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VINCI Energies: Using Qlik Gold Client to Carry Out a Large-Scale Migration Project

In 2018, VINCI Energies carried out one of the most significant Global S/4HANA migrations. The project was recognized by SAP as one of the most innovative projects of 2018. VINCI Energies also received an SAP Innovation trophy in 2019. Watch this video to find out how this leading company has developed a clear strategy with Gold Client, to carry out a large-scale migration project.

Data is the new Gold for Lenovo’s Strategic Advantage

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Although conventional SAP S/4HANA implementations are a combination of technical migration and business transformation, SAP customers usually approach these projects separately. For many, the move to the cloud is still purely a question of infrastructure. This is a shame, since a combined move to SAP S/4HANA and the cloud offers companies several advantages at once: digitalization of the IT landscape with high innovation potential, new components and shorter workflows. In addition, companies benefit from lower project costs, shorter project durations and fewer system failures during the implementation.

According to the Benchmark Report published by SAPinsider in November 2021, SAP customers mostly focus on costs (46 percent) and SAP S/4HANA Cloud (39 percent). They are currently less interested in the other parts of the Business Process Intelligence program, embedded tools, industry enhancements, SAP BTP and SAP Business Network.

SAP users are taking advantage of the migration to modernize their existing IT landscapes and at the same time prepare themselves for fully digitalized working environments. In addition, by moving to SAP S/4HANA and the cloud, they can combine two strategic transformation projects and reduce the overall workload. Project managers should allow sufficient time for systematic planning and avoid making rash decisions. So what do companies need to consider when they decide to move their systems, data and applications to SAP S/4HANA Cloud?

Gerald Faust, managing director and CEO – Asia Pacific and Middle East, SNP, said, “In moving to the cloud with SAP S/4HANA through RISE with SAP, organisations can redesign their processes leveraging retained historical data to better align to an entirely new business environment. To support this transition, SNP’s packaged solutions provide rapid implementation based on a proven methodology and a predefined scope, combined with clear and predictable implementation without the usual risk. There is no one size-fits-all formula for organisations undergoing a cloud transformation journey, however when a solution is tailored to meet the organisation’s goals the impact is significant.

This is inline with our own learning, as we walk the talk and move to the cloud with RISE with SAP. SNP has chosen to implement SAP S/4HANA® Cloud, private edition on Microsoft Azure. SNP aims to successfully complete the move to the cloud in just two months by the end of April 2022 and the Datavard integration in a total of five months by the end of July 2022.”

Good Planning Is The Key to Success

To develop the ideal SAP S/4HANA Cloud strategy, companies should first identify their own drivers for wanting to use the cloud. Companies want to free themselves from the burden of a large, on-premises data center and find a simpler, scalable alternative that allows them to save costs or respond to unexpected events in an agile manner.

Furthermore, companies have to gain an overview of their current IT landscape: How big is the system? What data and applications are used? Is it possible to move the entire system or only certain parts? Would this even be allowed and should it take place? Based on this information, companies can plan the project carefully and in line with their corporate strategy, decide on the ideal cloud infrastructure, and select a suitable provider.

Another key factor is finding the right model to deploy SAP S/4HANA Cloud as part of RISE with SAP. The software provider offers two models for this purpose: SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition and Public Cloud Edition. Most SAP user companies are interested in the private cloud. It is primarily aimed at medium-sized and large companies that need to adapt SAP S/4HANA to their requirements and utilize enhancements. The well-known hyper scalers Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM and Microsoft operate the SAP systems. The public cloud is aimed at SAP customers who want to use the standard version of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. The cloud solution does not allow for any customizing and is therefore particularly suitable for smaller SAP user companies with less complex processes or for new companies. The advantage is that they can achieve the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO).

Allow Sufficient Time to Prepare

Ideally, companies will lay the groundwork in parallel: Many of our customer projects have shown that it is worth cleaning up the existing SAP landscape before the migration. If companies can reduce the data volume in their systems, they will need less cloud storage at a later date, resulting in considerable cost savings. It is also worth aiming for fewer non-production systems such as development and quality assurance systems. This cost-cutting potential is often overlooked, and it can be leveraged more easily than the costs saved by archiving in the production system, or indeed implemented in addition.

Lower Costs, Less Risk? Absolutely!

The next step for companies is to carefully consider the question of how to realize the migration to SAP S/4HANA Cloud at the technical level. This crucial decision has a significant impact on the success of the project. It is advisable to use transformation software and an automated procedure. This enables companies to migrate data particularly quickly and securely while also avoiding long system downtimes, as it is necessary to stop business processes during the conversion for technical reasons. In particular, for highly customer-oriented companies with continuous operations and those with global operations, it is important to keep system downtimes to a minimum, since they quickly lead to enormous costs. A direct comparison shows how much the downtime can vary depending on the approach: A modern migration approach enables SAP systems to be converted with near-zero downtime, allowing operations to continue largely without disruption. In contrast, the same data migration using a standard approach would take significantly longer than a weekend and render the IT system unavailable throughout this period.

The chosen software solution should also provide companies with a glimpse into the future: How will the planned changes affect their systems? By simulating these changes before the actual migration, companies can minimize costs and risks and always maintain control of their major project.

Learning from Mistakes? Don’t Make Any in the First Place

When complex SAP systems and processes are moved to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, serious errors can sometimes occur. Those who deal with possible pitfalls in advance are clearly at an advantage. For example, it is important for companies to consider the interfaces that exchange information with internal and external communication partners. There are often several thousand of these digital connection points, all of which need to be identified before a migration to SAP S/4HANA Cloud and converted or updated during the project. This is the only way to ensure uninterrupted communication between employees as well as with partners, suppliers and customers. In addition, companies are well advised to set aside sufficient resources for test phases with SAP S/4HANA Cloud. To plan or document a migration properly and to ensure that balance sheets are not distorted, close coordination with auditors is a must, especially when migrating financial systems.

If everything has been considered, well planned and prepared, companies can move to SAP S/4HANA and the cloud quickly and securely while also unlocking the full innovation potential of the new technology.

Regional Contact: Priya Sharma,
Head – Marketing, JAPAC & MEA, SNP Transformations SEA Pte Ltd.

For any questions connect at:
marketing-asia@snpgroup.com or +65 98209905.

This article is sponsored by SNP

The post RISE with SAP to the Cloud — What Companies Need to Consider appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

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

The post How to Ease Your Journey Migrating to the Cloud appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

Singapore, May 3, 2021 – SNP Schneider-Neureither & Partner SE, a world-leading provider of software solutions for digital transformation processes and automated data migrations, has developed a new solution package for moving SAP landscapes to the cloud in a simple and predictable manner. The cloud migration package is based on the data transformation platform CrystalBridge^®, which automates the migration of SAP systems to the cloud, therefore providing a fast and secure move. The package includes all costs that are necessary for a successful data migration – software licenses and consulting services – and the fixed price ensures highly reliable planning. In addition, the package enables a particularly fast move to the cloud thanks to SNP’s flexible, software-based approach: Depending on the complexity and requirements, the time between the performing the assessment and gaining access to the migrated SAP systems in the cloud is often less than six months.

The cloud migration package is designed to map most diverse scenarios even with varying complexities. The package enables a 1:1 migration of SAP landscapes to the cloud (“lift and shift”) along with the necessary SAP upgrades of the ECC systems, operating system and database changes, and even Unicode conversions. The add-ons offered are a selective data migration to the cloud and a migration to SAP S/4HANA in a cloud environment, respectively. In addition, companies have the option to add downtime optimization and the creation of a proof of concept for a test system. If additional functions are required, the package can be supplemented with further services and software modules from SNP. The offer is aimed at both direct customers and partner companies, which can include the package in their offerings.

“Our end-to-end cloud migration package enables customers and partners to move to the cloud quickly, securely and in a highly automated manner with CrystalBridge^®,” says Gerald Faust, Managing Director & CEO, JAPAC, SNP Transformations SEA Pte Ltd. “We are confident that our fixed price package is the ideal solution for every SAP customer in the Asia Pacific Japan and Middle East region as it reduces complexity and enables delivering high business performance at the same time: customers benefit from highly reliable planning and won’t experience any unpleasant surprises during the migration project. With that companies get exactly the security they need to take the step into the cloud and the next step in order to become an intelligent enterprise.”

“Our primary goal in developing the cloud migration package was to provide customers and partners with simplified and risk-free approach” adds Tarik Husain, Vice President, Strategic Sales, JAPAC, SNP Transformations SEA Pte Ltd. “Partners can seamlessly integrate this package into their own offerings to provide users with an optimal end-to-end solution. At the same time, customers can see clear benefits from our unique approach. Many want to go to cloud but are concerned about risk, what interfaces they have, project timelines and even what the real cost benefits are. Our approach overcomes all these challenges. This provides a clear and simple path for moving to the cloud.”

For more information explore:
SNP The Data Transformation Company | SAP Transformation, Automated (snpgroup.com)
To learn more download the Move to Cloud Strategy Paper

About SNP

SNP is a world-leading provider of software for managing complex digital transformation processes. Instead of traditional IT consulting in the ERP environment, SNP offers an automated approach using specially developed software: The Data Transformation Platform CrystalBridge^® and the SNP BLUEFIELD^TM approach allow companies to restructure and modernize their IT landscapes much more quickly and securely as well as migrate to new systems or cloud environments more securely. This gives customers clear qualitative advantages while at the same time reducing their time and costs.

The SNP Group has around 1,400 employees worldwide. The company is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and generated revenues of around EUR 143 million in the 2020 fiscal year. It serves multinational companies in all industries. SNP was established in 1994, went public in 2000, and has been listed in the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since August 2014 (ISIN DE0007203705). Since 2017, the company has been trading as a European company (Societas Europaea/SE).

More information is available at www.snpgroup.com

SNP Contacts:

This article is sponsored by SNP

The post SNP Offers Automated Solution Package for Moving to the Cloud appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

In this article, Matt shares findings, insights and perspectives from the online session and further explores the relevance of SAP data transformation projects in 2021 and beyond.

Without transforming core processes and entrenched mindsets augmented by the modernisation of incumbent and increasingly unwieldy applications, many of us will face continued friction delivering on our increasingly cloud-first, digitally driven data transformation strategies.

The last 12 months have provided a fantastic cultural opportunity to change mindsets around how we work and challenge static practices and investments from the past with all its challenges.

Technology and business leaders in ADAPT’s extensive ANZ research community remain under immense pressure balancing ongoing and unpredictable lockdowns, remote workforce productivity, and increased budgetary scrutiny. While we still face the need to improve operationally and completely rethink how we gather, manage and act on data in our quest to become data-driven organisations and businesses.

Data assets from core ERP, CRM and HR business applications holds a wealth of deep strategic insights that could better connect the organisation and enhance visibility to make critical business decisions and emerge from the current situation smarter and stronger.

This highlights the need to demonstrate how we are leveraging the value from existing investments, modernising core apps, enabling rapid innovation, and leveraging new cloud offerings and pricing models.

“If workplace transformation was the number one digital transformation initiative at the height of the pandemic, 2021 will increasingly be all about data transformation”.

Challenge and solution

ERP at the heart of legacy headaches – cloud makes its mark.

IT and business leaders have consistently told ADAPT they want to invest in technologies that improve business outcomes and operational effectiveness whilst reducing legacy reliance.

During the past two years across all its Edge events, ADAPT has been mapping the progression of cloud. Today we see 32{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of all workloads in the public cloud, increasing to 42{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} in 2022.

Many organisations are not as concerned as they used to be about moving mission-critical workloads, such as ERP into the cloud.

That said, when polling delegates at a recent ADAPT/Fujitsu/SNP webinar, 58{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of attendees were still at the planning stage to migrate SAP workloads to the cloud as illustrated below:

Pre-migration, critical considerations

• Gain a clear understanding of just what is deployed within the organisation.
• Create a risk profile of current assets and workloads.
• Understand what is holding us back from moving these mission-critical workloads to the cloud, and are they founded on fact or legacy mindsets?
• Be clear on where you stand to move forward with the changes required – what is your baseline appetite for change? If it’s too high, determine how it can be lowered.
• Identify the outcomes-based business pre-requisites first, then invest the time in the assessment phase to understand how we can align every decision and step to line up to those business outcomes.
• Look on SAP as a part of the overall application landscape, look for interdependencies and synergies. The assessment phase to meet business outcomes should encompass your entire application landscape and prioritise workloads cloud migration accordingly.
• Governance and compliance have taken on increased focus and attention in Australia since the Financial Services Royal Commission, which served as a wakeup call for all industry sectors. Assess and plan for each use case’s regulatory requirements individually and in their entirety.
• The business case or outcome should always be the driver; the forced migration to move off SAP by 2027 drives users to mistakenly make this another tech project. It should be a strategic, transformative initiative that enables the next phase of business growth in two very distinct phases: Migrate workloads to the cloud & Implement cloud-enabled migration to S/4 HANA.

Major data transformation project drivers in 2021

IT spending remains be conservative and under immense scrutiny, predicating the need to ensure typical investment justification questions are addressed, such as:

• How will it help drive business and employee resilience?
• How will it help improve operational efficiency and effectiveness?
• How will it enable our employees and enhance their overall employee experience?
• How will it help us differentiate our products and services?
• How will it help us optimise and ultimately help us save time, money, and resources?

Many of these areas are driving Australian and New Zealand organisations in their quest to become data-driven organisations. However, we are still hamstrung with disaggregated and unstructured data in ever-increasing volumes.

In a post-pandemic world, resilience, efficiency, employee retention and well-being, differentiated products and services are more critical than ever. So too is the data we need to make the right decisions to deliver on these areas.

No business is immune from this. However, there will be those clear leaders prepared for and willing to take the data transformation plunge and investment, particularly in an environment where mergers, acquisitions and demergers accelerate and act as drivers for these many complex SAP data transformation and rationalisation projects.

Balancing risk with benefits amidst ongoing pandemic fuelled uncertainty

Attracting and retaining the right talent in a post-pandemic world will be a critical challenge and focus for many organisations, particularly as it relates to data, analytics, and areas related to AI, machine learning and cloud migration initiatives.

It is clear; there are not enough people on the planet to meet the increasing demand associated with these areas and to simply “get these jobs done”.

As organisations prioritise investment and associated business outcomes that many of these data and cloud transformation projects relate to, the pressure to act and invest sooner rather than later will only increase.

De-risking transformation is key, ensuring business resilience during the transformation as well as post-implementation, is key. When a Telco in Malaysia, for example, is quoted seven days of downtime associated with an SAP cloud migration initiative, this is simply not good enough.

IT decision-makers need to expect but demand that the impact on their business during such an initiative is minimal. Leadership teams or boards will barely consider hours let alone days of downtime.

Partnering with third-party providers, particularly when we face continued limitations on resource availability due to corporate and government-mandated travel restrictions will be key to success.

Partners and vendors who have the strongest focus and capabilities related to automation are likely better placed to help organisations effectively execute these projects, in this remote and resource-constrained world.

If business downtime is one of the major challenges – how can we mitigate and reduce downtime?

It is standard practice for the cutover manager to come onboard in traditional projects, sometimes as much as halfway through the project.

Involve the business, the cutover manager and key stakeholder early, related to the benefits to be achieved, and potential disruption/change employees will face.

Typically, transformation projects involve, separating your data from the business logic. In other words, in most SAP data migration projects, all the data is loaded and then shifted across in one go.

A best practice approach is to not take the production system down at any stage. Instead, a copy or ‘Rapid Empty Shell’ is created.  The data is then brought across incrementally, pre-determined based on time – perhaps a months’ worth or weeks’ worth at a time. The final stage involves the last few hours, limiting potential downtime to a matter of hours at the most.

ADAPT Perspectives

Most organisations successfully transformed the workplace, the workforce, and their customers during the darkest days of the pandemic. By and large, this was done with existing technology and capabilities – albeit at a scale never imagined.

What we have seen is a willingness to accept change and challenge legacy mindsets and processes. We have a fantastic opportunity to innovate and rapidly transform many of our core, yet entrenched approaches.

In September 2020 over 200 ANZ IT and business leaders from many of the region’s largest organisations told ADAPT they would increase innovation.

As illustrated below, 59{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of organisations told ADAPT they expect increased rates of innovation and a significant increase in associated funding.

Particularly as it relates to products and services being transformed digitally to help them build data-driven organisations and improve operational efficiencies.

A second question posed to delegates during the webinar was designed to understand just which business scenarios were critical to their data transformation efforts in the coming months, as shown below.

The key to working towards success in these scenarios with partners is a common go-to-market approach focused on what the business is seeking to achieve – business first, technology second.

The four key points to consider when looking at any business scenario are:

1. Early engagement is crucial.
2. Having a clear vision – or destination postcard with exact steps to getting there identified.
3. Where do you stand today compared to where you want to get to and is the business on   board?
4. Make sure you have business buy-in and executive sponsorship.

“The pandemic has seen a drastic shift in our thinking related to traditional and long-term supply chains that were stressed and failed in many situations.”

There is increasing carve out and merger and acquisitions, associated with the moving around and re-prioritisation of supply chains.

The move to S4 has been forced on organisations; we all must make that shift; we must start implementing the changes and strategies for that move. Automation can accelerate that move and should be a key consideration as organisations embark on their migration strategy, potentially reducing the move to a matter of months.

While the polling percentages were different when it came to the business scenarios, 50{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} for S/4 HANA and 33{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} for the move to the cloud, they are not mutually exclusive. Most customers should look to move to cloud and S/4 HANA at the same time.

Modernise, rationalise and future proof mission-critical workloads

ERP was created to provide business leaders with a consolidated view of their organisation’s performance. These systems were built around a group of tightly integrated modules so transactions recorded in one part of the business would automatically flow through. For example, a front of house sale would automatically reduce stock in hand in the inventory system.

However, over time they have become inflexible and unwieldy, particularly as ever-increasing amounts of, often unstructured, data has been added to the mix.

If legacy modernisation is a goal for most organisations ADAPT speaks to, data transformation and the ability to change entrenched mindsets is key.

In this next normal of a “post-pandemic” world, flexibility is a non-negotiable across the business spectrum.

“Flexibility and agility are critical to enabling organisations to move quickly in such areas as mergers and acquisitions, restructuring and divesting business units and introducing new product lines.”

Mission-critical workloads that curtail flexibility and our ability to become truly data-driven businesses must be considered ripe for migration to the cloud. We must ensure that we modernise, rationalise, and emerge from the pandemic more agile, nimble, and no longer weighed down by the legacy headaches of yesterday.

This article was written by Matt Boon, Director of Strategic Research at ADAPT and is sponsored by SNP.

The post SAP Data Transformation Projects: How to Get Ready to Meet the Coming Demands of 2021 appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

Heidelberg, February 22, 2021 – Following the successful launch of “Cloud Move for Azure” last year, SNP Schneider-Neureither & Partner SE will deepen its collaboration with Microsoft. The new standalone software component of the SNP data transformation platform CrystalBridge^® was developed in close cooperation with the cloud experts at Microsoft and has already been used in migration projects. This has led to results in a matter of days instead of weeks and therefore accelerated the assessment phase. The results have prompted Microsoft to expand its collaboration with SNP as its Preferred Partner for SAP on Azure migrations. In turn, Microsoft will be SNP’s preferred cloud provider.

Microsoft customers planning to move to the cloud can migrate their SAP systems quickly and with minimal risk using the new Cloud Move for Azure software as part of the highly automated CrystalBridge^® platform while also continuing to benefit from the results of joint development and project work in the future. Looking ahead, the agreement shows that the chosen path is the right one for customers and both partners alike: As part of the agreement, the two companies have therefore concluded far-reaching agreements with the aim of driving co-development, joint go-to-market initiatives, co-selling and delivery as well as leveraging the partner ecosystem for scaling and sustainable growth.

“The fact that Microsoft has chosen us as its Preferred Partner at a global level validates our work and our powerful software products, which we want to use to continuously drive the success of our customers,” says Michael Eberhardt, CEO of SNP. “In return, we chose Microsoft to be our preferred cloud provider because of their long-standing and extensive enterprise customer experience, the trusting collaboration between our organizations in the past few months, and their comprehensive portfolio for digital transformation. Additionally, we see a great level of trust in Microsoft and SNP from customers all over the world, especially in the SAP market. Together with Microsoft, we have set ambitious goals for the next three years and will continue to work together on our cloud migration solution to help Microsoft’s SAP customers throughout the world move to the Azure Cloud. It is an exciting project that we are very much looking forward to.”

Gerald Faust, Managing Director and CEO JAPAC, adds: “Predefined fixed-price packages for the initial Cloud Move for Azure assessments, subsequent proof of concepts, and the migration of SAP workloads will make the customer’s journey transparent in the future as well as shorten the transition period. Accordingly, companies can fully concentrate on getting the maximum benefit from their cloud conversion. The SNP BLUEFIELD approach, which makes it possible to move to Azure and to SAP S/4HANA at the same time, offers them an enormous advantage here. This is because it allows companies to quickly reap all the benefits of new technologies for their business processes.”

João Couto, Vice President for SAP Business Unit at Microsoft, explains: “We see a tremendous market opportunity to support SAP customers in accelerating their transformation journey to SAP S/4HANA and the cloud, and SNP is uniquely positioned to help in precisely this area. As a result, we have now chosen SNP as our Preferred Partner for moving SAP customers to the Azure Cloud quickly and securely. By leveraging SNP’s solutions and capabilities, we can provide our customers with a simplified and accelerated path to SAP S/4HANA on Azure. The integrated approach and close agreement between SAP, SNP and Microsoft provide SAP customers with extremely reliable planning and a highly automated solution, allowing them to focus on the real innovation potential and business opportunities created by SAP RISE, SAP S/4HANA and Azure as an intelligent platform.”

To learn more, download the Strategy Paper: Cloud Move for Azure (snpgroup.com)

About SNP

SNP is a world-leading provider of software for managing complex digital transformation processes. Instead of traditional IT consulting in the ERP environment, SNP offers an automated approach using specially developed software: The Data Transformation Platform CrystalBridge^(R) and the SNP BLUEFIELD^TM approach allow companies to restructure and modernize their IT landscapes much more quickly and securely as well as migrate to new systems or cloud environments more securely. This gives customers clear qualitative advantages while at the same time reducing their time and costs.

The SNP Group has around 1,500 employees worldwide. The company is headquartered in Heidelberg, Germany, and generated preliminary revenues of around EUR 143 million in the 2020 fiscal year. It serves multinational companies in all industries. SNP was established in 1994, went public in 2000, and has been listed in the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since August 2014 (ISIN DE0007203705) and was admitted to the SDAX^® in March 2020. Since 2017, the company has been trading as a European company (Societas Europaea/SE).

More information is available at www.snpgroup.com and SNP Business Partner Microsoft (snpgroup.com)

SNP Contacts:

This article is sponsored by SNP

The post Successful Launch of “Cloud Move for Azure”: SNP Signs Agreement with Microsoft to Expand SAP Cloud Migration Solutions appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

In December 2020, Tech Mahindra, a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting, and business reengineering services and solutions, extended its partnership with SAP as a global strategic service partner to join a select group of consultancies working with the German software enterprise. As part of TechMNxt, the exclusive partnership enables SAP and Tech Mahindra to leverage their strong domain expertise and portfolios, providing customers worldwide increased implementation services, enhanced solution delivery, increased global access, and improved pricing options in support of SAP applications.

As a true reflection of Tech Mahindra’s expertise in SAP, including but not limited to SAP data migration, the Indian multinational technology company has received the SAP Expertise on Google Cloud. The recognition establishes the enterprise’s brand as a certified Google Cloud Platform Partner helping customers accelerate digital transformation by leveraging Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

“Tech Mahindra is honored to have received the SAP Expertise on Google Cloud. Through this accreditation, we can combine Tech Mahindra’s cloud migration expertise and the power of Google Cloud to enable enterprises migrate complex workloads,” said Vivek Gupta, Head, Global Cloud Services, Tech Mahindra.

“The testimony further enhances our Google Cloud capabilities thus strengthening our commitment towards TechMNxt charter and allowing us to help customers enable digital transformation with a special focus on Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence /Machine Learning, and digital workspaces,” added Gupta.

Specialising in SAP Data Migration 

The accreditation was given to Tech Mahindra for demonstrating expertise on end-to-end implementation and migration of SAP environment to GCP, Google’s public cloud computing service platform. The Mahindra Group subsidiary provides comprehensive migration services to the public cloud, minimising the impact to the business while reducing risk to achieve a successful migration including performing a complete SAP HANA or S/4HANA upgrade.

In 2017, SAP and Google forged a strategic partnership that helped extend GCP’s robust set of existing capabilities through jointly developed solutions. The alliance opened the door for SAP flagship products to run on GCP and integrated SAP applications with G Suite.

Nina Harding, Chief of Global Partner Programs & Strategy at Google Cloud stated:

“We’re excited to recognise Tech Mahindra with this SAP Expertise, and look forward to working together to help customers migrate and manage their most critical enterprise workloads on Google Cloud.” 

Tech Mahindra’s customer-centric TechMNxt charter focuses on providing digital solutions while enhancing customer experience through new-age technologies. In line with this charter, having expertise in the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program highlights Tech Mahindra’s goal of meeting customers’ dynamic needs with technical proficiency and proven success.

As a Google Cloud Partner, Tech Mahindra has over 1000 trained resources and has also built a dedicated Google Cloud Practice which includes consulting services for assessing the migration of workloads, including SAP, to Google Cloud; managed services for providing ongoing services and domain solutions based on next-generation technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML). 

The post Tech Mahindra Recognised for SAP Data Migration on Google Cloud appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.

Director of Enterprise Resource Planning at CPWD, Satyendra P. Gupta commented during a live streaming session with SiliconANGLE Media on the selection of Tech Mahindra,

“Tech Mahindra has started the implementation process we are in. More than four months have passed since then, and we have covered a lot. The whole objective of this implementation is all our activities will be done on this [new] ERP system.”

He adds that he is expecting the workflow efficiency of the CPWD unit to improve significantly with the implementation of the new ERP cloud system. He adds,

“By the click of the button, we will be able to get all the inputs, all the reports with what is going on across the country. So, it is going to be really a transformation to the working of the department, and, as a whole, the entire public work center of the country. Everybody is going to benefit, not only the Central Public Works Department but all of our stakeholders.”

The government of India has been actively working on the country’s growth and development through digital transformation. Several upgrades in the digital infrastructure, the introduction of online services for citizens, and developing a business-friendly ecosystem have been implemented recently—highlighting the country’s dedication to setting an example for other developing countries in leveraging technology.

To aid the country’s goals and vision, the CPWD put forward this project to implement an ERP cloud system in October last year. As India’s principal engineering organization, the government unit is set to execute construction, maintenance, and beautification work for the central government across the country. According to a report, the ERP cloud system project has an estimated cost of Rs 180 crore.

Tech Mahindra’s ERP Cloud System Implementation Plans

According to Gautam Chatterje, Sales Leader for India Public Sector at Tech Mahindra, the CPWD wanted to automate multiple applications and processes to streamline the government unit’s workflow across the country. To do this, the systems integrator brought in SAP for the SAP HANA implementation. He said SAP HANA will be the primary business application for the CPWD’s new ERP cloud system.

This, along with several other database applications such as eTendering, third-party tools for performance testing, management and monitoring, as well as the complete infrastructure and platform will be hosted to the cloud on the AWS platform.

Chatterje explains,

“We engaged AWS from the beginning itself—the AWS team and the SAP team. And we had multiple interactions with the customer. We understood the challenges. We understood the number of users, number of iterations, number of redundancy, number of high availability they will require. Along with AWS and SAP, all three of us together have the complete solutions, architecture so that overall impact comes to CPWD as the customer—the ultimate results and the business output they deserve.”

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The Google Cloud partnered with system integrators and launched Lighthouse early this year. The Lighthouse is a program that helps streamline the SAP journey of the customers to the cloud. Lighthouse was evolved; hence, the coming of the Cloud Acceleration Program.

The Cloud Acceleration Program provides Google Cloud and partners’ customers with solutions that will help simplify their cloud migration process.

Customers who chose to be a part of the Cloud Acceleration Program will get many benefits which include accelerators, centres of excellence dedicated to SAP on the GCP, new architecture templates, partner-led assessment services, prototyping, and SAP-focused support. Additionally, cloud technology providers and independent software vendors (ISVs) will also participate in the program and will offer services such as code remediation assistance, near-zero-downtime migrations, and others.

Partners’ contributions for the SAP to cloud migration

Global services partners will also support the launch of the Cloud Acceleration Program. These partners include Accenture, Atos, Deloitte and HCL – each with its business units that cater specifically to Google Cloud to help customers in migrating their key applications and workloads to Google Cloud. Other partners such as Capgemini, DXC Technologies, Infosys, NTT, TCS, and Wipro will also help the global services partners in providing solutions that will simplify the migration process. Google Cloud technology provider partners such as Datavard, Gekkobrain, SNP Group, SpringML, and others, are also participating in the program.

Here are all the solutions made available by the partners:

Deloitte, an award-winning SAP partner, built a business unit from that launched a portfolio of Google Cloud-enabled SAP end-to-end cloud services called “Reimagine Everything… Anywhere.” The portfolio included industry-based leading practices on Google Cloud that will help accelerate SAP S/4 transformation. It will help SAP S/4 transformation by including industry-based leading practices made available on Google cloud. An SAP-specific API library on Apigee for SAP-to-anywhere integration was also added. Furthermore, they have also expanded their platform to welcome BigQuery and TensorFlow.

Accenture, a multinational professional services company, created and offered a solution that will allow customers to migrate their older data into cost-efficient data stores such as BigQuery. Customers are benefited from the solution because this will help reduce their SAP HANA footprint and the related infrastructure costs. Also, Accenture is creating machine learning-based applications that will help augment SAP on Google Cloud deployments.

Atos, a multinational IT service and consulting company, created a “Quick Cloud Start” program. This program lets them move the customer’s SAP environment to the Google Cloud in a timespan of less than four weeks. Also, the application will incorporate several Google Cloud-based machine learning (ML) offerings that will speed up the automation and innovation. This will also ensure SAP connectors for seamless integration of SAP data to BigQuery.

Datavard, a Germany-based software company, provided solutions that will assist in migrating data from SAP to BigQuery, archive SAP data, reports and decommission purposes.

Gekkobrain, a software company based in Denmark, offers industry-leading code remediation capabilities. These capabilities automatically clean up more than 90{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of the custom code, which is a critical part of the SAP migrations.

NTT created an industry template for manufacturing, automotive or automotive supply. They have also created a Life Sciences Platform-as-a-Service offering which will be launched on Google Cloud.

SNP has its own CrystalBridge platform. This platform allows customers to select applications, data, and workloads to migrate to the cloud with almost no downtime. They offer customers alternatives to brownfield or greenfield S/4HANA migration options.

Spring ML build smart workflows for SAP users using Google Cloud. It also includes unique offerings on document processing, sales forecasting and other preventive maintenance services which lets SAP users innovate quickly on the Google Cloud.

Wipro developed SAP workload migration framework named ‘Safe Passage to GCP.’ This framework provides low-risk yet accelerated and less disruptive ways to migrate on the Google cloud platform. It is expected to help customers with automated discovery, assessment, and migration as well as the maintenance of SAP landscapes on the cloud.

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