SAP ERP is used by businesses to manage their core business functions at a common place. It is a critical business application that enable employees to generate invoices, track inventory and keep a track of the production schedules. To make its optimum utilization, the companies have started to move their SAP ERPs to cloud platforms. Undoubtedly, this is a hugely beneficial move to make but it certainly comes along with several challenges. Let’s take a closer look at how migrating SAP to cloud is beneficial for the organizations and the challenges it can pose.
Benefits of Migrating SAP to Cloud
Migrating SAP to the cloud is a smart decision as it benefits an organization’s functioning in several ways. A few of these are as mentioned below:
1. Desired Control Over Data
Moving to the cloud ends the risk of machine crashing and in turn, loss of data. As the data is moved to the cloud using SAP support services, the disaster recovery systems and additional storage provided by cloud gives customers the desired control over the data. The hardware of the clouds also offers high availability of the data and ends the other issues that might be caused while storing data otherwise.
2. Improved Data Security
A high-level of data security is ensured after transferring the data on the cloud. The chances of data leakage are minimized using encryption, access control, testing, and more. Even when the risk of cyberattacks are high and the chances of losing their data is no less, the companies find it valuable to keep their data on the cloud and make use of the providers’ security services.
3. Reduced Cost
An organization might have to deal with the burden of excessive cost and expenses when storing data on other platforms. However, when the data is moved to the cloud, it helps in reducing the cost of hiring technical staff for support services. Moreover, providers can handle servers off-site as cloud is an off-site service.
4. Compliance
Meeting compliance certifications is a major need of the IT departments. This is majorly important when an on-premises data center is being used. In such scenarios, migrating SAP to cloud provider that already meets the desired compliance certificates such as Google or Amazon is the best idea. This is because it eliminates the complexity and resources needed for ongoing audits.
5. Scalability
With a cloud portal, it is possible for the IT administrators to make additional servers, storage, and processing power easily available with just a few clicks. This is strongly in contrast to the SAP servers that require multiple servers to run, a data interface, a database engine, and others. At times, these servers may also need some changes to manage the changes in data users and requirements.
Challenges
Moving to the cloud comes with several challenges for its users. Some of these are as mentioned below:
1. Adaptability
When the data is migrated to the cloud, the major challenge faced by the corporate is adaptability or flexibility. It gets difficult for the teams to get accustomed to the change when it occurs and adjust accordingly.
2. Managing Complex Business Operations
At times, businesses require to obtain data in real-time from two different sources. This is possible with SAP where the data can be sourced by the marketing automation and then passed on to the CRM and finally, end up in SAP cloud platform. But, to carry out these functions, the businesses require a thorough preparation and keep all the data in sync to flow from one system to another.
3. Unreliable Connectivity
If an organization is in some rural area or a place where there are issues with internet connectivity, it is very likely that it would face issues with access to SAP. Moreover, when the SAP is migrated to the cloud, the chance of downtime gets higher. The issue is not reported in case the access to data is on-premises even when the internet is down.
4. Performance Issues
SAP has no restrictions in its deployment in public and private clouds. This increases the chances of its overall performance issues. The chances of issues are much higher when the ERP system is integrated with the automation systems. Any sort of inactivity on the system would also lead to challenges for the users.
5. Customization
The cloud-based solutions are generally one-size-fits-all. Therefore, in case, your company requires a customized solution for its systems and workload, using cloud is not a right choice. Opting for the on-premises systems are much easier to modify.
Conclusion
When considering migrating the data to the cloud, it is important for the organization to think about its pros and cons in detail. Moving to the cloud would certainly have benefits such as improved scalability, speed, and reliability, it would also lead to several challenges for the organization such as risk of internet connectivity and flexibility. Therefore, when planning to make this move, it is recommended to get yourself trained about its concepts and make SAP migration easier to cloud for your organization.
