Is SAP S4 HANA On Premise is more like traditional ECC setup with HANA flavor?
Good Read: HANA as a “Service”
SAP left classical SAP ECC far behind with SAP S4 HANA On Premise. S4 HANA On Premise now receives yearly upgrade from SAP. In addition, SAP normally retires On Premise version after five years. e.g. On Premise version 1709(Released in 2017-09) will retire in September 2022. This is the way SAP makes sure that onboarded customers keep their systems up to date. In addition, this reduces SAP headache to support ancient versions of their own product. Let’s check characteristics of SAP S4 HANA On Premise one by one:
- Hardware is responsibility of SAP Customer(bought and managed). A customer is responsible for the hardware upgrade. The business who want to manage hardware on their premises(for compliance, security etc.) should consider HANA On-Premise. In this case, they have to hire IT maintenance and Basis team to take care SAP system up and running.
- Costing model for HANA On-Premise is different than HANA Cloud Platform. On-Premise costing is generally in-line with traditional licensing. A Customer has to buy the current version package + build/contract a team for maintenance/support. In general, one-time cost may be high for an On-Premise system than a Cloud-based system.
- Upgrades happen when Customer Wants it in HANA On-Premise. Technical and Functional upgrades are managed and tested by the team designated by SAP customer. This can be a short to long activity based on system size and complexity.
- Customization for customer specific business is simple and flexible in On-Premise HANA system. Cloud-based versions flexibility is substantially lesser where process best practices are followed.
- All Functionalities are available as per license in On-Premise HANA. System can be freely and independently configured as per business requirement. In contrast, Cloud-based systems products are subscription based. In addition, limited configuration options are available per customer basis.