SAP customers should exercise caution when seeking infrastructure support for ERP software from community cloud, cloud-like, or legacy co-location vendors due to potential long-term risks and increased total cost of ownership (TCO), according to Gartner. Differentiating between SAP-certified cloud IaaS providers and community cloud hosting for SAP workloads can be challenging, leading to unintentional risk exposure and higher TCO over time.
While SAP certifies public cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and others to run its workloads in a fully certified environment, some community cloud providers offer shared infrastructure that is not supported by SAP, potentially resulting in unexpected costs and risks. Managed service providers and specialized cloud vendors may offer managed or unmanaged shared infrastructure for SAP-based software in a cloud-like model, but not all can guarantee end-to-end quality of service across all components, which SAP does not support.
Although opting for a community cloud provider may not be recommended, it could work for organizations needing historical data access for regulatory reasons or small businesses with budget constraints. However, some customers have reported lack of support from SAP when encountering issues with community cloud hosting.
Since early 2021, SAP has been encouraging customers to migrate to the cloud and upgrade from legacy ECC to S/4HANA. RISE with SAP, a managed services provider, offers a comprehensive relationship with SAP while overseeing relationships with cloud providers, consultancies, and systems integrators involved in the project. Customers considering RISE should carefully analyze what the MSP offers as it may be more rigid in terms of options compared to other providers in the space.
Gartner suggests working with an MSP capable of mastering SAP in the public cloud to reduce risk and enhance operational excellence. Customers should be willing to switch MSPs if the current one does not meet their needs. Understanding the implications of various models, including community cloud, RISE with SAP, and different cloud providers, is crucial for making the best decision for individual organizations.
Article Source
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/06/25/sap_customers_warned_on_hidden/
