IBM
By Inhi Cho Suh, general manager, IBM Global Strategic Partnerships
Digital transformation continues to accelerate rapidly. Whether it is making supply chains more resilient, managing exploding ecommerce demands, or tackling escalating cyber threats, the business leaders we speak to all express the same needs — technology platforms that deliver innovation, speed, efficiency, flexibility, and security.
For most enterprises, the cloud is still the key technology driver for digital transformation. It enables flexible new business models, connected collaboration among partners, vendors, and suppliers, and new digital experiences to engage customers and employees. Equally important, cloud costs are flexible based on business demand.
But while cloud adoption continues to rise — with 64 percent of companies surveyed in an IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) report saying they have shifted to more cloud-based business activities during the pandemic — only 25 percent of mission-critical workloads have moved to the cloud.
Why the gap? Because companies need to overcome serious hurdles, including regulations, security, reliability, and control, to move to the cloud. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, especially when it comes to modernizing the applications that are the backbone of their operations, like SAP.
The other key factor creating the gap is that most public cloud offerings are not optimized to migrate mission-critical core applications in phases, where a portion of application workloads will remain on premises, and a portion will move to the cloud — or more often, multiple clouds. SAP clients need a public cloud platform optimized for today’s hybrid cloud reality, as well as access to experienced partners who fully understand the technology and the challenges, from hundreds of previous engagements globally.
A 50-year partnership is making modernization efforts easier
IBM and SAP have a long-tenured partnership, nearly 50 years in the making. The two companies have worked together to help clients manage their most complex, mission-critical workloads, creating more than 200 joint technical innovations, including the use of AI to transform business processes and automate workflows.
SAP technology enables more than 77 percent of all business transactions worldwide, but 80 percent of SAP users are still faced with transforming digitally. Now to help clients accelerate their hybrid cloud journey, IBM and SAP have expanded their partnership to provide an easier way for clients to modernize and meet the new requirements today’s market demands.
For those organizations making the move, many are gravitating toward Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environments. SAP introduced RISE with SAP in early 2021 to access the company’s ERP platform, S/4HANA, bundled with services and cloud and billed as-a-service.
IBM recently introduced BREAKTHROUGH with IBM for RISE with SAP, a premium supplier option to help clients accelerate their journey to SAP S/4HANA. As a premium supplier of RISE with SAP, IBM is the only organization that can provide SAP application consulting, SAP application management services, SAP Technical Managed Services, and IBM Cloud infrastructure all from one vendor.
Businesses can rely on the two leading experts to help with their migration – SAP and IBM. The alternative requires clients to manage multiple vendors, including public cloud providers, cloud managed services providers, SAP application management services providers, SAP consulting and implementation service providers, and security experts. Each additional vendor involved in an ERP transformation project adds complexity and incremental risk. IBM provides the full circle of services, in conjunction with SAP, to reduce the risk associated with a business transformation using RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition.
Clients are also offered the flexibility and choice to migrate SAP solution workloads to the public cloud with the support of deep industry expertise.
IBM Consulting, with more than 38,000 SAP consultants, also brings services and deep industry expertise to help clients run SAP S/4 HANA workloads on IBM Cloud to deliver a more streamlined and secure experience. By providing powerful industry insights to help organizations shift from traditional business models to new service-based models and revenue streams, we’re helping clients adapt to changing customer demands and emerging technologies to succeed in the new service-based economy. Virgin Megastore KSA and Coca Cola European Partners are IBM and SAP clients that have already undertaken their hybrid cloud transformations. For those ready to join them, here are few important considerations to help guide a cloud-driven digital transformation:
- Value-driven assessments define the optimal business case. This offers insights into your Enterprise Process Model, helps develop a governance model to support the implementation strategy, and allows you to intelligently choose the optimal deployment and adoption approach.
- Reference architectures help choose the cloud solution to determine the approach to help accelerate business transformation.
- Advisory services are an approach to innovation that builds differentiated solutions in an agile manner to move SAP S/4HANA to the cloud.
- Business process management — which includes tools, applications, and adoption of intelligent workflows — enables you to maximize the value of S/4HANA.
- Application management supports minor enhancements, DevOps, automation, and continuous innovation.
Digital transformation is complex and takes a highly orchestrated effort and the right ecosystem of business partners, especially when you’re running a large enterprise with decades worth of IT infrastructure. For SAP ERP application users considering the next steps in the journey to hybrid cloud, the time to begin planning is now.
This post was created by IBM with Insider Studios
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