But for some organizations, data privacy regulations or business concerns make moving to the cloud more complicated.

Systems 鈥� that customers rely on 鈥� and infrastructure are already interconnected. In this situation, the prospect of migrating to the cloud is comparable to changing the engine on a plane while in-flight: a challenging task that requires the utmost care and experience.

Additionally, there are several external forces standing in the way of moving to cloud. Cloud service latency means there is a potential for delay from the time a request is made to a cloud provider and the time in which they provide a response with actionable advice. Some workloads demand that data be stored locally, and some regions and industries need to ensure data residency.

Bringing the Cloud to You

This is why 51风流and Lenovo worked together on RISE with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, customer data center option, to bring the cloud to the data center. The option effectively counters the complexities associated with cloud service migration and provides customers with a system that supports flexibility as well as the ability to adapt to changing needs.

The customer data center option gives companies the benefits of a cloud environment, including:

• A subscription-based, burstable consumption model that allows customers to pay for what they need and easily scale when required
• The ability to meet security and privacy regulations
• Less disruption to operations with computing and concierge managed services, delivered by 51风流and Lenovo, to free up IT resources to focus on strategic projects

Running on Lenovo TruScale supports:

• Maximized availability to keep operations running with continuous monitoring and proactive management of the infrastructure
• Life cycle coverage with complete managed services from planning and installation to deployment and monitoring to removal
• A team that is focused on customer success

Servimed Chose 51风流on Lenovo TruScale

Servimed is one of the largest distributors of pharmaceutical and consumer products in Brazil. With more 28,000 deliveries per month, the company sought to build on its link between the manufacturing and retail sectors. In order to do this, Servimed recognized that it needed to ensure its IT infrastructure kept up with its growth while streamlining shipping and sales processes to boost efficiency.

Obstacles included previous IT infrastructure that failed to keep up with its growth, as well as legacy IT solutions that required specialized support and contributed to increased company IT costs, subsequently limiting the company’s agility

Servimed explored alternatives and landed on 51风流applications deployed on Lenovo TruScale Infrastructure Services. While the general market trend is to move one鈥檚 data center apps to a public shared cloud environment, Servimed chose to stay in its data center with a private cloud.

Customers like Servimed illustrate that moving to the cloud and demanding to run in your own data center are not incompatible — at least not with Lenovo and SAP.

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Learn more about RISE with 51风流at .

Joe Zarb is vice president of RISE with SAP, Private Cloud, at SAP.

This 51风流ERP cloud offering provides license subscriptions to customers that want to gain cloud-like economies yet keep their 51风流software landscape and data within their own data center, for geopolitical or data sovereignty concerns, for latency or application entanglement reasons, or for those customers who simply lack access to market-leading hyperscalers. is now part of the RISE with 51风流offering and includes support for Dell Technologies APEX.

51风流S/4HANA enables customers to reinvent business and drive new revenue and profits, as well as provides access to amazing technologies that can:

• Bring real-time decisions closer to the edge for increased agility
• Enable transformation of data into meaningful business insight
• Increase automation of business processes though artificial intelligence (AI)
• Develop deeper understanding of experiences across employees, products, and customers

This and more is possible, all while working to reduce your data footprint and lower your overall total cost of ownership.

RISE with 51风流is a simplified and turnkey 51风流ERP, private cloud edition deployment model that can reduce risk of implementation and outages, freeing up precious resources so customers can focus on truly vitalizing, cutting-edge technologies and business processes provided by 51风流S/4HANA. You don鈥檛 have to go on your transformation journey alone.

Customers told us that they need cloud-like experiences with 51风流S/4HANA deployment flexibility and solutions that work in their own data center. Their reasons included the need to meet stringent compliance, security, or data sovereignty guidelines and limited access to hyperscalers. Some have geopolitical concerns. RISE with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, customer data center option delivers as-a-service, private cloud managed services, software, and infrastructure for leading business applications with simplicity and incredible uptime commitment to our customers.

Dell Technologies APEX for 51风流S/4HANA is scalable and secure, providing customers that want to run in their own data centers data sovereignty and the peace of mind in knowing where their data is located throughout its life cycle.

With the availability of Dell Technologies APEX as the underlying infrastructure for the customer data center option 鈥� for data center and colocation deployments鈥� our customers now have access to leading 51风流solutions in a cloud operating model across more geographies.

鈥淥ur longtime partnership supports thousands of organizations around the world and is critical in their business and IT transformations. By marrying Dell and 51风流technologies to create Dell Technologies APEX for 51风流S/4HANA, we are providing an agile as-a-service infrastructure that paves the way for on-premise cloud solutions a customer can control without disrupting critical workloads in the data center,鈥� says Travis Vigil, senior vice president, Portfolio and Product Management, Infrastructure Solutions Group at Dell

Together, 51风流and Dell Technologies provide a radically simplified as-a-service and cloud experience under one contract, so you can react quickly to capture new opportunities and work to ensure that your technology stays aligned with business requirements. With 51风流leading the engagement, Dell Technologies will supply, install, monitor, and manage the required infrastructure for the customer鈥檚 landscape in a secured environment. By expanding our solution to include Dell Technologies APEX offerings, in addition to Lenovo TruScale™ and HPE GreenLake, 51风流broadens customer flexibility and choice.

These ecosystem powerhouses enable an open innovation approach that puts customers鈥� needs first as they start the journey to become an intelligent enterprise. With 51风流and partners like these, how can you fail?

Free your operations team to do new and exciting initiatives, move from CAPEX to OPEX, increase your agility, resilience, and sustainability, and let us help you securely manage the rest. Talk to your account representative today.

Peter Pluim is president of 51风流Enterprise Cloud Services at SAP.

One of the most rewarding aspects of my job is watching people of various skills and experiences work together to positively change the world. bring a level of brilliance, ingenuity, and empathy when creating and delivering the innovations, pace of change, and outcomes that our customers desire.

There is no limit in sight to what our software development teams can produce. However, that fact does not mean that they should not evolve. Businesses now operate in an environment that is quickly shifting away from traditional on-premise software toward more modern cloud-based solutions. And as 51风流customers adopt a cloud mindset from their digital transformations, developers should too.

This realization recently came to life with a breakthrough approach to development. When 51风流customers began strategically migrating their on-premise infrastructures to the cloud, we knew the time was rapidly coming when a cloud-based application lifecycle management (ALM) solution would be needed. Delivering this offering 鈥� now called聽聽鈥� helped optimize customers’ relationships with its existing and new 51风流solutions and its chosen cloud providers and support partners.

Evolving Software Development for True Cloud Transformation

Developing 51风流Cloud ALM was vastly different from our typical on-premise projects.

Traditionally, we implement a solution over months and then make it available for download to customers. But even while our customers are using the solution in a productive environment, the technology is updated and聽 re-released as a new version when a critical mass of improvements are made 鈥� potentially impacting tens of thousands of installations across our customers鈥� and partners鈥� data centers or cloud environments running on 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud.

With the cloud, 51风流can now stop moving applications to various data centers and offer a holistic service that enables customers to realize the speed, agility, standardization, and consolidated intelligence that the cloud promises.

Our global team of developers had to shift its design and delivery paradigm as quickly as possible to be successful. This meant transforming themselves with the right tools and processes for delivering impactful, cloud-based innovations with a flexible mindset.

Based on the advice and best practices of development executives from innovation leaders such as Netflix and Facebook, we underwent four fundamental cultural shifts.

Transform from On Premise to Cloud

Standard delivery of on-premise software is focused on the general availability of new software, completely updated versions, and service packs. Whether these offerings are released annually or biannually, these deliverables feature a bundle of functionalities designed, coded, tested, and quality assured by a team of 200 people. This model may have been profitable, but bug fixes, broken integrations, and requested modifications are inevitable.

The cloud environment requires a much more purposeful and swift development process. Now, the goal is the daily delivery of new capabilities and updates. 51风流runs smaller, more frequent iterations with a defined road map and a portfolio of relevant innovation practices, analytics tools, and process automation 鈥� from DevOps to testing and delivery.

Evolve Hierarchies to Networks

In most software development teams, the organizational chart features more than 15 roles and various siloed teams focused on a specific offering, solution capability, or user experience element. Most projects require everyone in the group to be involved 鈥� each one with well-defined responsibilities and approval authority.

By flattening the hierarchical structure, we release 聽developers from the pressure of answering to various people with different opinions and experiences. They are now empowered to do what they do best 鈥� engineering. In addition to creating software, developers are taking care of the end-to-end process, including testing, quality assurance, and production.

Accelerate from Static to Dynamic

To help ensure the team stays on track and delivers valuable outcomes for customers consistently, we conduct spot checks throughout the development process. The inclusion of automation into the daily delivery model allows developers to collaboratively structure features by working on small pieces synchronously and integrating their deliverable continuously until all requirements are fulfilled. Ultimately, developers have clear ownership of the feature or version they produce, which is increasing the overall quality and speed of the development process.

Delivering small changes avoids big bang releases and, therefore, improves availability. For example, massive simplification of code lines is now possible due to this single-trunk approach. Going from 20 code lines to just one is a significant time-saver. Fixes can also be done in 60 minutes, including testing and rolling them out to all customers.

From Yearly Planning to Continuous Innovation

Daily delivery of new software functionalities and upgrades removes the risk of difficult-to-resolve surprises that often happen with on-premise software. 51风流customers’ users can submit a note immediately through the software, detailing where a feature may not work as well, a dashboard could be improved, or an interface could be more seamless. SAP鈥檚 development team receives this information in real time, assesses the request, and assigns the appropriate developer to resolve it.

This design-thinking mindset gives 51风流space to listen to customers carefully, understand their needs thoroughly, and deliver on expectations quickly. This methodology prevents the investment of time, money, and resources on features or upgrades that are not used or relevant to customers. By optimizing the balance between nice-to-have capabilities with those that customers must have, 51风流can optimize the value and agility of its cloud solutions.

By offering a minimally viable feature first, customers have a say in how the solution behaves and appears. Then, 51风流iterates development in a steady cadence of small increments until customers鈥� requirements and desires are fully addressed.聽This approach gives them the freedom to try out new features or upgrade and provide feedback for further refinement and adaptation to the solution based on their needs.

Elevating the Purpose of Development

Let’s face it: software providers cannot afford to stick with traditional, on-premise development. Old approaches may be familiar and comfortable, but they do not work in an era where cloud-centric innovations and updates are expected to be delivered continuously, consistently, and quickly. No customer can afford surprises 鈥� such as release delays and quality issues 鈥� and wait for the next release, months later, to have them resolved.

So much has changed for SAP鈥檚 development team over the last year. The initial motivation may have been a native-cloud project, but everything from the way 51风流looks at its projects to the company鈥檚 delivery approach has been forever improved. In fact, the term “developer” does not fully describe what SAP鈥檚 talented team members do. They are engineers creating a better future for every business and person.

Andreas Heckmann is the executive vice president and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation, 51风流Product Engineering for 51风流SE.

As a leading manufacturer of gas springs and hydraulic vibration dampers,聽聽is no stranger to this increasingly challenging reality. The urgency around innovation and accelerated delivery has become so high that the midsize company with production locations worldwide modernized its IT landscape using the hyperscaler Microsoft Azure with聽.

鈥淥ur decision to leverage Microsoft Azure with 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud allows our business to upscale the IT landscape to meet the needs of peak scenarios and downscale it during idle times. Most importantly, this setup seamlessly supports the fluctuations of our innovation cycle,鈥� reflected Matthias Zanger, director of IT at Stabilus.

Encouraging Flexibility and Curiosity with Digital Openness

Since its start in 1934, Stabilus has maintained a long-standing tradition of commitment to customer satisfaction, openness to turning opportunities into progress, delight in winning customer trust, and ethical approaches to long-term partnership and prosperity. This core vision has proven to be precisely what its customers need, earning the trust of industrial businesses worldwide.

To safeguard this reputation, Stabilus chose to upgrade a relatively unstable, high-maintenance, and on-premise infrastructure to the cloud. This decision led to the migration of existing 51风流applications to 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud, which standardizes the IT environment, minimizes the time and effort to manage it, and reduces the total cost of ownership significantly.

But these advantages were only the beginning of the potential of 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud. Stabilus quickly learned that running a hyperscaler, such as Microsoft Azure, with the service gave the business the technology support necessary to scale IT resources, as needed.

鈥淔or us, this migration is a significant step forward in our mission for dynamic progression and innovation,鈥澛燴anger said.聽鈥淢icrosoft Azure with 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud enables us to create powerful solutions for our customers by combining application management with our engineering expertise and ingenuity. And it鈥檚 all available in a global and intelligent cloud environment that we trust.鈥�

Kick-Starting the Journey to a Hyperscaler-Enabled Cloud

Gaining the full benefit of Microsoft Azure with 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud required Stabilus to follow a well-mapped strategy.

鈥淭he scope of our project consisted of two waves. The first handled the upgrading and migration of our HR applications, enterprise portal, 51风流BusinessObjects solutions, and text retrieval and extraction (TREX) capabilities. Then, we focused on our ERP and supply chain management software as well as the 51风流Fiori design system,鈥� shared Erhard Stannek, IT team lead of 51风流cross-applications at Stabilus.

By first provisioning the system targeted for 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud, Stabilus underwent a structured and measurable migration with the assistance of the landscape strategy and architecture services available through . The framework included sandboxing, development, quality assurance, testing, and production 鈥� taking the project from premigration tasks to uptime, downtime, and post migration.

鈥淯sing the database migration option of the Software Update Manager tool, 51风流migration consultants helped us combine our upgrade and migrated database in one tool 鈥� 51风流HANA,鈥� mentioned Stannek. 鈥淲e not only reduced downtime but, more importantly, finished the migration successfully.鈥�

During all these activities, Stabilus did not experience any disruption, compared to a non-hyperscaler migration to 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud. The target system was handed over to SAP, so the software landscape could be integrated into the cloud service, undergo user and regression tests, and ramp up.

鈥淲ith two consultants from the Business Transformation Services group from SAP, we accessed a tremendous volume of valuable knowledge from highly experienced experts,鈥� Stannek observed. 鈥淭he well-established back-office unit allowed us to exchange information with 51风流and leverage a migration framework based on the 51风流Enterprise Architecture Framework methodology to create and use our unique聽enterprise architecture.鈥�

Optimizing the Landscape, Closing Gaps, and Reshaping the Future at Stabilus

For Stabilus, a migration to the cloud with a hyperscaler is setting its foundation for a digital landscape that is optimized, simplified, and seamless. Giving 51风流the responsibility to maintain its technology operations allows the company鈥檚 IT team to concentrate more on strategic topics that can help move the business forward, explore the possibilities of enterprise content management, the Internet of Things (IoT), and a .

Follow 51风流Services and Support on , , , and .

Verena Eitle and Thomas Dieter Hauschildt are business consultants for BTS IT Architecture Advisory at 51风流Germany.

51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud, customer edition, is the latest testament to our commitment to make the transformation to the Intelligent Enterprise easier.

The customer edition of 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud is one of SAP鈥檚 private managed cloud deployment options that helps customers to accelerate the adoption of 51风流S/4HANA along with a suite of other 51风流products. Now customers can have 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud managed and run their 51风流software landscape and data in our 51风流data centers, in hyperscalers, or, with the customer edition, in their own data center environment. Customers that need to keep systems in their own data center for data residency or low-latency reasons can benefit from an all operating expense (OPEX) subscription model and our concierge service to accelerate their 51风流S/4HANA adoption.

Additional customers now have Lenovo TruScale™ as a hardware IaaS choice, next to HPE GreenLake.

51风流customers selecting the customer edition of 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud can leverage the Lenovo TruScale IaaS offering to deliver cloud solutions on premise in their data center. Application and data entanglement are among the biggest issues that customers face when moving to the cloud. Simply said, it is challenging to separate the 51风流S/4HANA application from the data that is needed to move applications and data to a hyperscaler cloud in a remote data center. With Lenovo TruScale, customers do not need to move their 51风流workloads, yet they can still secure the merits of a modern, OPEX billed cloud infrastructure.

鈥淐ustomers are looking for innovative solutions to leverage the cloud on premise,鈥� said Laura Laltrello, vice president and general manager of Services at the Lenovo Data Center Group. 鈥淟enovo鈥檚 long-standing partnership with 51风流is enabling us to jointly bring to market another strategic cloud solution to help our customers. Leveraging the best capabilities of both companies, 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud, customer edition, is now available with Lenovo鈥檚 TruScale Infrastructure Services. Customers can fast-track their cloud transformation capabilities while keeping the 51风流application landscape within their own data centers.鈥�

As previously announced, customers can also select HPE GreenLake as their infrastructure for 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud, customer edition. HPE GreenLake meters actual usage, enabling HPE, SAP, and customers to plan for capacity. HPE鈥檚 infrastructure technology, which underpins HPE GreenLake cloud services, has been proven in verifiable 51风流benchmarks to scale to substantial demands from 51风流customers.

Additionally, we have made it easier for our 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud, customer edition, customers to adopt and consume 51风流S/4HANA through our VMware partnership. The collaboration provides a solid foundation for 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud that enables consistent, secure infrastructure and operations across private and public cloud and increases agility and flexibility. We have partnered closely with VMware on the full-stack VMWare Cloud Foundation (VCF) technology for 51风流S/4HANA that is used by our hardware IaaS providers and it is integrated with 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud management, monitoring, and reporting service delivery tool chain.

Together with our supplier partners, we deliver one of the best choices for customers for their cloud strategy on their path to the Intelligent Enterprise. 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud, customer edition, offers customers choice and the merits of an OPEX business model and concierge managed services, all delivered by SAP. Best of all, customers are connected to a vibrant innovation ecosystem that has a track record of helping companies with their business transformations.

These latest collaborations with Lenovo, HPE, and VMware for 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud, customer edition, demonstrate our commitment to customer choice and ease of consumption. Together with our customers and partners, 51风流integrates digital technology into all areas of a business to fundamentally change how companies operate and deliver value to their customers to build a sustainable future.

Peter Pluim is executive vice president and global head of Enterprise Cloud Services at SAP.

鈥�51风流S/4HANA is the foundation of our company鈥檚 digital transformation and part of our overall strategy and commitment to better serve our customers across the globe,鈥� said Hiroshi Nagumo, president and CEO of TAH. 鈥淚ntegrating vital business processes on one common platform means greater efficiencies, allowing us to continue bringing physicians and their patients the highest quality products and services as we grow.鈥�

Digital Transformation Powers Business Growth

To directly support the company鈥檚 future growth, TAH implemented 51风流offerings including 51风流S/4HANA, the 51风流Master Data Governance application, 51风流Ariba solutions, the 51风流Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solution, the 51风流Extended Warehouse Management application, 51风流SuccessFactors solutions and 51风流Concur solutions running on 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud. This U.S. implementation of 51风流software is part of Terumo’s global IT initiative, successfully launched in Japan in 2018.

鈥淲ith the implementation of 51风流S/4HANA, we鈥檙e providing the best practices that our different business units require with the right balance of standardization and configurability 鈥� and the results have been immediate,鈥� said Kalyan Balsubramanian, vice president and chief information officer, TAH. 鈥淔or example, by sharing updated demand information from customers in America, Europe and Canada with our manufacturing facilities in the United States and Japan, we can now better manage our data across our supply chain.鈥�

Project Goals Achieved: On Time, Under Budget, In Compliance

Despite going live at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, TAH met the challenges with a combination of remote and socially distanced in-person activities, including the training of over 1,500 employees. Additionally, as a life sciences company, TAH鈥檚 implementation was required to meet the industry鈥檚 stringent regulatory compliance mandates.

鈥淭he strategic planning for this transformation was well underway prior to the global pandemic, but we persevered 鈥� with the help and commitment of our employees 鈥� to support future growth,鈥� said Sung Yang, vice president, 51风流Program Executive at TAH. 鈥淲e met our ambitious goals and are now live with a fully validated implementation. Our processes, software and data are compliant with government regulations and controls.鈥�

TAH鈥檚 experience reflected the tremendous advantage of becoming an SAP-enabled intelligent enterprise, said Greg Petraetis, 51风流general manager and senior vice president for the 51风流Midmarket and Ecosystem in North America.

鈥淐ompanies in every industry need to stay ahead of fast-changing markets and customer demands,鈥� he said. 鈥淏eing able to integrate actionable data across all of business processes 鈥� from manufacturing, supply chain and inventory through procurement, finance, human resources and more 鈥� is how modern business ultimately delivers the right products at the right time to the right customers for competitive advantage.鈥�

Automation Speeds Up Orders with End-to-End Visibility

TAH is now set up for a more efficient, scalable order-to-delivery process. The company鈥檚 healthcare customers have improved visibility into their orders, from initial acknowledgement through tracking notifications and delivery. Using 51风流S/4HANA, TAH can virtually manage its in-hospital product inventories more effectively, ensuring customers receive devices when needed.

Transformational Partnership for Strong Future

Now that 51风流solutions touch every part of operations across TAH, the company is looking to the next phase of transformation, eventually expanding to supporting business operations worldwide.

鈥�51风流is a great partner for our digital journey, effectively collaborating with our teams and other important partners to bring our business into a single source of truth,鈥� said Rick Larrieu, vice president of Global IT Applications and Infrastructure at TAH. 鈥淲ith these investments, we can better serve our customers and their patients, while increasing our operational efficiency.鈥�

Visit the 51风流News Center. Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

About SAP

SAP鈥檚 strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77 percent of the world鈥檚 transaction revenue touches an 51风流system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT) and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers鈥� businesses into intelligent enterprises. 51风流helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want 鈥� without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 25 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees and thought leaders, 51风流helps the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives. For more information, visit

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Over the last seven years, the demand for 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud has steadily grown. Customers rely on us to guide them through their cloud transformations and run mission-critical 51风流landscapes in a secure and reliable environment as part of their journey to become intelligent enterprises.

As a private managed cloud solution, 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud comes complete with a reference architecture, comprehensive, end-to-end service-level agreement (SLA), and innovative pre-built tools for rapid deployment, with full governance and security managed by SAP.

While we have been offering the flexibility to run 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud in 51风流data centers or using hyperscalers, customers told us that they want a third choice: to run 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud in their own data centers. The reasons included the need for data sovereignty, specific industry compliance, a low risk tolerance, specific company policies, and limited or no access to 51风流data centers or hyperscaler infrastructure options.

In response, 51风流introduces the customer edition as a turnkey solution at the customer鈥檚 data center. It is less disruptive to their operations and offers the merits of an operation expense (OPEX) business model, elastic computing, and white-glove managed services delivered by SAP. 51风流Cloud Application Services will support the day-to-day running of the applications and help customers with adoption of 51风流S/4HANA on their path to the Intelligent Enterprise. The new service is launched in partnership with key global hardware infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers.

Today we are announcing our plan to partner with HPE to deliver 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud, customer edition. It will be available to customers with HPE GreenLake, which provides cloud services for edge, datacenter, and colocation deployments. HPE will supply, install, and manage the required infrastructure for the customer鈥檚 landscape in a secured environment.

HPE GreenLake cloud services for 51风流HANA is scalable and secure, providing customers that want to run 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud in their own data centers the ability to gain data sovereignty and regulatory compliance.聽 Additionally, HPE鈥檚 infrastructure technology, which underpins HPE GreenLake cloud services, has been proven in verifiable 51风流benchmarks to scale to substantial demands from 51风流customers.

This launch is a celebration of what is possible through an open innovation approach that puts customers鈥� needs first as they start the journey to becoming an intelligent enterprise.

Peter Pluim is executive vice president and global head of Enterprise Cloud Services at SAP.

One way in which a company can innovate and scale its business is through digitalization, moving from a solely on-premise business to a cloud-based intelligent enterprise. To support companies, 51风流provides a fast and flexible path to the cloud, driving the implementation of innovative business processes. And the cloud extension policy from 51风流can help achieve this while allowing businesses to seamlessly move to the cloud at their own pace.

Whether to optimize human resources (HR) procedures, business-to-business transactions or other enterprise-wide processes, the cloud extension policy allows customers to move their on-premise processes onto a hybrid cloud solution. This offers customers the opportunity to flexibly adapt their landscape to changing business requirements. Benefits of this policy include optimization and automation of certain processes in order to become more efficient, the creation of data-driven insights to help improve business outcomes, and the acceleration of speed to value.

One 51风流customer, a large player in the Australian energy and natural resources industry, was able to undergo a digital transformation while optimizing costs by purchasing a cloud extension of 51风流Ariba software. This enabled the company to facilitate data-driven insights to make conscious purchase decisions and to optimize cost control as well as spend and risk management.

With the company鈥檚 move to the cloud, triggered by its quest for digitalization and innovation, some of its supplier relationship management (SRM) users were no longer needed. Therefore, by leveraging the cloud extension policy, it was able to terminate redundant SRM users and reallocate on-premise maintenance payments to the cloud. This process optimized its resource allocation to unlock value for its business. Additionally, the new hybrid solution was fully integrated between cloud and on-premise applications, offering seamless delivery and support as well as full control over the application landscape. Not only did the customer receive the opportunity to reduce its total cost of ownership, it can now access solutions from anywhere on any device, thereby getting the best of both worlds in its landscape.

With this integrated approach, customers gain the flexibility, choice, and efficiencies needed to innovate for growth across their entire business. See further recent examples of .

To take advantage of the cloud extension policy, the following requirements must be fulfilled:

• The cloud solution must be eligible for the hybrid cloud strategy. A .
• The terminated licenses must be in the scope of the extension policy. Typically, all on-premise licenses covered with 51风流Enterprise Support, 51风流Standard Support or 51风流Product Support for Large Enterprises are in scope.
• The transaction assumes an expanded investment with cloud solutions from SAP, given the substantial added value from this new hybrid scenario.

View the .

51风流offers the cloud extension model for public cloud solutions, and also provides a model for 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud service subscriptions as well as the on-premise extension model. This allows customers to evolve their existing on-premise software with solutions from 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud or other solutions from the on-premise 51风流portfolio. More .

Thomas Spandl is senior vice president and head of M-GTM at SAP.

Following is the Q&A from that discussion, moderated by Andrea Stokvis of 51风流and featuring Harald Muley, of Corporate Functions IT at Doehler, and Horst Ebert, vice president of Global IT from Goodyear.

Q: Let鈥檚 begin by telling us a bit about each of your organizations and your role.

Ebert: Goodyear is one of the world鈥檚 largest tire companies. We employ about 64,000 people and manufacture products in 47 facilities in 21 countries around the world. I鈥檓 responsible for all 51风流activities at Goodyear globally, with focus on centralizing our 51风流support structure, harmonizing our application architecture across geographies, and defining together with 51风流strategic roadmaps to move toward the Intelligent Enterprise.

Muley: Doehler is a global producer, marketer, and provider of technology-driven natural ingredients, ingredient systems, and integrated solutions for the food and beverage industry. We have over 7,000 employees worldwide and serve customers in more than 130 countries with 45 production sites.聽 As head of Corporate Functions IT, I am responsible for all IT aspects regarding finance, controlling, and HR.

Both companies have been long-standing 51风流ERP customers and have decided to move to 51风流S/4HANA on premise, supporting very complex system landscapes. What was the key driver for embracing 51风流S/4HANA as your digital core?

Muley: Doehler had run its operations on the 51风流ERP application since 1993, which resulted in a highly customized and specialized system with more than 33,000 custom objects and roughly 3.7 million lines of code. To accelerate growth, the company needed to update our ERP. We made a strategic decision to use 51风流S/4HANA. We knew it was the future of 51风流and that development and investment were being made.

Ebert: Goodyear is running separate ERPs to support our business units in North America, EMEA, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. We identified a couple of key drivers to start our 51风流S/4HANA journey. First, we want to leverage the latest 51风流technologies, including machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Second, we wanted to harmonize our applications architecture and drive standardization and simplification to support new business requirements quicker. Finally, 51风流S/4HANA will be the core of the 51风流architecture surrounded by cloud solutions, and we need to stay within maintenance windows.

Many are interested in how you moved to 51风流S/4HANA. Can you describe your journey and where you are in the process now?

Muley: We were previously using 51风流ERP Central Component with 51风流MaxDB. Our journey began by first moving to 51风流HANA with a technical upgrade. Then we did a system conversion to 51风流S/4HANA 1610 with 90 percnet automation of custom code conversion. Currently, 17 companies are running on our central 51风流S/4HANA 1809 system. We鈥檝e been doing yearly upgrades to keep on the latest and greatest version of 51风流S/4HANA.

Ebert: Our journey started with SAP鈥檚 announcement to cancel maintenance for 51风流ERP Central Component by 2025. We went live with finance initially, deploying a technical foundation last year and now we continue to add more business processes and innovations. We don鈥檛 consider our 51风流S/4HANA journey in isolation; it鈥檚 part of the digital enterprise transformation where we have a strategy of leveraging as many cloud solutions as possible.

How did you decide the path to deploy 51风流S/4HANA?

Muley: We decided a system conversion was the way to go because a greenfield project would have taken too long for our fast-changing industry. We decided to perform process redesign on the new 51风流S/4HANA data model. Also, it allowed us to reuse valuable custom developments.

Ebert: We are taking a hybrid approach since we are running multiple ERP systems. Our first deployment was a new implementation for functionality we wanted to globalize and standardize, like finance. However, since we are not moving all our business processes into a single instance, we will do system conversions of existing ERPs, where processes are market-driven and might differ by geography. We are making that decision in close collaboration with our business functions.

What did you consider when deciding whether to deploy on premise or in the cloud?

Muley: We decided to keep our data on premise, because our own data center is very efficient. It allows us to keep our financial data as well as valuable intellectual property like development recipes on our on-premise instance of 51风流S/4HANA.

Ebert: We are not ready yet for 51风流S/4HANA in the public cloud, but we are deploying 51风流S/4HANA on 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud. This allows us to focus on our own capacities to improve core processes and drive new innovations while leaving the management of 51风流S/4HANA hosting to 51风流as part of our hosting strategy. In APJ, 51风流HANA Enterprise Cloud only had a center in Japan and we decided that we needed a location closer to our markets in Australia and New Zealand, so we have deployed on Amazon Web Services in Singapore.

What was your biggest challenge?

Muley: Being an early adopter at that time presented us with great challenges. We could not leverage 51风流tools like 51风流Readiness Check, documentation was missing, and there was a shortage of consultants with 51风流S/4HANA knowledge. Also, 51风流S/4HANA support from third-party add-ons and consulting solutions was a challenge, as some were not ready yet for the journey. Nevertheless, we made it on time within six months, including necessary retrofits due to parallel projects, two FPS 51风流S/4HANA upgrades, and around 230 implemented OSS notes.

Ebert: 51风流continues to invest in 51风流S/4HANA with the consequence of significant annual release upgrades. While we are increasing the utilization of the system, we need to plan for those annual upgrades.

What were some of your magic moments that worked well during your deployment?

Muley: I have to say the collaboration with 51风流during our project was one big magic moment. The commitment of the team involved was outstanding 鈥� from our customer care coordinator to the support consultant during our production system conversion weekend, working on an unexpected serious issue during migration. Everybody was very committed to make this a success story. It was a big success for team Doehler and SAP.

Ebert: The robustness of the application is really impressive. We replicated 5 billion universal journal items records into 51风流S/4HANA and had zero rounding difference.

A specific question for Doehler: What is your strategy with the yearly 51风流S/4HANA upgrades?

Muley: There are always so many new capabilities, like embedded 51风流Extended Warehouse Management; embedded 51风流Transportation Management, our key driver for 1709; embedded master data quality, our key driver for 1809; or group reporting for 1909. Also, we see many innovations like machine learning with 51风流Leonardo 鈥� 51风流Cash Application extended functionality under 1809, GR/IR monitor 鈥� so we decided that we need to do the 51风流S/4HANA upgrades each year. Furthermore, our upgrades are comparable to enhancement package upgrades in 51风流ERP Central Component times. We will now try the next upgrade with 1909 within five weeks. From our perspective, the sooner you start, the better it gets!

What capabilities of 51风流S/4HANA are you currently using, and what other solutions do you have connected to it?

Ebert: Currently we are using finance and plan for central procurement in 2020. We have 51风流Analytics Cloud to leverage real-time analytics and eventually, planning. Furthermore, we integrate with 51风流SuccessFactors, 51风流Concur, and 51风流Fieldglass solutions. Digital supply is under evaluation.

Muley: We are using all the classical 51风流51风流S/4HANA modules like finance, supply chain, inventory, etc., but we also implemented 51风流Financial Closing cockpit, and the embedded 51风流Extended Warehouse Management and 51风流Transportation Management. We integrate 51风流S/4HANA with the 51风流Data Maintenance by Vistex, pricing option for 51风流S/4HANA, 51风流Sales Cloud, 51风流Ariba software, and just recently acquired 51风流Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain to also strengthen our supply chain footprint in connection with 51风流S/4HANA. We are also implementing live reporting with 51风流Analytics Cloud.

Now a Goodyear-specific question: You mentioned finance as a key driver for why Goodyear moved to 51风流S/4HANA. Can you share what your users are telling you and what benefits they鈥檝e received?

Ebert: The availability of information has been amazing. It鈥檚 the first time in history we can provide comparable data globally with full transparency to the lowest level of detail. Our finance professionals don鈥檛 have to make decisions based on yesterday鈥檚 or last week鈥檚 reporting. They鈥檙e getting real-time numbers 鈥� what鈥檚 actually happening in the business. All of this means they can make better, more informed decisions.

What are some of the benefits you鈥檙e realizing with 51风流S/4HANA?

Muley: We didn鈥檛 focus on before-and-after metrics or focus on the percentage increase of productivity, etc. However, we had a definite increase of performance implementing 51风流HANA already by more than 30 percent. We are also seeing with 51风流Cash Application that 30 percet or more of the postings are automated, so that gives folks in finance more time to focus on more strategic activities versus just posting items. Overall, 51风流S/4HANA gives us a foundation to run new business processes and create innovative business models that deliver even more value to partners and customers.

Ebert: We quickly identified opportunities and benefits for finance. We didn鈥檛 have a global chart of accounts or global cost center structure, so this was really an opportunity to implement global standards and gain real-time visibility into financial data.

What advice would you give other customers that are considering deploying 51风流S/4HANA?

Ebert: Take your time to implement 51风流S/4HANA and make sure you understand the full potential in combination with other applications like 51风流Analytics Cloud. Make sure your internal support team is building the required capabilities and learn how to leverage all the new functionalities.

Muley: A conversion project can be done fast, and the sooner you start, the smaller the gap between 51风流ERP Central Component and 51风流S/4HANA. As with every release, there are new simplifications implemented, which make the conversion more complex if you start with 51风流ERP Central Component as basis. And expect and be prepared for the unexpected.

We hear a lot from our customers about the importance of change management. How did you approach it? Whether from a business user or IT professional perspective?

Muley: Since our approach was to perform only mandatory adjustments for the system conversion, such as the implementation of 51风流Business Partner for 51风流S/4HANA or rebate settlement management and keeping 51风流GUI as user front end, there was not much change management necessary initially.

Ebert: Most important is the support of the executive leadership. Second is to demonstrate to users what is possible; don鈥檛 implement just the as-is. Lastly, train your internal IT professionals and make them hungry for new technologies.

Thanks to Harald Muley from Doehler and Horst Ebert from Goodyear for sharing valuable insights about their respective 51风流S/4HANA deployment and journey to become an Intelligent Enterprise.

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