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Introduction:
Following on from the previous blog in this series, we continue exploring from an
SAP Architect's perspective how the path to the cloud can be eased for enterprises
with mature SAP landscapes.
To recap, the last blog looked into the challenges facing CIO's when searching for
a path to the cloud and strategy for navigating the route.
The previous installment centered around the perspective of the enterprise customer.
This blog turns that perspective around 360 degrees and looks from SAP's perspective
and offers SAP a suggestion for a strategy for bringing their customers to their cloud.
We all know, enough material has been written about the benefits of moving to the cloud
to fill a library. As pointed out previously, everybody is preaching moving to the cloud, but
nobody is offering the enterprises a path to the cloud, and this is the root of the problem.
We can tell a horse to go and drink water, but actually as the saying goes, we need to
lead a horse to water. We need to help the horse find the safest path to the water and
ensure that when the horse gets to the water the horse can safely drink the water.
When we talk about moving to the cloud, in the area of enterprise systems, for example
moving SAP BI from on-premise to on the cloud, this is a huge task, with many steps.
Part of the task of moving a mature SAP solution from on-premise to cloud, is actually,
the migration project. It can be looked at in the same respect as a datacenter migration,
because at the nuts and bolts level that's what it is.
Anybody who has ever been involved in a SAP data center migration, or on a smaller
scale, a SAP hardware or database migration from one system to many systems, will
be fully aware of the challenges involved and the planning required, and detailed
execution required and associated risks.
When we picture moving to the cloud as a SAP migration project we can begin to see the
steps of the path to achieving the goal and relate to the pieces of the puzzle and their
sequence required to deliver seamless success. And there will be many steps, and this
is where SAP needs to be doing more and helping the customers with roadmaps for the
on-premise to cloud migration and blueprints for planning and delivering the project.
John Appleby only this week, wrote an excellent blog entitled the 'ultimate batch process'
where he looks at the steps involved in moving to Hana. This blog compliments John's work
and suggests a strategy which SAP can apply to help their customers with the on-premise to
cloud migration.
Does Anybody Here Remember Vera Lynn Safe Passage ?
Does anybody here remember that interesting period of contempory IT History when there was
a special sequence of events leading to a perfect storm for ERP Customers.
Back in 2003 PeopleSoft aquired JD Edwards.
This consequently lead to uncertainty for JD Edwards customers, uncertainty over support,
maintenance, product development, and put customer's JD Edwards infrastructure assets
at future risk.
Subsequently, spicing things up, in late 2004 Oracle aquired Peoplesoft.
This compounded the uncertainty for the enterprise customers of JD Edwards and brought the
same uncertainties to the Peoplesoft customerbase.
Then, if that wasn't enough, in 2005 Oracle aquired Siebel creating forward looking uncertainty
for their customers.
We can all imagine the worries on the faces of companies running the aquired products,
uncertainties over future support, product development, the inevitableness of a future migration
project coming up to migrate to Oracle's suite and the costs and challenges associated with such
a previously unplanned action.
In the face of this perfect storm of uncertainty in the ERP world, SAP, in 2005, played a masterstroke,
and brought to the market their Safe Passage program.
SAP's Safe Passage program was a touch of genius, in the word's of SAP's own marketing
material it offered:
In making the announcement, SAP said its “safe passage program” was a considerably better
opportunity for customers than other third-party offerings because:
. SAP assumes the maintenance, service and support issues across the customer’s SAP and
PeopleSoft/JDE environment;
. Customers gain immediate integration benefits from SAP NetWeaver, which will allow them
to extend the life of their existing investments in PeopleSoft and JDE;
. SAP has defined a clear road map for migration to best-in-class business software, as well
a services-oriented platform to drive business innovation via next-generation applications
like SAP xApps™ packaged composite applications.
Wrapping Up:
What does this all have to do with SAP's cloud offerings ?
SAP wants their enterprise customers to move mature on-premise SAP landscapes to SAP's
cloud.
SAP's cloud is huge revenue stream in waiting.
SAP are telling us everyday, the benefits of moving to SAP's cloud.
How can SAP bring the customerbase onto the cloud ?
SAP needs to offer a Safe Passage program for enterprise SAP customers running mature
SAP landscapes to move to the cloud.
There's no need to write another three pages on this, it's not necessary, the message is simple,
using the same strategy as SAP used for bringing the JD Edwards, Peoplesoft, Siebel, Oracle,
customers onto SAP, there needs to be a new SAP Safe Passage program for bringing SAP's
customers onto SAP's cloud with the same underlying principles as the last one.
Make moving to the cloud cost effective and easy to execute, and it will be hard for the
customerbase to say no.
I hope this helps the penny to drop.
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