What does the future hold for German-speaking SAP users?
Meetings hosted by the German-speaking SAP user group (Deutschsprachige SAP-Anwendergruppe e.V) or DSAG, are always an enlightening experience. This year at DSAG 2022 was no exception. Listening to the keynote and sessions, there were three key takeaways, each of which reinforces the validity of TJC’s strategy to develop ELSA as a cloud-based decommissioning platform for S/4 HANA users. What did we learn?
1. Resilience becomes the goal
Firstly, it was astonishing that SAP emphasized the need for Resiliency during the keynote. As the saying goes, “when the exception becomes the rule, resilience becomes the goal”. Enterprises have to become more resilient, to manage the risks of actual crisis and even of a power blackout this winter time. As a voluntary CIMIC (Civic Military Cooperation) member, I’m part of a disaster control team in case of a catastrophe and planning for a blackout scenario now falls under our remit.
Businesses using a public or private cloud, including those already on S/4 HANA, most likely have less to worry about in terms of blackouts. Their service providers will need to meet agreed SLAs and deliver the relevant uptime. Things become more problematic for existing ECC users with an on-premise infrastructure, that becomes a legacy infrastructure after the move to S/4 HANA. To reduce any kind of risk for legacy systems, we recommend system decommissioning, securing the entire content of the systems into a tax archive.
For companies planning migrations to S/4 HANA, dealing with legacy applications and data is an ongoing concern. Enterprise Legacy System Application (ELSA), as a cloud based solution, offers the resiliency needed and means data can be accessed easily from any application in the future. Significantly, it is one of the only solutions to be accredited by SAP for its cloud based ecosystem, Business Technology Platform, BTP.
2. SAP’s cloud-based platform environment – The burger analogy
This provided a natural segway for the second key takeaway. Here, SAP’s keynote speaker explained the logic behind SAP’s cloud-based platform environment (now SAP BTP, but formerly SAP Cloud Platform (SCP)) using a burger analogy. Significantly, this model emphasizes how SAP is standardizing its solution around its core applications, the intelligent suite (the burger part), to be enhanced with ‘innovation’ solutions offered through approved partners – TJC Group being one of them. These add ons are the ‘special sauce’ layer, provided around S/4 HANA within SAP BTP.
As a long term SAP partner, TJC Group was an early adopter of cloud development platforms and the investments we have made over the past 5 years to move away from ABAP development are paying dividends now. One of the clearest indicators of our success in this area comes through being recognized as an innovator by SAP for the launch of ELSA one of the first cloud native applications for legacy systems available on SAP BTP.
3. SAP Delos, the new sovereign cloud for the Public sector
Thirdly, SAP shared its plans for a new, sovereign cloud, to provide a dedicated, ultra secure private cloud hosting service for public sector clients. Unlike other cloud services, the sovereign cloud differs because data never leaves the country of origin, so the German sovereign cloud – Delos Cloud – can guarantee that data processing will always comply with local country regulations. Delos Cloud is a joint venture between SAP, Microsoft and Arvato Systems, whereby users get all the advantages of the cloud, but with the reassurance that the federal ministry is in full control.
Conclusion
TJC is an approved SAP partner for public sector organisations that are decommissioning legacy systems. Through ELSA, SAP users can decommission their data, safe in the knowledge that should they need future access, it will be swift and easy to do so. This is especially significant for organizations migrating to S/4 HANA, because it uses a different data model to SAP ECC. The cost of HANA means it’s highly pricey to bring legacy data across to the new environment so a safe repository that can be accessed through ELSA makes financial sense. In addition to being an approved SAP public sector solutions partner with ELSA, TJC offers additional benefits to public sector organisations, through the DSGVO/GDPR-features, outsourced from ECC systems into ELSA application.
It was great to meet industry colleagues, customers and fellow developers at DSAG 2022 and we’re already looking forward to next year. In the meantime, find out more about how ELSA can support decommissioning of your legacy applications or get in touch!
Author: Frederic Hottner, Head of Sales DACH region
