Choosing the right managed hosting solution for your SAP systems

Whatever the cloud platform, be it public, hybrid or private cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure you need your SAP managed services run professionally and continuously with a guarantee of availability.

The relationship with your managed service provider should offer you a one-stop-shop where your IT infrastructure is remotely managed and quite possibly your end user systems, often on a subscription model.  But so many customers get caught up in the infrastructure choices when they should be focused on the level and quality of service their managed service provider will give them.

We know how important the availability and security of your SAP systems are to the running of your business. You need water-tight SLAs to ensure accountability and that everything runs to your requirements. But there are a lot of options and it can get confusing.

To help you navigate through your decision making, here we evaluate the different hosting solutions for your SAP systems

Public cloud versus Private cloud for your SAP hosted systems

Public cloud has its place but is highly standardised and does not give you any flexibility on infrastructure. On top of this, responsibility for the management of the solution and software applications sits firmly with you as the customer.

One particular advantage of public cloud however, is its elastic pay model where you pay per minute/hour to obtain instant resources. This can be a very good fit for unpredictable seasonal workload changes in compute power, and for development.

In SAP production landscapes however which are more stable production environments, there are cost benefits (discounts) because of longer 36-60 month contracts versus a premium price for a fully elastic model.

Private cloud is a more customisable option with flexibility on infrastructure. The management of the solution is covered by your provider, both for software and hardware as well as the required ongoing support. In this scenario you would have one SPOC (single point of contact) and one SLA with terms and conditions being individually agreed so finger pointing is greatly reduced or eliminated.

Choosing the right managed hosting solution

Find our evaluation of principal SAP hosting solutions:

SAP on Amazon Web Solutions (AWS)

In this instance, terms and conditions are US-based which may or may not be an issue for your GDPR requirements. More than one vendor may be needed for the solution management and to cover specific SAP expertise. A specific advantage however is its world wide availability.

SAP HEC (HANA Enterprise Cloud)

This is a full SAP solution, but it is standardised and geared at high end customers. You will need to carry out mandatory upgrades and updates, planned by SAP which generally attracts premium pricing.

SAP on Microsoft Azure (provided by Microsoft)

As well as AWS, terms and conditions are US-based which again may or may not be an issue for your GDPR requirements.  More than one vendor may be needed for the solution management and for specific SAP expertise. A specific advantage with Azure is also its world wide availability. Although it doesn’t have ERP foundations, as it has grown from office automation, it’s a good choice if you are looking for standardisation on a Microsoft platform.

On premise solution

You will need the right skills and upfront investment to effectively deploy an on premise solution. With technology and business moving at such a fast pace, you may be at a disadvantage if you can’t make changes and adapt quickly enough.

Hybrid solution

This is a combination of private and public cloud, and even on premise.  You will need effective integration to run these seamlessly. i.e you can run development in the public cloud on elastic resources  and production in a private cloud or on premise. Also you can run specific workloads in public and others in private/on premise. Much depends on software that can allocate the workloads to the right cloud flavor and optimize cost, control and SLA’S

Still confused? We’re here to help

SOA People and our partner T-Systems developed and created solutions to offer all of these solutions, to provide all the SAP expertise and knowledge that will ensure you get the best SAP solution for your business.

As the world’s largest SAP host and one of the largest European SAP integrators, we know SAP together inside out.  We know which infrastructure will work for your SAP systems and at the same time, we understand our customers’ business processes, so we can manage them at an extremely high level.

As a SAP Gold Value Added Reseller (VAR) in all countries, we’re focused on delivering the entire end to end SAP technology stack. In particular, we are certified on SAP Solutions and Services, including specific industry offerings.

If you have questions about how to host your SAP systems we’re here to help.