History: From SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA to SAP S/4HANA
With the launch in 2011 of SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, SAP was the only software vendor in the market at the time to allow SAP Business Suite customers to bring together transactions and analysis into a single in-memory platform. In less than two years, over 1,850 customers acquired SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA to run their businesses in real time, making it one of the fastest-growing products in the history of SAP.
With SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, SAP’s product approach has been to port applications on the SAP HANA platform and optimize the code, which improves the performance of business processes and reporting activities and, as a result, improves performance on relational databases. SAP HANA represented a new database alternative for existing customers who required only a simple database migration.
On February 4, 2020, SAP has announced an innovation commitment for SAP S/4HANA until the end of 2040. This means that until 2040, there will always be at least one release of SAP S/4HANA in maintenance.
SAP S/4HANA, launched in 2015, is the next generation business suite that helps lines of business and industries to run simple. SAP S/4HANA delivers simplifications (customer adoption, data model, user experience, decision making, business processes and models) and innovations (Internet of Things, Big Data, business networks and mobile-first) to help businesses run simple in the digital economy. SAP S/4HANA combines the most recent innovations (including SAP HANA and SAP Fiori UX) into a new suite that caters to a digital, networked economy.
SAP S/4HANA creates unique opportunities to run your day-to-day business in real-time using industry best practices and enables you to redefine the following business practices:
- Business decision
Acquire insight on any data from anywhere in real-time: planning, execution, prediction and simulation are done on the fly for faster business impact.
- Business processes
Focus on essential tasks in real-time and change business processes as needed.
- User experience
SAP Fiori UX is available for any device: desktop, mobile, and tablet.
The following SAP S/4HANA editions are available:
- SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition
This edition offers a business scope that is similar in terms of coverage, functionality, industries and languages to the current SAP Business Suite. Within this scope, SAP S/ 4HANA also includes the transformational simplifications delivered with SAP Simple Finance (SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA) as well as a planned integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central and the Ariba Network.
- SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition
This edition covers specific business scenarios for the marketing line of business and for the professional services industry as well as the most essential scenarios to run an entire enterprise in the cloud with a digital core including finance, accounting, controlling, procurement, sales, manufacturing, plant maintenance, project system and product life cycle management, plus integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central, Ariba Network, SAP C/4HANA, Field Glass, and SAP JAM. Note that SAP JAM will be replaced by SAP Build Workzone.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud essentials edition (ES) is commonly used by net new customers who want the full cloud approach with regular quarterly upgrades that include new configuration and new software. It is also used for subsidiaries alongside SAP on-premise implementations.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud extended edition (EX) has the advantages of the cloud with more flexibility and control. It has standardized infrastructure processes, services and SLAs. There is a minimum number of users.
