAP clients, our system has been very extremely personalized. We’ve invested closely in excessive levels of automation and excessive levels of integration with a number of different programs in-house,” mentioned Couto. “That makes it much more thrilling, let’s put it this manner, to undergo this journey.”
To make sure that issues don’t turn out to be too thrilling, Microsoft is specializing in migrating simply three areas of its enterprise for the primary section of the mission, working instantly with SAP and with out the help of a programs integrator.
Couto mentioned he expects to have the ability to announce the outcomes of this primary section later within the yr, and that different companions will turn out to be concerned after that, because the migration course of scales up.
“It’s undoubtedly going to be a multi-year mission for us taking into account that we additionally need to leverage the chance to construct new ranges of providers, new integrations, new improvements that we are able to make out there for patrons,” he mentioned.
SAP’s head of strategic engineering partnerships, Stefan Goebel, mentioned that unravelling a long time of customizations will probably be a problem for Microsoft, however not the largest.
“Change administration is unquestionably going to be the biggest problem to start with, no matter whether or not it’s SAP or anything. When you’ve got software program that was initially put in 20 years in the past, that’s simply going to be a giant piece of labor.”
