Becoming an Intelligent Enterprise with RISE with SAP

Many software providers are moving towards a subscription model with a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering. SAP is no different with its cloud-first strategy, in which SAP S/4HANA Cloud is the cornerstone. RISE with SAP presents a very attractive bundle of software, tools, and services to help customers in their business transformation to SAP S/4HANA. However, some services are not included in the RISE with SAP offering. SAP has always relied on their partners to handle the advisory, implementation, and application management services.

ERP systems, SAP and non-SAP, support complex business processes, must comply to many regulations, and contain a lot of data. The complexity of installing or migrating to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud require many precautions and should not be underestimated. You therefore need an experienced partner as your guide in this journey.

As SAP certified Value-Added Reseller, we embrace the RISE with SAP offering and have embedded it in our service portfolio. This enables us to enrich SAP’s offering with our services and ensure customers of a complete, smooth, and non-disruptive journey to the cloud. If you are new to SAP, we can help you better understand what RISE with SAP is all about, what is covered and what is not. If you are already running SAP for many years, we can assist you with your decision process and explain the opportunities and challenges when transitioning to RISE with SAP. And when the decision is taken, we will accompany you during the preparation and execution of the transition and deliver continuous support after the go-live.

In this article, we will guide you through the private RISE with SAP offering and the services Expertum offers as SAP partner. For more information on your journey to the cloud, we invite you to have a look here at our other blog on this topic.

Businesses running their operations with SAP know exactly what is happening, because the system captures all operational data about customer transactions, manufacturing, logistics, finance, etc. They also know the activities of their workforce via solutions such as SuccessFactors. This data is captured on the operations (O data) side (see Figure 1).

An intelligent enterprise uses this data to predict what will happen next and to get insights in their products, their employees, and their brand. Experience data (X data) capture beliefs, emotions, opinions, and perceptions. It essentially answers the question why something is happening. These insights help businesses integrate data and processes, innovate with industry best practices, and build flexible supply chains.

RISE with SAP includes different components of the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and the SAP Business Network to jumpstart businesses into becoming an Intelligent Enterprise. The SAP BTP is the glue between the operations and experience data, as it addresses requirements such as database and data management, analytics, application development and integration, and intelligent technologies like process automation. It also includes the consumption tickets for the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), the SAP Business Network Starter Pack, SAP Process Insights, and SAP Process Intelligence. These are explained in more detail in the next section.

Figure 1: The Intelligent Enterprise

RISE with SAP is not a new product, but a subscription-based license model that includes a variety of SAP cloud solutions and services.

It includes the following solutions:

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud
  SAP S/4HANA is SAP’s latest Enterprise Resource Planning solution, covering finance, supply chain, sales and much more.
• SAP Business Network Starter Pack
  Businesses are never standalone. Complex networks and point-to-point integrations exist between trading partners. SAP Business Networks enable businesses to collaborate between all partners in the supply chain. It includes a number of documents or assets for connecting with trading partners in the areas of Procurement, Asset Management or Logistics.
• SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) Consumption Tickets
  The SAP BTP is a Platform-as-a-Service, which enables application development, automation, analytics and planning, integration, and artificial intelligence to integrate and extend SAP S/4HANA Cloud with other SAP and non-SAP solutions. SAP with RISE customers receive credits to explore and use the different areas of the SAP BTP.
• SAP Process Insights
  SAP Process Insights is a process analytics solution to help businesses discover areas of improvement within their SAP business processes.
• SAP Business Process Intelligence
  The Business Process Intelligence capabilities of RISE with SAP enable customers to bring value to data using components that can be used to improve data quality and that enables users to display, design and simulate through artificial intelligence, no-code development, process automation and much more.
  
  

A subscription to RISE with SAP not only includes the SAP S/4HANA Cloud software, but also the subscription to the hyperscaler infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP). Event and incident management for the technical infrastructure and SAP basis services are included as well and are delivered against an agreed-upon service level agreement (SLA).

To summarize, the RISE with SAP subscription includes software, tools, and services to help the transition to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, as well as software maintenance and support, infrastructure management and technical managed services. Basically, everything from the hypervisor up to the basis layer is the responsibility of SAP.

Important to consider is what is not included, such as advisory, implementation and application management services. Based on your requirements, it is important to understand which services are and which services are not included with the RISE with SAP offering, and hence require in-house or partner resources. For these services, an SAP partner like Expertum is involved, subject to a separate agreement.

Here are some of the services where we can assist you:

Implementation: only SAP S/4HANA is considered!

RISE with SAP is a (private) cloud for SAP S/4HANA running on Amazon, Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform, among other platforms. If you are currently running other SAP or non-SAP applications, they will need to be hosted in a separate environment and integrated with SAP S/4HANA, which is running in the private cloud managed by SAP. In this scenario, your SAP and non-SAP applications would be hosted on your own servers or in the public cloud, and use the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to integrate with the SAP S/4HANA system.

Our technical teams support SAP solutions running on any platform, operating system and database supported by SAP, whether they run on-premise or in the public cloud. Additionally, our integration and development teams can assist you in the integration between SAP and non-SAP systems, and the SAP S/4HANA system using the Integration Suite of the SAP BTP platform.

Technical Managed Services

RISE with SAP includes software, infrastructure, and managed services support. However, you should be aware that if you're transitioning from a managed cloud solution that offers full basis support, the level of support provided under the SAP agreement is more limited. While SAP takes care of technical operations, high availability, and business continuity, many tasks are the responsibility of the customer or partner. Technically, SAP will only provide support in Client 000, the other Clients are yours to manage. Additional services such as application operations and monitoring can be obtained at an additional fee.

Our application management services team has been supporting many customers for many years and provides services for monitoring, performance, stability, and availability. Typical examples of our services are:
- functional application management, including event, incident and change management;
- technical support services for batch, output, and user management;
- monitoring for interfacing;
- automation;
- and security.

Our application management services offering consists of several building blocks, which can be tailored to your requirements, and integrated with the support services of RISE with SAP (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: RISE with SAP, Managed Services

Picking the Hyperscaler Platform

As mentioned earlier, RISE with SAP is with multiple platforms, including Amazon, Microsoft Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform, among others. The choice of platform should not be taken lightly and requires careful consideration of various factors, such as the location of the data center, service availability, and compliancy requirements. This is especially the case when SAP applications that are not supported by RISE with SAP are to be included. Deploying RISE with SAP on Amazon while other applications are already running on Microsoft Azure makes no sense, as network latency between both will be increased.

At Expertum, we support many customers running their SAP solutions in the public Cloud. We not only support the application, database, and operating system, but also the virtual environment on the hyperscaler. We advise our customers during the selection of the hyperscaler platform, the sizing and configuration of high availability and disaster recovery, the migration of the systems and the continuous support after go-live. Our integration teams have the necessary experience and capability to configure the integration between the SAP and non-SAP applications running on your cloud environment. Reach out to us if you want to explore the possibilities of RISE with SAP for your business.

Interested to learn more on how to integrate RISE with SAP in your business? Take a look here at our blog where explain the different steps of the consulting and implementation process.