SAP S/4HANA

SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (or SAP S/4 HANA) is a business suite that is built on SAP's proprietary Operational Database System and in-memory computing platform called SAP HANA.

Purpose

The offering is an Enterprise Resource Planning software meant to cover all day-to-day processes of an enterprise. It integrates functions from lines of businesses as well as industry solutions, and also re-integrates portions of SAP Business Suite products such as SAP SRM, CRM and SCM. However SAP Business Suite 4 only runs on the SAP HANA database, and thus it is packaged as one product: SAP S/4 HANA.^[1]

SAP's classical R3 based business suite and related products were designed to run on several database platforms, including those from Oracle, Microsoft and IBM.^[2]

SAP has said that the SAP HANA platform can potentially save an organization 37% across hardware, software, and labor costs.^[3]

History

The platform SAP HANA has been available since 2010, and SAP applications like SAP ERP and the SAP Business Suite have been able to run on the SAP HANA database and/or any other database.^[4]

The S/4HANA launch^[5] took place on February 3, 2015 at the New York Stock Exchange. The event introduced cloud computing and on premises editions, and launched the on-premises edition. Availability of the cloud edition followed at SAPPHIRE NOW (SAP’s annual customer conference) on May 6, 2015 in Orlando, Florida.^[6]

SAP S/4HANA is being called SAP's biggest update to its ERP strategy and platform in over two decades.^[7] Post-launch, Gartner analysts noted that SAP S/4HANA represented a “transformational shift,” but raised questions about the functionality, availability, pricing and migration surrounding S/4.^[8]

By April 21, 2015, 370 customers had purchased S/4HANA.^[9] After the first half of 2015, positive growth was confirmed for SAP.^[10]

Growth continued through the third quarter of 2015.^[11] Following its third quarter earnings announcement, SAP said the number of SAP S/4HANA customers had risen to 1,300.^[12]

There are numerous ERP systems with the same intention, some of the product’s competitors in the Software as a Service space are Oracle,^[13] Microsoft and Workday, Inc.^[14]

the main difference is that performance reporting, real time data, running of batch jobs are required in ECC to get data and process is slow. Whereas in SAP SFIN there is no required to drill report and its user friendly.

--> To migrate to sap sfin, predefined tools are available in sap sfin, which will need to understand by consultant and need to map to present business environment.

Editions

The S/4 product offering consists of two editions: SAP S/4HANA On-Premises Edition and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Edition.

SAP S/4HANA On-Premise Edition is similar in terms of coverage, functionality, industry-specific support, and localization to the current SAP Business Suite (35 languages, 61 country versions, 21 industries). This edition is available for on premises deployment and as a hosted offering via SAP and its partners.^[15]

SAP also offers SAP S/4HANA Cloud Edition.^[16] It consists of functionality for finance, accounting, controlling, procurement, sales, manufacturing, plant maintenance, project system, and product lifecycle management, plus integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central, Ariba Network, SAP Hybris Marketing and Field Glass.

SAP plans to have comprehensive industry coverage for the cloud edition, as well as industry-specific solutions.^[17] It is currently available in several languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese). The cloud edition supports:

• SAP S/4HANA, cloud marketing edition for the marketing line of business (no country dependencies)
• SAP S/4HANA, cloud project services edition for the professional services industry (country/regional scope: U.S., Germany, Australia, Canada, UK)
• SAP S/4HANA, cloud enterprise edition for full ERP capabilities, covering all lines of business; cloud enterprise edition is the equivalent to the Enterprise Management on premises offering (country/regional scope: U.S., Germany, Australia, Canada, UK)

Deployment

There are several possible starting points for deployment and migration.^{[18] [19]}Many SAP customers typically move to SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA, and the next step is to implement packages that contain the simplified code lines for specific business processes.^[20]

References