As businesses start to adopt SAP S/4HANA Cloud, either as a new implementation or as part of SAP RISE, they should carefully consider their TMS (Technical Managed Service) and AMS (Application Managed Service) requirements. Businesses need to assess the gap between what SAP provides, and their own in-house skills. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition may have the feel of a typical SaaS product, but it still has the management overhead associated with running a large ERP system.

The predefined and mandated upgrade schedule, which cannot be changed, must be managed around a company’s operations and workflows. Furthermore, businesses require bespoke monitoring solutions over and above those offered by SAP to ensure the hosting Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are not just met but reflect the company’s unique needs and key performance indicators.

If companies are to maximise their investment in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, it is vital they understand the nuanced roles and responsibilities that come with implementing and managing SAP RISE, and have a credible partner who can guide them through this new complex support landscape. As Ross Hamilton discusses, SAP support partners must raise their game and provide service offerings and tools to support customers with new S/4HANA Cloud and RISE with SAP solutions…

Changing Roles and Responsibilities in the Cloud

The move to the cloud is gaining pace for SAP customers. The benefits are compelling, not least the chance to quickly leverage innovation, but this is a very significant operational change and one that requires new thinking across the board. With growing numbers now moving to the implementation phase for their migration to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, it is vital that companies understand the new roles and responsibilities across the IT ecosystem.

At face value, the transition looks straightforward. It looks like SAP take responsibility for the platform and support of the S/4HANA solution, including regular mandated updates that ensure every business is up to date. It is not necessarily that simple, however, as SAP’s 38-page Responsibility Matrix outlining what the service includes as well as what it doesn’t – attests.

For the vast majority of organisations, SAP S/4HANA is just one component of an extremely wide and complex technical environment. From integrations to other systems, to business specific user management processes, it is vital to understand where SAP’s role ends and, critically, determine who is responsible for other aspects of both TMS and AMS requirements.

TMS and AMS in the Cloud

Today, organisations either have a TMS and/or AMS contract with an SAP partner or, less frequently, a dedicated in-house team, responsible for applications, the servers, system monitoring, user management, and connectivity between systems. This resource is key to achieving seamless IT delivery, not only monitoring and managing business processes spanning different systems and infrastructures but also ensuring security certificates are up to date and overseeing user management processes such as segregation of duties, among other things.

Under a cloud implementation model, the TMS requirements are different, but they still exist. Who is monitoring and managing the cross-business processes outside the SAP environment? Who is managing the user access model, ensuring segregation of duties and organisational compliance?  Who ensures system integration remains secure, in an increasingly changing security space? How can a business put in place the right approach to manage SAP’s rigid predefined scheduling options to avoid affecting core workflow and business processes? These tasks are relevant for both implementation, and on-going support.

Essentially, while the move to the cloud inevitably shifts some elements of technical support onto the vendor, in this case SAP, there will always be bespoke and company specific work that cannot be standardised – and businesses need to factor that into any S/4HANA planning.

Managing SAP as a Vendor

Every business will also need a way to manage SAP as a service provider. Is the S/4HANA Cloud performance and uptime hitting the agreed SLA? Are agreed patches being delivered on time? The SAP support team will undertake a lot of tasks, but these have to be requested and the timeline is likely to be longer than expected, especially for a company used to the quicker response of a long-term SAP partner supporting a familiar on premise set up.

Furthermore, the ability to monitor performance in detail is essential to enable any business to negotiate and manage its SAP relationship. Monitoring not only ensures adherence to SLAs but also enables proactive identification and resolution of potential issues, thereby safeguarding the continuity of business operations and maintaining high levels of satisfaction.

As a result, however, this creates another potential area of contention as managing SAP as a supplier is a requirement of the application support services. It is therefore imperative to put in place a dedicated support system – in house or third party – to ensure independent oversight and business specific control.

Dedicated Expertise

Essentially, there is an added layer to the delivery of TMS and AMS now. Some tasks are the responsibility of SAP and cannot be handled by anyone else, which means potential delays have to be avoided by adopting a very proactive approach. SAP partners that have already garnered significant experience in delivering S/4HANA Cloud deployments have discovered the need to factor in additional time to achieve vital tasks – such as manging compulsory system upgrades – to avoid expensive business interruption.

In addition, it is important to understand the wider implications of the updates to operating systems, databases and security.  These are applied by SAP, but a schedule needs to be agreed and more often than not, there is no set, automated timeline. Each change demands a separate request – something, again that is manageable but requires knowledge, planning and dedicated resources.

Furthermore, it is also essential to recognise the potential impact of upgrades on the rest of the IT ecosystem. SAP will schedule mandated upgrades for low demand times – such as 3am on a Sunday – which will minimise potential business interruption. But does that clash with routine data warehouse uploads for example and, if so, what happens to the essential business reports on Monday morning if that upload is not rescheduled? What about the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) linking S/4HANA to a raft of essential systems? Each time SAP undertakes a mandatory update, it is vital to check if any APIs have been deprecated and, if so, ensure a rapid fix. It’s not a problem – as long as the business recognises that this problem will occur and puts in place the required level of technical support service to rapidly deliver a solution.

Conclusion

Migrating to the cloud offers a host of benefits, however, it is a significant transition culturally as well as operationally. The cloud model is new for SAP customers but it is mature and trusted, with businesses learning in recent years that a migration to the cloud does not mean the end of dedicated TMS and AMS services. The cloud has simply shifted the way support services are designed and delivered.  SAP customers making the leap for the first time can learn from others’ experience.

As organisations navigate the complexities of SAP S/4HANA Cloud TMS and AMS, addressing the gap between standard service offerings and customer requirements emerges as a paramount priority, necessitating a collaborative approach between SAP, partners and customers to drive innovation and deliver value-added solutions.