Introduction to SAP S/4HANA

For more than 45 years, SAP has been on a journey with our customers, helping them create value for their organizations by applying technology to solve some of their most complex challenges. In each era of enterprise computing, we’ve evolved our strategy – and product portfolio – so our customers can run better. In the 1960s and 1970s, as mainframe computing gained popularity, SAP enabled its first customers to automate their plant floor operations with material requirements planning software. In the 1990s, as companies expanded their use of the Internet, SAP helped connect its customers’ headquarters with their subsidiaries through SAP® R/3® software for enterprise resource planning. Over the past 10 years, as cloud computing and Big Data have become ever more pervasive, SAP HANA® software, along with SAP's extensive portfolio of cloud applications, has helped SAP's customers begin their own digital transformations. Now, as technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), advanced analytics and blockchain become mainstream, SAP has a new opportunity – to help turn its customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises, with new capabilities that enable their workforces to focus on higher-value outcomes.

Advances in machine learning are enabling algorithms to become highly accurate in natural language understanding and in image and speech recognition. Businesses can use these increasingly sophisticated capabilities to drive the next level of intelligent business processes automation and eliminate repetitive manual tasks. Automation can now also be implemented far more cost-effectively, because it is embedded more and more within business processes. All of this means that the workforce are able to focus on high-value activities such as customer success, strategic planning, and innovation. Advances in ubiquitous connectivity and edge computing are creating a step change in business productivity. This connectivity, coupled with artificial intelligence and machine learning, can be used to analyze petabytes of data to affect real business outcomes. IoT can connect the entire value chain, from design to production to supply chain, and data-driven insights of customer preferences can inspire better design, lower material costs, and reduce risk. Real-time analysis of machines can predict maintenance needs, identify potential quality problems in manufacturing processes before they occur, and reduce asset downtime by as much as 50%.The integration of advanced analytics capabilities into applications allows business users to analyze data on the fly and informs better decision-making. Empowered users, benefiting from embedded analytics in business processes, can get real-time visibility into their changing environment, simulate the impact of business decisions, and achieve better customer outcomes.

The global economic growth of the last nine years has been powered largely by technology. Record corporate profits and new business models can all be tied to technology-driven innovation. On average, an S&P 500 company is now being replaced once every two weeks. This "tumble rate" is accelerating, with the difference between winners and losers tied to their ability to embrace digital technologies. The next decade will, of course, bring about even greater tectonic shifts. To address these challenges, businesses need to make sense of a growing volume of data, create a step change in productivity, and innovate with relentless clock-speed. In other words, they need to accelerate value creation. This is the heart of the Intelligent Enterprise.

This means first, an intelligent suite of seamlessly integrated applications with a unified user experience for each line of business including, Customer Experience, Supply Chain and Manufacturing, Digital Core, People Engagement, and Network & Spend Management. Next, customers can use the digital platform to tap into new sources of data within your business and across value chains to derive deep and holistic insights in real-time. SAP Cloud Platform provides the glue to securely integrate and extend solutions, and reuse common services. Last, intelligent technologies, including Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and Advanced Analytics are embedded in SAP S/4HANA to enable customers to automatically detect patterns in data, recommend the best courses of action, and optimize workflows. For customers that want to innovate even further, we offer industry accelerators and open development services where you can apply design thinking methodologies to identify new business models.

SAP is evolving its strategy to deliver the Intelligent Enterprise for our customers. We are empowering them with a set of "next practices" that help them innovate faster than the competition, create new markets, and capture mindshare.

These "next practices" are made possible by next-generation intelligent technologies, which accelerate value creation through three core capabilities:

• Visibility:

  Tap into siloed or external data and recognize previously unseen patterns

• Focus:

  Simulate the downstream impacts of critical decisions and allocate scarce resources

• Agility:

  Adapt business processes in response to changing market conditions, in real time

These enhanced capabilities will empower SAP customers to achieve the following three critical outcomes faster, more effectively, and more completely than ever before:

• Do more with less and empower employees

• Invent new business models and revenue streams

• Deliver best-in-class customer experience

At the center of the SAP S/4HANA Suite is SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management. This has been built by simplifying the SAP ERP solution, and reintegrating and simplifying portions of SAP Business Suite products, such as SAP SRM, CRM, and SCM, into this core. SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management is available on-premise and in the cloud, with different licensing and subscription models. SAP Portfolio and Project Management (PPM) is also part of the digital core and is assigned in the Research & Development (R&D) area of the solution. It is included in the whole SAP Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPPM) section together with SAP Project System (PS) and SAP Commercial Project Management (CPM).

The SAP S/4HANA Suite is completed by the native integration of dedicated Lines of Business (LOB) and industry solutions into SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management. These solutions can be cloud only, such as SAP SuccessFactors. Alternatively, they can be delivered on premise, such as SAP Transportation Management, depending on market need.

The decision of which deployment option to select largely depends on the degree of standardization versus the degree of flexibility required by a customer in their enterprise software.

The SAP S/4HANA Suite is completed by the native integration of dedicated Lines of Business (LOB) and industry solutions into SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management. These solutions can be cloud only, such as SAP SuccessFactors. Alternatively, they can be delivered on premise, such as SAP Transportation Management, depending on market need.

The decision of which deployment option to select largely depends on the degree of standardization versus the degree of flexibility required by a customer in their enterprise software.

This first choice is between SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA AnyPremise:

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud (SaaS) is highly standardized with regular upgrade cycles. SAP takes more or most of the responsibility for upgrades and overall technical system management. Customizations directly in the system are limited to maintain stability through the regular upgrades and enhancements.
• SAP S/4HANA AnyPremise is highly flexible and fully governed by the customer. Customers can carry over existing system configurations and custom code through conversions, and have full control over their upgrade cycle. There is maximum flexibility to configure and customize the system directly.

All cloud deployments offer an annual, subscription-based pricing model, so customers pay for what they need and can add to it later. On-premise continues with the traditional licensing model.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition is a public cloud solution that is highly standardized and covers selected LoB and industry scenarios, and a comprehensive ERP scope. Services are delivered to customers over a network generated from a multi-tenant server. "Multi-tenant" means that two or more tenants (customers) are sharing the bandwidth of one server. This multi-tenant server resides in an SAP data center. Your cloud provider (SAP) is responsible for maintaining the technical backend of your system, and runs your software service in the server where your tenant resides. SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition has the fastest innovation, meaning quarterly release cycles, where new features and enhancements to existing functionality are released. SAP maintains your system with bi-weekly hotfixes, and installs the quarterly release enhancements to a customer's existing scope on the defined release upgrade schedule.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, has the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO), because more standardization means SAP can provide many pre-built resources to make the implementation and running the solution as simple and easy as possible. If you have subscriptions to multiple services in addition to SAP S/4HANA Cloud (for example, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Concur, and so on), you will have an individual tenant for each software server that may or may not reside in the same data center as your SAP S/4HANA Cloud ERP solution.

Characteristics of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition include:

• Highly standardized business processes covering selected LoB and industry scenarios, and a comprehensive ERP scope
• In-depth coverage for professional services and component manufacturing; more industries on road map
• Configurable standardized processes and best practice
• Defined extensibility options and extensions via SAP Cloud Platform
• Quarterly release cycle
• Lowest TCO and fastest time to value
• Subscription licensing
• Runs on multi-tenant/public cloud infrastructure in SAP data centers

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition is a private cloud solution based on standardized business processes, but also includes the extensibility and geographical reach of the SAP S/4HANA on premise solution. Services are delivered to customers over a private network protected by a firewall from a single-tenant server. "Single tenant" means that only one tenant (customer) is using the storage and bandwidth of one server. This single-tenant server can reside in your own data center, or in a data center owned by a vendor. Private clouds offer the most security and control. SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition has semi-annual (twice yearly) upgrades, and is hosted in SAP's private, managed cloud, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, is an excellent choice for customers that require specific functionality, broader extensions, and deeper configuration capabilities in a dedicated cloud environment. Additional capabilities are allowed, because the customer is the only tenant on the server. As a cloud solution, it is also easily scalable and has a low total cost of ownership (TCO).

Characteristics of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition include:

• Standardization and scalability of the cloud combined with the full functional scope, extensibility, and geographical reach of SAP S/4HANA on premise
• Semi-annual upgrades
• Configurable and customizable processes
• SAP S/4HANA Extensibility Framework and extensions via SAP Cloud Platform
• All industries supported
• Low TCO and fast time to value
• Subscription licensing
• Runs on single-tenant/private cloud managed infrastructure (SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud)
• Choice of where SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is hosted: SAP data center or hyper-scaler (non-SAP vendor, for example, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and so on)

SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud is a private, managed cloud offering that provides a comprehensive cloud infrastructure and managed services for SAP products. The environment is specially built to support mission critical processes on the SAP HANA database platform and maintain a stable environment for cloud applications. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud managed services include backups, patching, provisioning and upgrades, restore and recovery, infrastructure monitoring and event detection-all in a private cloud environment. SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud has the unique capability to operate with the large size, scale and breadth of SAP HANA and SAP systems with very complex IT landscapes that have systems up to 72 TB of memory.

Customers have the opportunity to choose whether their SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud tenant is hosted in an SAP data center, or a hyperscaler datacenter. A hyperscaler is a non-SAP Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) vendor, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud Platform. SAP provides the same comprehensive Service Level Agreements for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud in a hyperscaler that a customer would experience in an SAP datacenter. Customers can bring their own (already licensed) SAP applications into SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, or tap into subscription-based pricing for SAP software.