S/4HANA Cloud is SAP’s SaaS variation of its following-era ERP platform.
The character of SaaS software program allows it to be updated regularly, and S/4HANA Cloud follows a quarterly release agenda, with new options added in just about every release.
SAP does not supply certain figures on how lots of prospects subscribe to S/4HANA Cloud, but it statements that the number of consumers is expanding. The most current variation — SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2008 — went dwell at the starting of August, with new options for job-based mostly earnings recognition, supply chain desire inventory administration and billing for qualified products and services.
In this Q&A, Jan Gilg, SAP president of S/4HANA, discusses the latest condition of S/4HANA Cloud adoption. The COVID-19 disruption was a component in the most current release, as development teams experienced to negotiate the new fact of remote or household perform. This did not have an effect on the release roadmap, Gilg mentioned, and all the updates that ended up promised ended up included in the release of S/4HANA Cloud 2008.
What’s the latest status of S/4HANA Cloud adoption? Have there been considerable new buyer wins?
Jan Gilg: Following Q2, we are now at extra than fourteen,600 S/4HANA certified prospects and seven,four hundred are dwell. That’s a combine involving on premises and cloud. We do not split out the figures, but we see considerable increase in the number of cloud prospects, and I believe that also all through COVID now, there is certainly a obvious change towards private cloud, but also community cloud is expanding.
Is there better desire in the SaaS S/4HANA Cloud for the reason that of COVID-19?
Jan Gilg
Gilg: A person fascinating matter that we’ve found is that usage actually went up for existing prospects in the cloud all through COVID. We are not sure why that was, but men and women are performing from household and logging in to the system extra than ever. We are observing a lot of inquiries in cloud in typical. Initial, from a business perspective, prospects are understandably shying away from large upfront commitments suitable now and they are seeking extra for a subscription model. So that is surely the dominant model at the second that we’re observing.
On the specialized side, the promise of quick implementation and standardization is surely attractive. It really is specially attractive for internet-new prospects that are starting from scratch and want to search into a SaaS remedy. For the set up base, it is really however on the fence for the reason that of customizations that they have. Typically, they don’t want to begin the comprehensive transformation nevertheless, but they want to standardize [on the cloud] at some position in time. There is certainly also a little bit of a divide here where by set up prospects are deciding upon private cloud while internet-new are likely community cloud.
How are set up prospects deploying S/4HANA? Are they entirely replacing on-premises programs or probably working with S/4HANA Cloud in hybrid environments?
Gilg: We see all different situations, frankly. We see a lot of our bigger prospects like Colgate and other individuals search into those kind of subsidiary or hybrid situations, where by you operate either a subsidiary or probably a certain M&A [obtained organization] on the cloud. We see that pretty a bit, but we also see that mostly higher midmarket businesses go with the total system into SaaS. If you speak about the Fortune five hundred or Fortune one thousand businesses, most of them are however seeking into private cloud and on-premises set ups.
What’s the breakdown of deployments that are community cloud versus private cloud?
Gilg: Largely, the set up base is focusing on private clouds, and we don’t see as a lot internet-new likely into private cloud. That actually matches what we see from analysts that the market place is obviously likely into the SaaS cloud and that is what we see when we speak to new prospects and some of the quick progress businesses. They’re all seeking into entirely SaaS ERP answers. In our set up base, there is certainly pretty some desire in the private cloud, but they usually also think about doing this probably for a section of their organization and take the chance to retain a portion community but retain the core in a private cloud. At the close of the working day, it is really all about the organization price. The pure specialized conversion is usually a little something that is not more than enough and then businesses are seeking for the low-hanging fruit and where by they can leverage and capture price suitable away by doing this go, even though it may well not be a comprehensive go into SaaS.
How is S/4HANA Cloud evaluating with the opposition, like Oracle Cloud and other individuals?
Gilg: From my perspective, Oracle Cloud is seriously the primary competitor in terms of the breadth of what it provides. We just observed the IDC MarketScape occur out and we’ve been quite a lot head-to-head with them in the chief quadrant from a capacity perspective. It really is incredibly shut from my position of perspective. I don’t know Oracle in element, but from what I hear speaking to prospects and so on, I think it is really incredibly similar. Then you have businesses like Workday that are incredibly sturdy in HR. They’re getting into finance, which is seriously extra like what we call the admin ERP or monetarily driven ERP area. But I believe that we have superior operation in finance, and via the integration into SAP SuccessFactors, I believe that we have a seriously sturdy proposition now in combining those. It really is however technically — and almost certainly commercially — two different answers, but they have been built-in close to close from the consumer encounter all the way down to the specialized stage. We carry on to perform on that, and in the cloud, I can see that this could be offered as one particular remedy at some position in time, especially combining HR with SuccessFactors and S/4HANA Cloud.
The previous variation of S/4HANA Cloud included the integration of Qualtrics. Will this carry on now that SAP has made the decision to spin Qualtrics off?
Gilg: Certainly, it is really surely likely to carry on and especially for what it did in terms of products encounter for S/4HANA by itself. We are collecting suggestions for S/4HANA Cloud from what our prospects and the implementation associates ship us. What we have carried out internally is to blend that with usage data, which we are collecting in any case from our cloud programs, and designed some quite fascinating correlations there. For example, we can see the correlation involving suggestions that was sent in and integrate particular events in the lifecycle, no matter whether it is really an upgrade or no matter whether it is really a number of concerns like a better volume of tickets. We have started to create some correlation here and products administration is actively seeking into that. So, we are seriously working with [Qualtrics] as a device and it is really undoubtedly a little something we want to also make offered to prospects. On leading of that, we’ve designed a full sequence of use circumstances that we want to embed in the products by itself and ship to the buyer, not only for them to give suggestions on S/4HANA Cloud, but also for them to leverage it in their organization. That will carry on despite the announcement. We have quite a lot aligned our roadmaps with Qualtrics together, and we’re likely to carry on marching down this route, which is quite promising.