Strategies for sustainable IT decisions

At the Technology Days 2025, the cards will be laid on the table and reshuffled – also due to the new SAP target strategy. The name “Business Suite” reactivates a successful product label from the on-premises era, which is now to be transferred in its entirety to the cloud solutions. The SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) continues to form the central technical foundation of this new Business Suite and will play a decisive role, for example in the integration of the various SAP solutions. Finally, the SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) is intended to enable cross-system harmonization and use of SAP data – also and especially for the use of AI-based use cases.

Business Suite – a full house for everyone?

With the business strategy announced at the “Business Unleashed” event in February, SAP is focusing on the core elements of processes, data and AI with the aim of providing efficient process chains. In addition, more and more end-to-end processes are also being offered in the cloud by combining the various technology stacks and cloud services on the basis of BTP. “Even though SAP is undoubtedly working on harmonizing and integrating its solution portfolio, a consistent architecture is the key to success for the envisaged Business Suite. To achieve this, it is essential that SAP continues to harmonize the product landscape and consistently implements uniform standards, e.g. for data models and identity and security services. By definition, a suite requires the seamless integration of the SAP solutions it contains, uniform operating models and clear migration and implementation strategies along the way,” says DSAG Technology Director Sebastian Westphal.

DSAG members also expect a modular business suite that can be flexibly adapted to company requirements and can be integrated into overarching company architectures without great effort or cost. “And, of course, the commercial advantage of a suite must also be clearly evident when everything comes from a single source with SAP. Both technically and commercially – in other words, transparent cost structures and contract models,” says Westphal. And since it cannot be expected that a business suite can cover all of today’s use cases, long-term support for partner solutions is required as part of the SAP Clean Core strategy. The frequently used add-ons in particular should remain usable on the basis of stable, long-term certification conditions – which is in the common interest of partners, user companies and SAP itself in light of SAP’s S/4HANA maintenance commitment until 2040.

RISE as a shared journey

In order to achieve the goal of a cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) system as part of the Business Suite, either as a public or private cloud edition, customers should embark on a RISE or GROW journey in future. The problem with this: “The RISE product is not necessarily ‘more cloud’ than an SAP system that already runs on a cloud infrastructure, as SAP itself admits. It therefore requires consistent further development into a uniform operating model for all SAP services used. A high level of integrability into existing operating and service processes of the user companies is therefore an important success factor,” says Westphal. For medium-sized companies in particular, it is important that their enterprise architectures can be operated in a comprehensive and standardized manner. DSAG welcomes the fact that the RISE Migration & Modernization program that was launched last year is to be continued for 2025 under a new name and in a positive way for customers. SAP is expected to make an official announcement on this in the coming weeks. According to the DSAG Investment Report 2025, the program can now be considered established.

Innovations for all customers, but not all legacy systems

In this context, it is also important that solutions such as SAP Joule for ABAP or the BDC are not only available to certain customer groups. “In the area of sustainability and the components developed on the BTP, all customers must be able to benefit from innovations,” the DSAG Technology Director is convinced, ”even if the customers themselves have to carry out the corresponding rework and integration services for legacy systems.” Secure application operation should also be a unique selling point of RISE with SAP. “For customers, full transparency across all security-relevant services, with a clear scope and basic support as part of EU access, is an important requirement. This also includes 24/7 German-language support for critical systems and processes, e.g. in the field of high-availability production systems,” says Westphal. SAP should also unequivocally guarantee that the operation of the systems within the scope of RISE will fully comply with the requirements of the NIS 2 guidelines in future.

Business Technology Platform: Rien ne va plus?

For customers who rely on the SAP Business Technology Platform, corresponding deployments are imminent, as the latest DSAG investment report has impressively shown: The BTP is and remains the central technical foundation of the new SAP Business Suite and is intended to integrate selective third-party solutions and SAP solutions in equal measure. This foundation has been expanded over the years and DSAG is in dialogue with SAP about further steps to standardize the BTP. This includes further standardizing authorization management for all services in order to enable companies in the BTP to control and monitor them across the board. “This requires a consistent set of APIs for all BTP services. For the consistent oversight of monitoring, logging, security and transports, ideally across the entire business suite,” summarizes Westphal. Central certificate lifecycle management to ensure the security of all applications and prevent unexpected system failures is also desirable and is already on the agenda.

From the users‘ perspective, the continued success of BTP also depends on a consistent and transparent pricing model for all SAP services. The easier it is to calculate a commercial model, the easier it is to calculate the individual business benefits. A solution which, in addition to the direct calculation and booking of services, would also enable the monitoring of costs during operation should therefore further increase acceptance by user companies.

Business Data Cloud: Will the cards be reshuffled?

From DSAG’s perspective, the BDC could become SAP’s biggest change in strategy since S/4HANA. The target image envisaged by SAP is intended to harmonize today’s fragmented data structures. “This is an enormous challenge: not only does SAP want to take on more operational responsibility for the integration and provision of uniform data models than before – the BDC is about nothing less than the transformation of existing landscapes into a future-proof, cloud-centric architecture, for on-premises and public cloud customers alike. The DSAG experts are in favor of the new strategy if the BDC is available to all SAP customers, including for on-premises systems and independent of commercial constructs such as RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP,” demands Westphal.

Future data products must be delivered in a timely, reliable and usable manner, both technically and commercially. “Cross-system data harmonization is essential to enable a data-as-a-product philosophy. However, many user companies have already implemented modern data lake (house) architectures. The success of the BDC will therefore also depend on how well it integrates into these architectures and provides SAP data without technical and commercial restrictions. This is a framework condition that is equally important for partners, SAP and user companies.” Westphal is convinced that “best practice guides for a reliable migration strategy are needed to ensure that today’s SAP architectures can be migrated without any problems.”

Cross-portfolio integration

Another innovation announced by SAP is the so-called Insight apps. These are data products managed by SAP, for which SAP is responsible for the semantic data model as well as ongoing operation and further development. User companies should be able to activate these out-of-the-box and enable analysis and planning across all lines of business – including core business, financials and human resources. “If this succeeds, it would solve a decades-long challenge that previously had to be solved individually by the application companies: the cross-portfolio integration of all SAP applications and data,” says Westphal. In line with its strategic orientation, the focus of the offering is initially on S/4HANA Private Cloud as part of the commercial RISE model, for which SAP-managed data products will then be provided from S/4HANA RISE 2021+. According to SAP, the integration of on-premises systems via mapping and integration logics in cooperation with the user companies is in preparation. “For SAP-centric architectures in particular, it is crucial that the new Insight apps deliver real business benefits, are cost-efficient and that only low technical hurdles need to be overcome to use them,” comments Westphal.

If these prerequisites are created and implemented with clear business benefits, Business Suite, Business Technology Platform and the Business Data Cloud will not become a bet with an unknown outcome for the user companies, but in the best case a royal flush.

www.dsag.de/techtage

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