SOLHANA guides you on your way to SAP S/4HANA®

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SAP® is focusing all its available and planned innovations on S/4®, a new generation of Business Suite that will only be available on the in-memory database HANA. SAP® already stopped delivering innovations to the previous versions of Business Suites, forcing its customers that wish to benefit of new SAP® features to move to HANA, which only runs on Linux. By 2025, SAP® will further stop offering maintenance and support to its previous ERP solutions, setting a deadline for all its customers. Latest by then, these organizations will need to have moved to HANA and imple-mented Linux. With this, SAP® has made HANA a strategic considera-tion for all customers and migra-ting to Linux is no longer up for questioning, as HANA is only available on the Linux platform.

With this transition, all SAP® users are faced the time pressure of moving to SAP HANA® by the given deadline and the challenges of working with a new database platform. This brings together three big concerns for organizati-ons running on SAP®: they need to migrate their SAP® landscape to HANA, learn how to work with Linux and adapt their business processes that are affected by the migration. All SAP® Business Suite

customers have to evaluate their optimal pathway for moving their SAP® landscape forward, to take advantage of SAP HANA® as a platform and to prepare themsel-ves for their journey to SAP S/4HANA®. But how can organiza-tions balance current SAP® systems, timetables and resources to determine the best route forward? Starting an SAP HANA® journey on the wrong foot could result in higher costs, inflexible and limited scalable architecture, incur unnecessary conversions and migrations further down the line. It could also result in a poorly sized SAP HANA® landscape and potentially degraded performance while more flexible and cost-effec-tive options are given too little consideration.

SOLHANA - short for „Solutions for HANA“- is a single point of contact for organizations searching a service provider to plan, imple-ment and operate SAP S/4HANA® in their organization. SOLHANA covers the broad expertise nee-ded to offer independent hard-ware or public cloud evaluations, Linux systems engineering & maintenance, SAP® migrations as well as SAP® operations. Additio-nally, the HANA migration and its

effects on the company’s business processes are analysed. Through a unique assessment, SOLHANA qualifies the status of your current SAP® landscape, understands your infrastructure, requirements and determines your unique conversion path to SAP S/4HANA®. Based on a thorough understan-ding of your current SAP® landsca-pe and your requirements for S/4HANA®, our SAP® architect experts will provide you with:

• SAP S/4HANA® readiness check• overview of the new features in

S/4HANA® related to your business processes

• 1-3 architecture design propo-sals of SAP S/4HANA®

• conversion path options to SAP S/4HANA®

• high-level plan with milestones and approximate dates for the migration.

The results of the assessment are presented to the management of the organization, which can then decide how to move forward. The assessment outcomes are also submitted as a document and can thus serve as a basis for decisions later on.

YOUR SOLHANA ASSESSMENT CONSISTS OF:

Kick-offSession

Business Transfor-mation S/4HANA®

Current Situation

SAP S/4HANA® architecture design

Roadmap to SAP S/4HANA®

Review & Closure

SOLHANA SAP S/4HANA® ARCHITECTURE

AND CONVERSION ASSESSMENT

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During the Kick-Off meeting we will explain the assessment process in detail and the expectations concer-ning the workshop.

Duration of this session: 1–2 hours

Following the kick-off meeting a workshop takes place to unders-tand your situation in the follo-wing dimensions:

a) Current SAP®: how does your current SAP® landscape look?

• Installed software versions and patch levels

• SAP® add-ons, Industry Solu-tions (IS) or 3rd party add-on components

• Interfaces to other SAP® sys-tems and non-SAP systems

• SAP® system architecture• Usage type of every SAP® sys-

tem in the landscape

b)Modifications:whichad-justments to your current SAP® were made?

• Are there any customer extensi-ons or enhancements

• Modifications to SAP® standard objects

c) Infrastructure requirements: whatspecificationsdoyouneedof S/4HANA®?

• High availability• Disaster recovery• RTO (Recovery Time Objective)

& RPO (Recovery Point Objec-tive)

• Deployment option (Cloud, Hybrid, On-Premise)

• Regulatory and Legal require-ments

Outcome: Thorough understanding of your current SAP® landscape and your requirements for S/4HANA®SAP S/4HANA® readiness check

Duration of this session: ½–2 days, depending on the complexity and size of the organi-zation’s SAP® landscape

The kick-off meeting Current situation –

what are your requirements?

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Figure 1: Example of the innovations of S/4HANA® in finance

In this step, executed by our partner neocore GmbH, the release upgrade to S/4HANA® is analyzed from a functional perspective, with the following workshops:

a) Process workshop: The core business processes of the compa-ny are collected and visualized. Core processes are the fundamen-tal, value-adding operations for the business to function. The visualization of these processes is based on a clear and comprehen-sible methodology, for example with the support of ARIS or Visio.

b) Presentation of new features in S/4HANA®: The innovations in S/4HANA® are presented, based on the previously recorded core business processes. By using SAP S/4HANA®, entire or partial busi-ness processes are reduced or, in

some case, even made dispensa-ble.

c) Delta workshops: The innova-tions in S/4HANA®, which have a direct effect on the core business processes of your company are outlined. In this workshop we will show you how to drive innovation and secure competitive advan-tages for your company by migra-ting to S/4HANA®.

d)Greenfieldvs.brownfield: It must be decided whether the business processes are complete-ly redesigned (greenfield ap-proach) or if the existing proces-ses can be maintained in S/4HANA® (brownfield approach). Both migration paths have specific advantages and disad-vantages and should be evaluated individually for each organization running on SAP®. More important

than a recommendation, howe-ver, is the need to calculate both options.

Outcome: • Visual representation of the

(core) business processes of the company

• Overview of the new features in S/4HANA® general and related to the company‘s (core) business processes

• A recommendation for the green- or brownfield approach

Duration of this session: 6-11 days, depending on the complexity and size of the organi-zation’s SAP® landscape.

* This step can be skipped or individual aspects can be booked separately, if necessary.

Business transformation to SAP S/4HANA®*

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Figure 2: Deployment options for SAP S/4HANA® and other workloads

The architecture design is one of the main elements of the assess-ment. During this session, we will work out various design, deploy-ment options and 1–3 proposals for a future design based on reference architectures and the requirements. This session is based on the infrastructure requirements discussed in the previous work-shop.

The collected information from the previous workshop and mainly the infrastructure requirements are important factors for the architec-ture design of the future SAP S/4HANA® landscape.

SAP® has developed on-premise and cloud editions of SAP S/4HA-NA® and multiple routes to conver-sion are feasible. When opting for SAP S/4HANA® on-premise edition the client maintains the software

on their own infrastructure. Alter-natively, customers can host SAP S/4HANA® on-premise edition on a public, hybrid or private managed cloud (see figure 2).

PUBLIC CLOUD: SAP S/4HANA® on premise edition can also be deployed on different public cloud solutions. As each solution has distinct capabilities and capacity, the choices must be carefully evaluated against the needs of the organization.

HYBRID CLOUD: Multiple options can be considered depending on the organization’s needs. For example, the production SAP HANA® system can be deployed on-premise while non-production systems and non-SAP applications can be deployed on a public cloud.

PRIVATE CLOUD OR ON PREMISE: Options include mixing and matching new and existing infras-tructure – tailored data center integration (TDI) – virtualized or bare metal deployment, deploying multiple database tenants on one system, in a private managed Cloud environment or on premise.

As SOLHANA strictly relies on the principles of modern IT, the SAP S/4HANA® architecture deploy-ments and configurations resulted in this session are fully automated using configuration management and administered with the corre-sponding systems management solution. Maximum flexibility combined with full consistency and traceability make SAP S/4HANA® architectures by SOLHANA robust and sustainable.

Outcome: • 1-3 architecture design propo-

sals of SAP S/4HANA®

Duration of this session: 1–3 days, depending on the complexity and size of the organi-zation’s SAP® landscape

SAP S/4HANA® architecture design and

deployment options

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Figure 3: Possible conversion paths to SAP S/4HANA®

After having discussed possib-le architecture designs of SAP S/4HANA®, we can now focus on the ideal conversion path for to get there. The focus of this ses-sion is to develop a roadmap to S/4HANA®, which should serve as a general project guideline. With this, organizations are able to understand the foreseen steps in the HANA journey in terms of targets and time, facilitating thus, the project plan. The best way to move to SAP S/4HANA® is depen-dent on the organization’s current SAP® landscape, topic thoroughly analysed in the second session.

Some organizations – for example those running earlier versions of SAP® software that have few elements which can be reused in an SAP S/4HANA® environment – may elect not to convert, but instead to opt for a “greenfield” installation that requires data mi-

gration from the old system into a completely new SAP S/4HANA® environment. However, for the majority a “brownfield” conver-sion is the likely path: upgrading live systems and reusing existing system elements selectively.

As part of this session we assess the current SAP® system and the steps required, including whether to maintain existing databases or move to a new version. Taking a phased approach makes it pos-sible to manage the conversion costs in line with planned budgets and timetables (see figure 3).

All organizations converting to SAP S/4HANA® need to comply with several technical and functio-nal requirements. These include a dual stack split, conversion to unicode and activation of SAP® New General Ledger.

Development of road-

map to SAP S/4HANA®

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Outcome: • Conversion path options to

SAP S/4HANA® • High-level plan of migration

with milestones and approxi-mate dates for the migration

Duration of this session: 1–3 days, depending on the com-plexity and size of the organiza-tion’s SAP® landscape

ITPC AG, Albulastrasse 60, 8048 Zurich, CHAdfinisSyGroupAG, Giessereiweg 5, 3007 Bern, CHPhone +41 44 521 73 40, info@solhana.com, www.solhana.com

In this last step, the project is clo-sed and the results of the previous sections – SAP S/4HANA® readiness check, overview of the new fea-tures in S/4HANA® related to your business processes, architecture design proposals, conversion path options, a high-level project plan with milestones and approximate dates – will be presented to your management and summarized in a report. These documents can serve as a basis for the management’s decisions later on.

There is no one-size-fits-all solu-tion for conversion. SOLHANA’s approach recognizes that priorities vary and each organization needs to determine the right timetable for its specific resourcing and schedu-ling requirements.

Duration of this session: 1 day

Assessment review and closure

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We are happy to contact you and discuss details of your project. You can reach out to use through our website on www.solhana.com or via email info@solhana.com