Migrate to a well-positioned SAP S/4HANA with Rackspace

Michael Wind

SAP on Azure

No one said running SAP® is easy. It's hard to find the IT resources to operate mission-critical applications 24x7x365, and initiating a S/4HANA migration project may appear daunting. Nevertheless,  making the move to SAP S/4HANA is a priority for many customers that are running core business applications on SAP and need to transition to more efficient and future-facing business models.

SAP S/4HANA is SAP’s next-generation digital business suite which enables transition to an adaptive enterprise business process which is both optimized and based on best-practices. Additionally, it is capable of incorporating machine learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) enabled automation. S/4 HANA is paving the way to the cloud, driving a substantial level of landscape simplification and infrastructure total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction.

Over 13,800 SAP customers have already chosen SAP S/4HANA, and thousands are actively deploying the solution to reshape their businesses. Recent surveys from both the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) and the SAP User Group (DSAG) show significant growth in investments from customers in SAP S/4HANA. DSAG reports that over 49% of customers plan to migrate to SAP S/4HANA within the next three years while the ASUG report shows that the number of customers who have no plans of moving to SAP S/4HANA has dropped to zero.

Cloud is proving to be the best environment for many mission-critical applications, so it should be an integral consideration for your journey to S/4HANA. You don't have to take the migration journey on your own –  we can help you get there. We are well-positioned to support SAP customers with their migrations, with end-to-end services offerings for S/4HANA migrations.  

SAP migration challenges

The migration process to SAP S/4HANA itself requires the investment of time, resource and focus over and above what's applied to daily business and operational tasks. The business cases and roadmaps for migration investments need to be compelling. A prescribed roadmap to SAP S/4HANA is incomplete if it does not include positioning and progression towards the best end-state infrastructure and planned, prioritized leverage of SAP S/4HANA capabilities post-migration. Migrations can become all-consuming if you’re not careful. You want to ensure the SAP S/4HANA migration journey involves executing a plan that minimizes rework. For every upgrade to SAP S/4HANA, the goal is to realize a properly positioned platform while allocating and maintaining reserves to take advantage of it, once completed.

Towards business-ready SAP S/4HANA

We can help SAP customers achieve a well-positioned SAP S/4HANA solution.

We have the depth and breadth of expertise as we are an unbiased provider of infrastructure solutions in private hosting, private cloud, public cloud and multi-cloud. Where some providers offer SAP services to guide customers only to their proprietary solutions, we offer a combination of hosting prowess and certifications in Microsoft® Azure®, AWS, Google Cloud Platform™, VMware™ and SAP. Additionally, these certifications demonstrate our comprehensive capabilities to build, integrate and operate the best solutions to serve customer-specific requirements.

Rackspace experts are well versed in many technologies and capabilities, so they can provide the expertise you need to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA. We offer an integrated SAP migration capability that can support all aspects of the migration journey, and ensure your end-state solution supports customer plans to leverage SAP S/4HANA.  We are technology agnostic and will recommend the best solution for you.  

Focus on Azure

While remaining fiercely protective of our position toward technology neutrality, we offer a specific SAP-to-Azure migration capability that is very attractive to Azure customers. SAP and Microsoft have a strong alliance and well-developed, complementary ecosystems, with Azure being a mature, scalable, resilient, secure public cloud. There are increasing synergies between SAP and Microsoft business, analytics, ML and AI applications, and SAP integrates well with Microsoft Azure infrastructure and integration services. 

Rackspace is uniquely capable with Microsoft and Azure via its Fanatical AzureTM service.  Rackspace operates globally with 1,200+ certifications and counting, along with earning significant achievements, including  Five-time Hosting Partner of the Year. 

Reaping the benefits

Deploying SAP applications on Azure provides the agility and scalability we've come to expect from cloud. This agility allows you to ramp up resources when you need them the most, and scale them back down when required, so you only use what you need, when you need it. Microsoft continually makes advancements to enhance interoperability between Azure and SAP applications. You can trust Azure to maintain compatibility with the latest SAP solutions as well as being able to handle sizable workloads.

With SAP S/4HANA deployed, Rackspace Managed Services offerings in infrastructure operations, security and managed BASIS can free up your resources and allow you to focus on reaping SAP S/4HANA functional and integration benefits to drive business growth, capability and opportunity. Rackspace Application Management Services can help companies realize these new benefits.

Whether you are a current customer or a new customer seeking a trusted path, Rackspace is a great partner for your journey to SAP S/4HANA.

Click here to learn more about how Rackspace can help you with your SAP needs.

Make the Most of Your SAP Investment