Understanding the difference between SAP HANA on Cloud vs On Premise becomes very important when it comes to buying a HANA digital core from the SAP. Both versions differ in terms of function, cost and even how they are managed throughout their life-cycle. Of course, there is no good-bad comparison when we discuss SAP HANA on Cloud vs On Premise, however, their fitment to customer’s requirement is vital to select one of the approaches.
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Let’s see how they differ:
SAP HANA on Cloud vs On Premise
|
Differentiator |
HANA On-Premise |
HANA Cloud Edition |
|
Hardware |
Hardware is commissioned and managed by SAP Customer. In other words, customer is responsible for the hardware upgrade. |
It is commissioned and managed by SAP. Cloud provider is responsible for the hardware upgrade. |
|
Costing |
Traditional License cost. |
Subscription-based cost. This may be a key differentiator for cost-sensitive customers because the subscription-based model may be appealing due to no one-time huge cost. |
|
Upgrades |
As per Customer’s need. Normally software upgrades incurs substantial costs because set of planned activities to be performed. A thorough testing should be performed to make sure sanity of solution. |
Automatic upgrades without Customer’s intervention. These upgrades are meant to be based on best practices, bug fixes, and industry standards. |
|
Customization |
Flexible. |
Difficult to deviate from the Standard process |
|
Features |
Bundled features come with the license. |
Features available as per the subscription. Getting new standard feature is as easy as buying a new subscription. However, getting a custom feature is a tough nut where you may need to develop a custom API. |
Another important key differentiator is Compliance, Data Privacy, and Security concern. In a cloud-based system, separate HANA instances of the same system may be shared among different clients. In On-Premise systems, there is no such issue may arise.
Hybrid Model
Apart from On-Premise and Cloud Editions, there is also an option of a Hybrid model. Here, Customer can choose to keep data on their private servers as On-Premise model and Subscribe to Cloud services like Ariba or Fieldglass services.