SAP retools its cloud-based ERP to ease migrations

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SAP introduced five line-of-business software bundles to simplify migrations to S/4HANA cloud-based ERP, the company said Tuesday at its annual SAP Sapphire conference.
The Business Suite packages are customized for finance, supply chain, human resources, procurement and customer experience. Each bundle integrates the S/4HANA ERP system with the SAP Business Data Cloud analytics platform, SAP Business AI tools and the SAP Business Technology Platform control plane, the company said in the announcement.
The move marks a shift in strategy as the company moves closer to ending mainstream support for its on-premises ERP Central Component systems in 2027. 'This is a massive simplification,' Jan Gilg, chief revenue officer and president, SAP Americas and Global Business Suite, told CIO Dive. 'It's no longer the customer's job to integrate those things together anymore.'
SAP's singular focus on moving its massive ECC base to S/4HANA has evolved into a multipronged effort to lure customers to the cloud.
In January, the company extended business continuity support for some customers who are planning a migration to 2033. SAP partnered with Databricks to deliver the Business Data Cloud analytics platform the following month.
Last year, SAP added migration credits to the RISE with SAP incentive program, armed its Joule AI assistant with agentic tools and rolled out industry-tailored integrations for manufacturing and retail businesses. To help ease cloud transitions, CEO Christian Klein pledged to provide a dedicated enterprise architect to every RISE customer in July 2024.
'For a lot of our installed-base customers, especially the large customers, it's really difficult to move core ERP in one step to a full SaaS model,' Gilg said. 'Often they have customizations from decades ago.'
Incrementally untangling accumulated technical debt through smaller, line-of-business migrations is an easier lift, he added.
IT services firm Kyndryl prioritized the finance function to ease an 18-month RISE with SAP migration as it decoupled its tech stack from former parent company IBM. Kyndryl has since built a RISE consulting practice around the experience.
'If you peel back the onion and you look into the finance premium package, you will see it's basically an administrative ERP,' Gilg said. 'You have core finance capabilities, operational procurement, sales order management, project management, Sales Cloud and Concur for travel and expense entitlements — everything a company that's not manufacturing anything needs to run their core processes.'
As SAP rolls out the bundled offerings, it is also severing the RISE migration framework from SaaS-based ERP products.
'You cannot buy RISE anymore,' Gilg said. 'We really look at RISE as the methodology. What you buy is either the SAP Cloud ERP private package or you buy those business suite packages.'
The terminology can be confusing, Gilg acknowledged. S/4HANA Private Cloud runs on public cloud infrastructure, but SAP is also helping customers with a large installed base shift from ECC to S/4HANA via a hybrid private cloud option that leads to public cloud.
'This is really a change that we have done this year, which I believe will take us some time to communicate,' Gilg said. 'We look at it as an alternative for those who either don't want to go all SaaS or cannot go all SaaS. Once customers are in an S/4HANA on-premises system, to move them to cloud is more or less a technical task.'

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