In January of 2021, SAP announced RISE with SAP to help companies with their business transformation and grow the adoption of S/4HANA Cloud. Now, after several months of increasing adoption, let’s take a look at what it is and what it means for SAP customers looking to transition to S/4HANA.
The idea behind RISE with SAP is to give the customer the solutions and services they need to start their business transformation in one simplified package, provided by SAP and supported by a network of SAP partners. The key to the simplicity is that everything is in one place – so all necessary products are bundled together, and customers sign a new single contract to manage all aspects of their SAP landscape.
RISE with SAP includes:
- SAP S/4HANA Cloud – SAP’s modular cloud ERP solution
- Business Process Intelligence – provides insights into performance through process analytics to help customers quickly understand, innovate and transform business processes.
- Technology Cloud Credits – allows organizations to integrate their technology with other solutions by using the data model and business services on the SAP Business Technology Platform to connect it all
- SAP Business Network Starter Pack – enables customers to create digital connections with all their trading partners
- Embedded Tools and Services – helps customers achieve a smooth transition to SAP S/4HANA Cloud
The business solution itself is from SAP and companies wishing to adopt RISE with SAP need to partner with a chosen systems integrator or hyperscaler to get specific implementation and administration help.
RISE with SAP offers help to customers looking to transform. By grouping everything together into one offer and under one contract, the solution aims to help reduce the complexity and ease the path to a S/4HANA cloud implementation.
According to Gartner, RISE with SAP may be a valuable proposition for smaller clients, but less so for bigger clients with a more complex IT architecture that require full control of their infrastructure and hosting partners1.
User Group Response
Shortly after the launch, in April and May 2020, a joint survey of the Americas’ SAP user group (ASUG) and the German User Group (DSAG) found that adoption of S/4HANA was increasing with more than 40% of organizations either already live with S/4HANA or having started a project to transition.
However, the majority of these adoptions were on-premises deployments (DSAG 57%; ASUG 27%), followed by private cloud (DSAG 23% and ASUG 24%) and managed cloud services (12% DSAG; 19% ASUG) with very few deploying S/4HANA public cloud. As both user groups cited the biggest challenge in using cloud services as licensing models and costs (DSAG: 72%, ASUG: 41%) – it’s not surprising that cloud adoption is lower.
Licensing Considerations
If you’re considering adopting RISE with SAP, having factual data to base your licensing decisions on is critical to avoid overspending. Read on to see how Snow can help you gather some of this information and prepare.
1. Full Use Equivalent Licenses
The calculation of Full Use Equivalent (FUE) is based on the S/4HANA cloud licensing model. For example, one FUE equals: 1 SAP S/4HANA for advanced use, or 5 SAP S/4HANA for core use or 30 SAP S/4HANA for self-service use.
It’s crucial to know how you are currently using the system and ensure your users are set up to use the most cost-effective license type before entering negotiations for the calculation of FUE licenses required. Snow can help existing SAP customers identify and model scenarios to get the right estimate of FUE licenses to match their licensing needs.
2. Engines
Engine licensing is complex, especially when multiple metrics are in place. Being able to measure and review exact consumption today will help you better understand your organization’s requirements tomorrow.
3. HANA Database
Knowing how many gigabytes are being consumed by the HANA database, which applications are being run and keeping track of consumption is key to managing the costs involved and understanding how much you are likely to need in the future.
4. Digital Documents
Where digital document licensing has been an option for licensing indirect access for legacy customers, under the new licensing methodology it becomes the standard when new contracts are signed. So, it is important to know how many digital documents you are going to create in order to license correctly. If you purchase too many, it may be difficult to adjust the number down in future years. Snow can help organizations estimate the number of digital documents and extrapolate usage into the future to ensure you don’t purchase too many or too few licenses.
With accurate data to base decisions on, you can be sure you’re making the right decisions for your organization.
At Snow, we believe that having visibility into all your factual licensing data gives you the insights you need to make informed decisions when opportunities, such as RISE with SAP are presented. We pride ourselves on our market-leading solution that gives a single view of licenses and usage across multiple SAP systems.
Understanding what you currently have and use puts you in a great position when it comes to deciding on the best way forward on your journey to S/4HANA. Request a demo to see how Snow can help.
1 Gartner, “Quick Answer: What Is RISE with SAP and Why Does it Matter for SAP Partners?” by Fabio Di Capua, Paul Saunders, Chris Pang, David Groombridge. June 14, 2021.