After all, the biggest bang for SAP migration is its cloud self. The current cloud has more than one competition, so what makes SAP stand alone? High cross-platform integration, multi-tenancy, simplified business processes, and many other features that simplify and secure your SAP system. However, holding you back from cloud SAP migration?
First, we must define what cloud migration is all about. Cloud migration is a process of migrating your SAP system to a new hosted public cloud platform. This process can be done in phases or can be a continuous migration process moving from on premise to on premise or vice versa. In essence, SAP is moving into the cloud to make it easier to process, access, and visualize data in any enterprise application, regardless of whether that application is on premises or in the cloud.
In most cases, the main benefits of SAP cloud migration are improving scalability and reducing costs. Scalability refers to the ability to adjust costs as your business needs change. Decreasing costs and increasing flexibility is a common result of SAP migration. Let’s look at the three stages of scalability to better understand the benefits of SAP migration:
The first benefit of migrating to the cloud is a simple one: more flexibility. In a vertical strategy, you are forced to maintain all your data and infrastructure in-house. You cannot move them to the clouds without incurring additional costs. However, in a horizontal strategy, you can easily migrate your applications and data to the cloud with little to no added costs. Both horizontal and vertical strategies have significant benefits to your bottom line, but the former can be more flexible depending on your business needs.
The second benefit of SAP migration to the public cloud is scalability. SAP ERP is a comprehensive database system, designed for large and midsize organizations. It contains applications from all the different departments in an organization, including finance, human resources, marketing, supply chain, manufacturing, and IT. These systems contain data that could potentially grow uncontrollably, especially during the first few years after implementation. Migration to the public cloud platform lowers the risk associated with such a large data influx and allows you to easily adjust to future needs.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is cost reduction. SAP ERP software is a costly solution for companies that implement it. It is not a system that is easy to replace. Large investments are needed to deploy it and train employees on its use. If your company cannot afford such an investment, you are better off using the free or low-cost alternatives available for SAP migration to the public cloud, such as Jira or Sugar. Even if your company is able to afford such investments, it will still achieve scalability and cost reduction by migrating to the open source Joomla CMS.