Future SAP Platforms

The SAP ECC (ERP central component) is a mature SAP ERP Platform which was released over 20 years ago and will only be supported until 2027. The successor for SAP ECC and the future SAP ERP platform is the S/4 HANA business suite. You are going to learn the basics about the S/4 HANA business suite in this blog post.

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S/4 HANA in General

S/4 HANA is an ERP System based on the SAP HANA In-Memory database. In the background a lot of refactoring was done in S/4 HANA to make business processes more efficient:

• In memory database for faster response times than classical databases stored on hard drives
• Innovative programming models like SAP RAP (RESTFul Application Programming Model), SAP Fiori or ABAP Core Data Services to save time/budget in ABAP development tasks and provide a more modern and intuitive user experience. 
• SAP GUI Transactions are replaced by their SAP Fiori counterparts.
• Simplified data models and business processes. For example:
  • Business partners are maintained with one application instead of separate SAP GUI transactions for customers, suppliers or banks.
  • The data model for general ledger accounting was consolidated to avoid redundances.

SAP provides quarterly updates for S/4 HANA to improve workflows, business processes and user experience with new features like automatic creation of sales-orders based on unstructured data or the CO2 footprint calculations.

S/4 HANA On-Premise edition

The S/4 HANA On-Premise edition can be installed on a data center of your choice. It will be supported according to SAP at least until 2040. It’s the best solution for brownfield or hybrid migrations of existing ECC systems. Brownfield means, that the data is transferred completely from SAP ECC to S/4 HANA, whereas hybrid means the data is transferred partly from SAP ECC to S/4 HANA and missing parts are implemented from scratch.

S/4 HANA Private cloud edition

The S/4 HANA Private cloud edition is a single-tenant system hosted in the cloud. That means you own a dedicated S/4 HANA system in the cloud, which can be customized for individual business processes. You can initiate the update procedure like by On-Premise systems. The private cloud edition is the ideal solution for existing SAP customers, who need to move in the cloud and want to retain the flexibility of their existing On-Premise systems.

S/4 HANA Public cloud edition

The S/4 HANA Public cloud edition is a multi-tenant system. Compared with the private cloud edition you just own a tenant, not a complete S/4 HANA system. Resources must be shared with other tenants. For this reason, SAP ABAP code or cross-tenant customization can’t be changed and updates are automatically deployed. The focus of the public cloud edition are standardized business processes, where customization isn’t required.

The access with SAP GUI isn’t possible in this edition and therefore classical ABAP reports or Web-Dynpro applications can’t be executed or developed in this edition. Development is done with SAP RAP in the background and SAP Fiori in the frontend. Access to printers in your local network can be done with the SAP Cloud Print Manager.

Comparison

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