SAP’s “Hybrid” Cloud via RISE with SAP. Yep, we got one of those, bet ya didn’t know. 3-minute read…

[j_zarb]

Gartner defines Hybrid Cloud Computing as “…policy-based and coordinated service provisioning, use and management across a mixture of internal and external cloud services.”  You can view Gartner’s glossary of terms here https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/hybrid-cloud-computing.

I like that definition, a mixture of internal and external cloud services.  Of course, by internal Gartner means within a customer’s data center.  By external they mean – outside a customer’s data center, like a public cloud hyperscaler, for instance.

From the SAP customer community, we know that 80% of DSAG members and 51% of ASUG members are deploying SAP S/4HANA on premises or in a private cloud[1].  And according to IDC, up to 68% of SAP workloads will stay on premises in the United States, especially large customers[2].

For those customers, a hybrid solution from SAP may make the most sense.  Bet ya didn’t know SAP has a hybrid solution for our RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition offering. Well, we do.

It goes by the stylish name RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, customer data center option.  Ok, I guess it depends on your style… Let’s just call it “CDC” for customer data center; which is the hybridization of our strategic cloud solution, RISE with SAP.

It’s also the market’s best kept secret.

But hey, now you know – SAP has a hybrid cloud solution for RISE with SAP, where you can run SAP S/4HANA as a cloud service from your data center; while accessing SAP BTP and SAP Signavio, and all the other wonderful innovative RISE components from the public cloud – aka a mixture of internal and external cloud services.  You can learn more about CDC here.

SAP’s strategic “hybrid” offering RISE with SAP, deployable in a Customer Data Center, is specifically designed to:

1. Secure an SAP cloud infrastructure and platform in a customer data center, that is backed by SAP, managed by SAP, and guaranteed to perform by SAP via an SAP Service Level Agreement (SLA).


2. Empower customers who want to run in their data center (on-premises) and stay in lockstep with SAP’s cloud innovation agenda, including ML/AI (Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence), LLMS (large language models), etc.


3. Meet the needs of challenging industry regulatory compliance topics which may prevent running SAP in a public shared hyperscaler (utilities, public sector, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, aerospace & defense, etc.), you get the drift.


4. Address the data sovereignty needs of customers, governments, and industry participants to keep their payload data inside their country, governed by the laws of their country.


5. Provide a powerful and novel approach to address the desire to embrace a cloud OpEx model, while benefiting from a high-performance dedicated system with low latency.


6. Resell an extraordinary RISE with SAP platform by SAP’s managed service provider and telecommunications partners, enabling them to become SAP partner managed cloud partners for RISE with SAP, servicing our mutual customers from the partner’s or customer’s own data center.

Here’s the kicker, we also have a Big Data solution that works as a “Database as a Service” or DBaaS; it’s architected for petabytes and doesn’t require any SAP applications – you bring the workload.  Yep, it runs out of your data center too!  Bet ya never heard of that one either…  Uhg, we’ll save that for a future Blog…

Joseph Zarb

Head of RISE with SAP – Customer Data Center

SAP RISE Global GTM Execution

10 Hudson Yards, 51st Floor, New York NY 10001 USA

j.zarb@sap.com

[1] ASUG and DSAG: Insights on SAP Cloud Solutions and RISE with SAP, August 2, 2021

[2] IDC Perspective: Workload Repatriation - An Integral Part of Cloud Migration Journeys

[Boletu23]

Thanks Joseph for sharing this and if you come to think of it, the needs of Governments or companies in the regulated industries was always going to be a sticky point, but  this Rise with SAP Hana Cloud Private Edition -CDS options provides a Win-Win for both SAP and all the related stakeholders.

 

 

[j_zarb]

Completely agree.  Our original thesis was: Regulated Industries, Public Sector, Pharma, Healthcare, Aerospace & Defense, Telecom (many view hyperscalers as encroaching on their co-lo services), Banking - finance - securities, Insurance...  But we are wining customers in manufacturing as well, where customers are concerned with Latency and/or outages due to communication truncs between their operations and a remote hyperscaler....

[arun_sitaraman]

Thanks Joe!

This private cloud can address the needs of a specific market that need to transform to the cloud in their own data centers, besides disrupting competition that has similar offerings. The unified approach also allows customers the flexibility to cohabitate different workloads in a common infrastructure.

[kristina_jonsson]

Thank you for sharing this Joseph, really interesting 🙂

Who is taking care of the operation in 'RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, customer data center option', SAP or can the customer be responsible for all operation as in an on-prem S/4 but with the difference that the installation is more of a "appliance" type?

[j_zarb]

Hey Kristina, great question - thanks for asking.  The contract is between SAP and the customer, so there is a single service level agreement (SLA), statement of work (SOW), recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO).  However, the delivery is a shared model.  Customers CAN NOT own or operate the infrastructure or platform; them may implement and run the SAP S/4HANA applications from a functional point of view (management, implementation, customization, configuration, integration), but not the infrastructure and platform.  Delivery is nearly identical to our public cloud hyperscaler deployments with the exception of SAP consuming IaaS from GCP, Azure, or AWS we consume it from Lenovo, HPE, or Dell.  The Customer has the added responsibility to deliver space, heating and cooling, physical security, and power....  Hope this helps...

[kristina_jonsson]

Hi Joseph, okay then I understand the concept.

Thank you very much for clarifying 🙂

Have a great day!

[jim_loiacono]

Thanks Joe. When SAP included the words "Customer Data Center" in the name of the offering, is this offering compatible with third party colocation datacenters as well as customer-owned datacenters?

[j_zarb]

Thanks Jim.  The approach from SAP is the customer is "responsible" and must fund the data center.  It can be owned and operated or a co-location facility, as long as the customer is the responsible party for the space we will use/share.  SAP will not contract the space on behalf of the customer.  Additionally, we run a "data center workshop" prior to contracting with the customer to assure they can provide us with power, heating, cooling, space, security, and connectivity akin to a Tier-3 data center (just about is good enough).  Hope this helps.