s-innovations was the internal project name for our development program and will not be used anymore.
SAP S/4HANA is the short form for SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA. It brings the next big wave of SAP innovation to our customers, similar to the transition from SAP R/2 to SAP R/@SAP S/4HANA is a new product with a new code line.
Yes. SAP remains committed to protect our customers’ investments. We recently announced that we are extending our maintenance commitment until at least 202@This is an unprecedented commitment to customers in the IT industry. We will also continue to deliver innovations without disruption (through enhancement packages for example) to SAP Business Suite customers on anyDB and on SAP HANA. However, transformational business and IT simplifications require a transformational platform and this is why as of today SAP S/4HANA runs only on SAP HANA. It is the logical next step for our installed base customers and the biggest step forward for 10+ years with full compatibility with SAP ERP 6.0.
The SAP Simple Finance solution marked the first step in our SAP S/4HANA road map for customers. The solution has demonstrated the value of simplification (for example, no indexes, no aggregates, and no redundancies) and instant insight in Finance. SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition leverages the full scope of SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA included in SAP Simple Finance. SAP S/4HANA, managed cloud edition is intended to leverage the same scope. SAP S/4HANA, public cloud edition is planned to focus on a selected scope of SAP Simple Finance in alignment with the key requirements in finance.
For the on-premise version, SAP Business Suite customers need to purchase the SAP S/4HANA foundationpromotion license to run the new SAP S/4HANA code line. SAP is offering the following promotion until the end of Q3/2015: • Existing SAP Business Suite customers have to procure the SAP HANA runtime license for SAP Business Suite (@15% HSAV = SAP HANA Software Application Value) and will get the SAP S/4HANA foundation-promotion license at no additional cost. • Existing SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA customers with a valid SAP HANA limited runtime license for SAP Business Suite (LREA) are eligible for the SAP S/4HANA foundation-promotion license without additional cost. For the cloud, the pricing model will be subscription-based and communicated at a later stage. Please contact your local sales representative for more information.
SAP S/4HANA gives customers the option to leverage the HANA multitenancy functionality as provided by the SAP HANA platform (currently support package 9).
SAP S/4HANA delivers high-volume transaction processing (OLTP) and high volume real-time analytical processes (OLAP) based on a unified data model without the redundant data layers typically required by traditional RDBMS based systems. This reduces TCO while providing new opportunities to increase business value from existing investments. Examples for redundant data layers are custom-built layers based on database tuning efforts such as secondary indexes, or application built-in performance accelerators such as aggregate tables or multiple general ledger versions for different managerial reporting needs. The massive simplifications of the data model and the data processing layers enable business and technological innovations on a broad scale across all lines-of-business and industry solutions. The new application architecture simplifies system landscape architectures and accelerates cloud deployments on an economical scale.
SAP S/4HANA is planned to integrate with our existing cloud portfolio offerings. These offerings remain offered under separate license/subscription.
SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition, supports current lines of business and industries.
SAP S4/HANA, public cloud edition, will be released by business scenario for specific languages, lines of business, and industries. The first industry available is currently planned to be the professional services industry. The scope will be determined in close cooperation with the SAP user groups based on customer requirements.
SAP S/4HANA, managed cloud edition, is planned to ultimately have a similar scope as the on-premise edition. For the first delivery in early 2015, the following core industries are planned:
Professional Services,Chemicals, Consumer Products, Industrial Machinery and Components, Life Sciences, as well as Transportation and Logistics.
With SAP S/4HANA, SAP has developed a new product that leverages basic data structures and elements of the SAP Business Suite for maximum compatibility, non-disruptive migration and hybrid scenarios. However, SAP S/4HANA provides new business functionality on top of these data structures natively built on the SAP HANA platform and designed with the SAP Fiori UX principles. SAP Business Suite on-premise customers on the latest enhancement package can easily move to this new product simply by migrating to the SAP HANA database and applying the exchange innovation (new code) to their current SAP Business Suite environment.
Moving to SAP S/4HANA for a typical existing SAP ERP 6.0 customer will require a move to the latest enhancement package, followed by a database migration from anyDB to SAP HANA combined with the deployment of the exchange innovation (new code). From an execution perspective, these steps can be executed in sequence or as a combined step. Moving to SAP S/4HANA for an existing SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA customer is even faster as only the deployment of the exchange innovation (new code) is required. Both journeys are well proven in the market with several hundred of live SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA customers as well as SAP Simple Finance live customers.
In the context of SAP S/4HANA, SAP HANA Cloud Platform serves as an extension platform and agility layer. It is possible to build specific capabilities extending the scope of SAP S/4HANA by either integrating non-SAP functions or building your own capabilities. The cloud platform not only serves as the development platform but also as the runtime foundation for the developed solutions. The extensions built on the cloud platform can run against both cloud and on-premise deployments of SAP S/4HANA.
The development approach of SAP S/4HANA is to eliminate all artefacts that have been introduced as performance workarounds for classical row-based RDBMS. These are aggregates and programmed indexes that contained no semantic value and only provided fast access to sums and data. On the downside, these created interconnections in the application and complexity in how to lock the system to avoid conflicting updates in aggregates. Moreover, significant code had to be developed for lengthy ETL (extract-transformload) scenarios incurring data preparation and exception management routines caused by latency. This portion of the code did not carry business semantic in itself, but served as “performance proliferation” in business processes. With SAP S/4 HANA, these different types of workaround on restrictions based on technical limitations are no longer necessary, as the latest information and the time travel from the columnar store can be accessed instantaneously across all inserts and updates and therefore eliminates the need for any overhead of the index and aggregates.
A single system can always only be on SAP S/4HANA or on the traditional SAP Business Suite (on SAP HANA or anyDB). However, customers can decide to move separate installations within their landscape individually to SAP S/4HANA and do not have to do a “big bang” for their whole system landscape – and thus run in a mixed environment. As SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Suite are using semantically consistent data structures, a move to SAP S/4HANA is nondisruptive.
SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition, currently supports the existing published legacy interfaces.
SAP currently plans to offer on-premise, cloud (public and managed), and hybrid deployments to give real choice to customers. SAP S/4HANA also gives customers the option to fully leverage the new HANA multitenancy functionality as provided by the SAP HANA platform (currently support package 9) for the cloud.
Yes, SAP S/4HANA editions are integrated and run mostly on the same data semantic.
The business scope for each edition was designed to offer maximum choice to customers in alignment with their business requirements:
SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition, already offers a business scope that is similar in terms of coverage, functionality, industries, and languages as the current SAP Business Suite. Within this scope, SAP S/4HANA also includes the transformational simplifications delivered with SAP Simple Finance (SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA) as well as a planned integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central and Ariba Network.
The on-premise edition is intended to offer a yearly innovation cycle through simplification and innovation packages. The next simplification and innovation package is planned for the end of 2015.
SAP S/4HANA, public cloud edition, should address specific business scenarios of lines of business and industries. The first delivery in early 2015 is expected to cover key scenarios in customer engagement and commerce and professional services (10 core scenarios, plus planned integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central, Ariba Network, SAP hybris Marketing).
SAP S/4HANA, managed cloud edition, should address a similar business scope as the on-premise edition. The first delivery in early 2015 is planned to already cover essential core ERP scenarios (accounting, controlling, materials management, production planning and control, sales and distribution, logistics execution, plant maintenance, project system, and PLM, plus integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central, Ariba Network, SAP hybris Marketing).
The cloud editions are intended to offer a quarterly innovation cycle.
SAP Business ByDesign remains a dedicated end-to-end cloud ERP application for midsize companies that want to run their entire business on single cloud application. SAP Business One remains a dedicated ERP option for small businesses in all industries
SAP has an established partner ecosystem (value-added retailers and systems integrators) that is ready to resell and service SAP S/4HANA for our joint existing and new customers to implement future innovations. More than 50% of the SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA projects were managed by partners. Partners and SAP will support customers in their journey with predefined migration, system conversion in the cloud, and deployment packages for quicker time to value. Companies of all sizes will benefit from the highquality service and reseller capabilities our partners provide.
For SAP S/4HANA, managed cloud edition, we are leveraging the same infrastructure as a service (IaaS), data centers, and security qualities, though the lifecycle management is different. Innovation updates for the cloud editions are planned on a quarterly basis, to be consumed by the customer, and managed by SAP.
All SAP S/4HANA innovations are intended to be delivered with SAP Fiori UX providing the same experience on all devices. However, a customer using SAP S/4HANA is planned to still be able to consume the traditional user interfaces.
Yes, all customers that already purchased a SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA license will get a corresponding credit for upcoming purchases. For details and conditions, please contact your local sales representative.
In any scenario, the move to SAP S/4HANA is a great opportunity to validate the existing modifications and simplify your solution. It has not been unusual for customers to realize that 50% of the modifications that hamper fast release cycles and require long test cycles were no longer necessary to run the business, but were leftovers from older projects while the remaining modifications could have been built in a less intrusive manner. When moving to SAP S/4HANA, public cloud edition, customers will move their modifications to SAP HANA Cloud Platform as an extension. Also, customers that make the choice of the SAP S/4HANA, managed cloud edition, the recommended approach is to use SAP HANA Cloud Platform extensions to provision enhancements. In fact, standard field extensions can directly be done within the SAP Fiori UX while SAP HANA Cloud Platform can be leveraged for more significant developments. SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition, provides maximum customization opportunities: on premise as traditionally done in the past or through SAP HANA Cloud Platform. SAP has several references of SAP Business Suite customers using SAP HANA Cloud Platform extensions for on-premise systems. In general, the SAP HANA extension framework of SAP HANA Cloud Platform uses SAP HANA as the common platform for SAP S/4HANA and offers additional choices such as the integration of open source solutions. The extension framework has the advantage to isolate modifications from the core and drive agility for the on-premise deployment and safeguard agility for cloud deployments. This means that rather than modifying the core code, enhancements are put in a “safe” environment so that innovation packages can be easily applied. The core SAP S/4HANA system remains “clean” and can be quickly and easily updated when new innovations are added – in just the same way that consumer mobile apps are updated on a regular basis.
SAP S/4HANA, short for SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA, is SAP’s next-generation business suite. It is a new product fully built on the most advanced in-memory platform today – SAP HANA – and modern design principles with the SAP Fiori user experience (UX). SAP S/4HANA delivers massive simplifications (customer adoption, data model, user experience, decision making, business processes, and models) and innovations (Internet of Things, Big Data, business networks, and mobile-first) to help businesses run simple in a digital and networked economy.
Yes, this service is provided as SAP Rapid Deployment solutions with SAP S/4HANA and will be delivered with prepackaged integration (for example integration between SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA in HCM).