Which public cloud must I move my SAP applications to - AWS/Azure/Google Cloud ?

Which public cloud must I move my SAP applications to - AWS/Azure/Google Cloud ?

As a decision maker which cloud should I choose to move my SAP applications to?

Hopefully this blog will help assist you in that decision-making process to add to your own company specific analysis.

Disclaimer:

The analysis below is by no means exhaustive; addressing all use case for all companies in all industries but some data points/perspectives in your individual analysis of your company’s use case of migrating SAP on premise application to the public cloud.

Background:

I am assuming your company is a SAP shop with numerous SAP applications running your core operations like Manufacturing and/or Finance and/or HR/SCM/CRM/PLM etc.

Pointers to help decided between the 3 cloud providers:

All these 3 public cloud providers have their own USPs; AWS as the leader with the most breadth of features & functions, Microsoft Azure with Productivity suite Office 365 and myriad of Microsoft technologies that existing most companies (SQL DB, Active Directory, .Net applications etc.), Google Cloud with its Analytics, AI services, G suite.

If we consider the 3-layer stack of top to bottom; SaaS, PaaS & IaaS; IaaS is almost a commodity in terms of price, storage capacity, compute power. There is hardly anything to differentiate the 3 vendors although they differ on prices (with all the price wars) at the IaaS layer.

So we proceed to the PaaS layer which is where the real battle of differentiation belongs. SAP’s Cloud applications are certified to run on all 3 PaaS platforms but based on what is your company’s top 3 goals of moving SAP to the cloud will help determine which cloud provider will be the best vendor.

PAAS comparison of AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud

Which of these 3 PAAS complements SAP’s own Cloud Foundry based PAAS SCP (SAP Cloud Platform)?

For example; if your company wants its SAP applications working with G suite, it’s a no brainer to go with Google Cloud and same applies for SAP with Microsoft Office to go with MS Azure. But would you decide to move something as core as a SAP application to GCP or Azure just based on your company’s usage of MS Office of G suite? Something for the IT leadership to think hard and deep.

As a general thumb rule; what are the top 3 priorities for your business to meet their goals (short & long) should help decide the vendor or vendors. Your company might decide on a multi-vendor approach for all applications but not necessarily for SAP as a technology.

All the 3 vendors are growing their global reach & functionality as of the writing of this blog but as of today if your company is looking for a global reach because of your operations worldwide that could be a differentiating factor in favor of the vendor with most availability zones geographically.

Another deciding factor could be if something as core as IOT or Analytics or AI (Artificial Intelligence) is very critical for your operations, that could be a deciding factor in favor of the vendor who offers the most depth and breadth of that technology or service.  Finally looking ahead one to three to five years where your business is heading in terms of products & services (a general roadmap); the vendor who can add most value in your industry/products space now and into the near future is the one who should get the highest grade.

None of the 3 vendors would have 10/10 in all the possible services; so it’s possible that a company might have multi-cloud vendors; one vendor for IOT services, another for AI/machine learning services etc. It goes without saying it is better to have lesser vendors in terms of overall managing the vendors during issue resolutions and overall manageability. But is also helpful to have more than one vendor for price and overall negotiations in terms of customer responsiveness and keeping the vendor on their toes. This was a digression from our topic which was more on SAP and a public cloud vendor/s.

Since this blog is about SAP applications on a public cloud I conclude for now that SAP applications on a single vendor seems a better option than different SAP applications distributed across different vendors. This could change due to the very nature of cloud and the rapid changes it brings; it could be a case of a best of breed vendors doing various SAP applications based on their strengths but not in the near future.

Watch out more updates to this topic …………………..