The clock is ticking for SAP customers to transition to S/4HANA. Yet, we haven’t seen a stampede toward SAP’s newest ERP system. Indeed some organizations are still undecided or don’t have comprehensive migration plans.
So, what is the current situation?
Recently, several reports on SAP customer transition plans have been published. Among these are papers commissioned by ASUG, Rimini St, Resulting IT, SAP (IDC) and SAP Insider.
After reading the reports – and a commentary on one of them – it was difficult to come away with an accurate sense of the real state of play. Yet, the compiled survey results are worth sharing.
A little background
Firstly, it is important to be aware of potential biases in the results:
- SAP sponsored the IDC report
- Resulting IT is independent of SAP
- Rimini Street offers 3rd party SAP support
- SAP Insider and ASUG may or may not be independent
- SAP Insider quote SAP as a research partner
Secondly, the commentary I read courtesy of Brightwork, states that ASUG’s 16% of the 38,000 to 45,000 existing ECC SAP customers running live on S/4HANA is too high to be considered realistic.
S/4HANA transition timing
Interestingly, whichever way you slice and dice the data, between 40% to 70% of current SAP ECC customers are not planning to transition by the deadline of 2025. Or, they simply won’t make it by then.
| Timing | Range | Resulting IT* | SAP Insider | Rimini St | ASUG | IDC |
| Evaluating | 52% | 52% | ||||
| Live already | 2% – 16% | 2% | 7% | 16% | 9% | |
| Implementing | 9% – 16% | 9% | 12% | 16% | 18% | |
| 1 – 3 years | 25% – 54% | 52% | 25% | 56% | 54% | |
| 3 – 5 years | 38% – 53% | 38% | 53% | 19% | ||
| Later or no plans | 4% – 26% | 4% | 26% | 12% |
*Note that the Resulting IT report was the first to be published (around October 2018) and so things may have changed since then.
S/4HANA Transition Method
There are three different approaches to think about when your organization is considering a migration – greenfield, brownfield and bluefield (or hybrid).
| Method | Range | Resulting IT | SAP Insider | IDC |
| Greenfield | 2% – 23% | 2% | 16% | 23% |
| Brownfield | 26% – 75% | 75% | 31% | |
| Bluefield/Hybrid | 13% | 33% | ||
| Being planned | 23% – 44% | 23% | 36% | 44% |
What we are seeing of our customers currently transitioning or intending to migrate in the near term, is that most have or will adopt a bluefield/hybrid approach.
S/4HANA Deployment Method
SAP’s cloud offerings have always been a moving target. Perhaps this is why only two of the reports published SAP ECC customer S/4HANA deployment intentions.
The results from both are close. However, with more than 50% of organizations intending to run all or some of their S/4HANA systems on-premise, don’t throw away those servers yet.
| Deployment | Range | SAP Insider | ASUG |
| On-premise | 32% – 40% | 40% | 32% |
| Public Cloud | 13% – 44% | 13% | 44% |
| Private Cloud | 30% – 44% | 30% | |
| Hybrid | 17% – 23% | 17% | 23% |
Access to skilled consultants
The likelihood of a ‘skills crunch’ dominates the conversation when talk turns to the timing of a move to S/4HANA. So, access to the right skills should be a key decision criterion.
According to Resulting IT
108 million consulting days will be required for all of SAP’s 40,000 ECC customers to be on S/4 HANA by 2025. This is based on a 9-month implementation with 15 consultants engaged on the project. Note: The Gartner report quotes 12-18 months for many transitions.
Since only half of SAP’s customers, at this point anyway, plan to move to S/4HANA by 2025, only 54 million consulting days will be required. Still, to put that into perspective, that’s some 245,500 man-years.
How does Rev-Trac help?
Automation is crucial for avoiding costly and time-consuming business disruptions as S/4HANA is configured and built. Rev-Trac is an automation solution that eliminates error-prone manual tasks and helps you safely transition to SAP’s new generation platform. It helps you to maintain business continuity during the migration and after S/4HANA is up and running, without breaking the bank.
For more information, request a demo with one of our Rev-Trac experts and check out the links to recently published papers and commentary.
Research links
Here are the survey, report, whitepaper and commentary links. If you find you cannot access the link, let me know.
ASUG – ASUG’s Point of View on SAP S/4HANA
Gartner – What Customers Need to Know When Considering a Move to S/4HANA — 2018 Update
IDC – Customers are on the move to S/4 HANA
Resulting IT – Don’t migrate to S/4 HANA until you have read this research
Rimini St – White Paper: Evaluating S/4HANA: Considerations for SAP Customers
SAP Insider – SAP S/4HANA: State of the Market
Brightwork – How accurate was ASUG on its S/4 HANA Poll?
