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.

As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the uncertainties and turmoil, positive changes have also occurred. These include the rapid increase in digital technology adoption and the emergence of opportunities for employees to upskill and reskill. Business processes are improving in unprecedented ways as leaders strategize and step up in response to business disruptions.

In an effort to help organizations meet the new challenges brought on by these changes, SAP announced a new and improved SAP Training and Training Adoption portfolio of online courses and training. The enhanced platform will equip SAP customers, partners and their users with the right knowledge and skills to successfully implement and use SAP products and services, and ultimately achieve their digital transformation goals.

Last month, SAP India also unveiled its Global Bharat program, designed to enable Indian MSMEs become globally competitive by equipping them with digital technologies. The program includes providing open access to SAP India’s Code Unnati, a coveted Golden Peacock Award-winning digital skilling initiative.

These digital learning solutions aim to help employees adapt to new working environments and enable businesses to stay ahead of the competition by creating a culture of continuous learning that keeps pace with technological advances.

Digital Learning Solutions for a More Agile Workforce

SAP Training and Adoption

SAP’s portfolio of online courses and training is designed to facilitate software adoption and use of SAP technology. It covers a full range of SAP products, solutions, and technologies that intends to accelerate productivity and performance with customized training direct from SAP product experts—all while providing employees with the flexibility to learn at their own pace.

Eva Zauke, SAP SE Chief Knowledge Officer, said,

“Since each of today’s and tomorrows’ trainees learns differently, and because learning topics and technologies will continue to grow and evolve, SAP Training and Adoption is focused on helping customers and partners not only learn about latest innovations but also apply new skills – adopt them into the way they work – so that they are best prepared for their future success.”

The learner-centered and customized courses enable greater personal success for employees through skills development and promote future business innovations. Expert-led training is delivered through live and interactive classroom instruction in virtual, on-site or hybrid environments, and include intuitive learning simulations. The platform also offers the opportunity for certification—a widely recognized accreditation of excellence for SAP professionals.

Some SAP customers and partners who found success using the SAP Training and Adoption portfolio include:

• Dimension Data, a company specializing in information technology services based in Johannesburg, South Africa. The company was able to efficiently create and deploy training materials for over 28,000 employees in 46 countries.
• Global Pinnacle Award Winning SAP Platinum Partner, itelligence, introduced SAP Enable Now to allow consultants to complete training courses at their own pace without having to travel to a training center.
• ROFF, a leading SAP Partner based in Portugal implemented SAP Learning Hub to minimize training costs while ensuring that consultants are up to date on changing requirements and empowered to maximize their SAP software skills.

SAP India’s Code Unnati

In India, MSMEs will have access to Code Unnati’s 240 courses on Digital Financial, Soft Skills, Productivity Technologies that will digitally skill the workforce and adapt to the new working environments. The curated courses are available through a mobile application for people to access via their android smartphone devices.

Code Unnati was launched in June 2017. Aimed at fostering digital inclusion in India, this collaborative effort between SAP, Corporate CSRs and Non-profit organizations has already trained over 1 million youth with the help of 1500 physical training centers across the country.

The post Digital Learning Solutions from SAP to Accelerate Digital Transformation appeared first on InsideSAP Asia.