For many organisations in Southeast Asia we speak to, migrating SAP to the cloud is no longer a matter of if, but when. They know the cost reductions and improved agility of migrating to the cloud are too enticing to pass up, yet they’re still in limbo because the migration itself can feel like a gargantuan task.
The good news is, SUSE has fine-tuned a range of best practices which we know can make your SAP migration journey as smooth as possible.
1. Create the business case for migration
Your technology team may understand why you’re migrating SAP to the cloud, but the broader business needs to be brought along for the ride. Executive sponsorship is crucial for creating organisational buy-in, so it’s important for senior leaders to understand:
- how the project relates to digital transformation objectives
- why it’s the right time in relation to your hardware refresh cycle
- the efficiency and agility opportunities that migration will enable
2. Find the right skill sets
Understandably, no one wants to mess up an essential workload, which is what can make SAP migrations so daunting. Thankfully, you will already possess all of the skill sets and expertise for avoiding costly errors, particularly when you consider you have access to:
- training from cloud vendors
- SAP training and tutorials
- SUSE expertise and training
- your own network of technology service providers with their own experience in SAP migrations
3. Involve everybody in the migration
SAP migrations don’t happen in a vacuum. There will be just as many business decisions that need to be made as there are technical decisions.
There are a variety of consumption models along with considerations for deployment and how to architect. Bring key business decision makers into each stage of the process, and consult widely with your contacts from SAP, SUSE, your cloud vendor, and your other service providers.
4. Don’t forget about Day Two
It’s easy to focus on the migration itself, and the process of getting from A to B. For the migration to be truly successful, it’s also key to think about what happens when the migration is complete.
For instance, you’ll likely have an SAP landscape built on a series of SAP application instances in the cloud, but what tools are you going to use to maintain and patch those instances? Along with having the right tools and technology in place, you also need processes for continuously gathering the latest information from SAP, SUSE, and your cloud vendor to ensure you are maximising performance and minimising inefficiencies.
No one has to go it alone on their journey to the cloud. While migrating on-premise SAP workloads takes an investment of time and resources, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is the ideal platform to help you reduce the risk of service outages, minimise effort during system maintenance, and deploy services faster, both on-premises and in the cloud. Additional offerings include SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching, SUSE Manager as well as SUSE Global Services all of which make up our completion solution for SAP Infrastructures.
Contact SUSE to learn how you can get started on your journey to the cloud today.
About the author
As the Managing Director for SUSE in Southeast Asia, I know our customers demand open technologies that help them drive their business outcomes. I believe the trend of enterprises leveraging open source technology will rise drastically as it allows companies to develop an ecosystem that can advance faster innovation, enabling unprecedented scale, adaptability and additional new features supporting changing trends and customer demands.
This article is sponsored by SUSE
