Describing the Technical Layers and Deployment Variants of SAP S/4HANA

The SAP Fiori launchpad is the central entry point for SAP S/4HANA users on both mobile and desktop devices. As a shell that hosts SAP Fiori applications, the launchpad provides essential services such as navigation, personalization, embedded support, application configuration, and the AI digital assistant Joule.

Users launch business applications via individual tiles, which are organized by business role to ensure users only see the apps relevant to their tasks. Hundreds of SAP Fiori apps are available across various industries and lines of business, supporting a broad spectrum of transactional and analytical requirements.

The suite refers to the core ERP software that integrates essential business processes - such as finance, sales, procurement, and manufacturing - into a single, unified system. The software is designed to continuously collect data and feed it into analytical applications and the digital AI assistant Joule, enabling automation and predictive insights.

Core Data Services (CDS) provides a set of domain-specific languages and services used to define and consume semantically rich data models. This layer offers a universal language for reading and processing data across various applications. Developers use CDS views to model database data for analysis or to generate Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for external data consumption. Typically, CDS views are designed for use by user interfaces (UIs), analytical tools, or external systems.

The SAP HANA database is an in-memory, column-oriented database that powers the SAP S/4HANA ERP solution. Its in-memory computing engine processes data directly in RAM (main memory) rather than reading it from a disk, resulting in significantly faster data access, querying, and processing. Because it is column-oriented, the system stores all data for a single column together. This allows it to precisely access only the data needed for a specific query instead of scanning and discarding unnecessary data within rows.

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, organizations can see results right away with ready-to-run business processes built on proven industry best practices. You can stay ahead by accessing the latest business processes and technology innovations through two major release upgrades per year (occurring in February and August).

These upgrades are automatically installed by SAP on dates defined in the release schedule, ensuring you always benefit from the most current capabilities. The fully extensible platform supports a clean core strategy, enabling you to maintain unique business processes through cloud-compliant extensibility while easily scaling as your needs evolve within the cloud architecture.

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, customers can move to the cloud at their own pace. A comprehensive library of ready-to-run business processes makes it easy to start with a baseline, while high customization flexibility enables the building of tailored processes that support specific industry requirements.

To help you stay current while managing the pace of change, SAP now provides a new major release every two years. Between these releases, feature pack stacks (FPS) are delivered every six months to provide continuous innovation without the need for a full upgrade. Customers are required to stay within mainstream maintenance, which has been extended to seven years. This allows you to plan your transformation and roll out innovations on a timeline that best suits your business needs.

SAP S/4HANA (on-premise) and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition share the same functional scope because they both use the same software code. The scope includes comprehensive end-to-end line of business processes and support for more than 25 industries. However, their management and maintenance models differ significantly.

Starting with the 2023 release, both versions follow a two-year release cycle, with innovation delivered through feature pack stacks every 6 months. The primary differences include:

• Commercial Model: On-premise uses a perpetual license, meaning the organization purchases the software into perpetuity (forever), while Private Edition is a subscription-based model.
• Infrastructure and Management: While on-premise is managed by the customer (onsite or hosted), Private Edition is hosted by SAP or a hyperscaler, with SAP providing technical managed services and a standardized Service Level Agreement (SLA).
• Maintenance Requirements: On-premise customers have no requirement to install upgrades. This means they have no requirement to stay within mainstream maintenance, while Private Edition customers must stay within the seven-year mainstream maintenance window by installing the latest upgrade at least once every seven years.

GROW with SAP and RISE with SAP are the names of the commercial offerings that customers purchase. These bundles include an ERP software product, any additional products or add-ons the customer purchases, and several "freebees" such as full access to SAP Cloud ALM as part of the support package, and limited trial licenses to other products intended to provide a comprehensive package of software that sets the customer up for success.

SAP Cloud ERP and SAP Cloud ERP Private are used as terms to simplify the message. SAP Cloud ERP can also be used as a broad category name that encompasses both public and private editions of the ERP solution.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition are the technical product names. These names refer to the software architecture (multi-tenant or single tenant) to clarify whether a customer is on public or private cloud.