3 Ways Migrating SAP Applications to AWS Helps Your Business Drive More Innovation

For 50 years, SAP environments have served as a critical system of record for organizations. That’s why, today, many IT teams are looking to take their SAP environments to the next level by transforming them into innovation platforms that fuel the business. And for many businesses, that transformation starts by moving SAP workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS).  

When considering an SAP-to-AWS migration, most companies get caught up in the numbers game. How much will the migration cost? How much will the company save on the cloud? And will the upfront cost justify the long-term return on investment?

In most cases, the cloud wins easily. The inherent design of the cloud—pay for only what you use—helps companies realize cost savings from the start. In fact, when you look at SAP-to-AWS migrations specifically, a Forrester Total Economic Impact study broke down the cost benefits of moving SAP ECC to AWS. It found that the average customer saves nearly $5 million on hardware/hardware maintenance costs, nearly $2 million on labor savings from SAP-related reallocations and more than $1 million on data center costs.

Cloud cost savings are proven and no doubt important. But, when considering a cloud migration, it’s important to look beyond the near-term financial benefits—the cloud also plays a critical role in fueling business optimization, transformation and innovation. And while we may not be able to quantify these benefits as easily, it doesn’t make them any less valuable. In fact, according to a McKinsey report, 75% of the cloud’s predicted value comes from its ability to boost innovation.

So, whether you’re making the business case to your senior leadership, or you’re already running SAP on AWS and want to derive more value, here are three ways moving your SAP applications to AWS can help you drive business growth.

1. Refocus Valuable Resources on Innovation Efforts

Let’s face it: Today’s skills shortage in combination with accelerated digital transformation plans have many organizations strapped for time, resources and budget. Because of this, most IT teams are stuck working on “keep-the-lights-on” administration, maintenance, and management activities—with no time to devote to higher-level initiatives that will drive business value. Moving SAP workloads to AWS can not only result in significant cost savings that can be reallocated to innovation efforts, but it can also help IT teams shift this disproportionate balance.

Companies can tap into the myriad services and features offered on AWS to automate many of these mundane and manual operational tasks—such as backups and refreshes for SAP environments. This helps organizations reduce the time spent on tedious tasks that aren’t mission-critical and instead spend more time on utilizing the core features and processes of SAP on AWS that can drive business growth, innovation and transformation. 

In this SAPinsider webinar, The Innovation Imperative: The Business Value of SAP Cloud Migrations, The Washington Post talks about the resource and cost-savings benefits the company has realized since moving their SAP workloads to AWS. Freeing in-house resources to focus on innovation versus “run-and-maintain” tasks not only helps drive business value, but also keeps employees happy and engaged, because you’re providing them with an opportunity to advance their skillset and demonstrating your investment in their career paths. And, with today’s ongoing skills shortage, this is extremely valuable for retaining and recruiting talent.

>> MORE: Learn about the top considerations when moving your SAP applications to AWS.

2. Transform Your Data into Business Value

Intelligent data forms the core of truly innovative, responsive and agile companies. And, with SAP on AWS, you can not only increase enterprise visibility but also use analytics to transform all of your raw data into powerful insights that drive business value.

During the aforementioned SAPinsider webinar, 57% of participants noted they already moved SAP to the cloud and now are looking to take advantage of next-gen functionalities, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and analytics. This high percentage isn’t surprising, since an effective data analytics strategy is critical to fueling operations, future plans and innovation. But to get maximum value out of their data, companies must have the right analytics platform—and SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP) on AWS provides the solution they need.

For accurate and actionable analysis, organizations need a complete picture of all data—and this is where SAP’s BTP comes up big. With SAP BTP running on AWS, you can merge business-critical SAP data with heterogeneous data outside of SAP into a centralized data lake. This gives end users a holistic view of the business so they can monitor operations, problem-solve, and respond to changes with greater speed and agility, identify areas for modernization, and much more. Additionally, by layering on one of AWS’s many analytics, AI and ML solutions, you can foster innovation, forecast trends and make data-driven decisions that deliver better outcomes, both today and in the future. 

The Washington Post is a great real-world example of how a company is using analytics to modernize existing processes. Their IT team is leveraging AI and ML solutions from AWS to engage with customers, subscribers and readers. You can hear more about The Washington Post’s analytics initiative in the SAPinsider webinar replay.

3. Bridge the Gap to S/4HANA

With SAP ending support for Business Suite 7 software by 2027, many companies will have to make the move from SAP ECC 6.0 to SAP S/4HANA in the next few years. According to a 2024 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Customer survey, 47% of surveyed ASUG members are either already using SAP S/4HANA or currently starting the implementation process. While that leaves many who haven’t yet made the move, ASUG noted that SAP’s cloud ERP has become a top focus this year for member organizations

For businesses planning their journey, migrating your SAP workloads to AWS can help bridge the gap to S/4HANA in several ways. For starters, doing so means you won’t have to wait until you’ve implemented S/4HANA to start consuming cloud services, features, and cutting-edge technology that work in conjunction with SAP. Taking incremental steps by moving SAP workloads to AWS will put your organization on the path to innovation now, while setting you up to still achieve your end goal by that 2027 deadline in the future.

Second, an SAP-to-AWS migration will help you gain cloud experience and confidence before embarking on the S/4HANA journey. With this experience under your belt, the path to S/4HANA will be much smoother when the time comes

>> MORE: For additional guidance on migrating to S/4HANA, check out Navisite’s eBook, How to Move to SAP S/4HANA Successfully.

Finding the Right Transformation Partner

Whether you want to move SAP workloads to the cloud or migrate from ECC to S/4HANA, Navisite is uniquely suited to help you throughout your digital transformation journey. Our professionals possess dual expertise in both SAP and AWS, and they combine years of experience with deep technical expertise and business process knowledge. We’re an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, a Premier SAP Gold Partner, and we’ve been named a Leader in the 2023 ISG SAP Ecosystem Report for SAP S/4HANA System Transformation in the Midmarket. We’re also recognized for our BI/analytics and cloud expertise that helps SAP customers drive business outcomes.

To learn more about the benefits of SAP on AWS with Navisite, view this infographic.