Mature, complex SAP systems are the norm in many large companies. Yet the operation, management, and further development of fragmented SAP environments are complex and expensive. The introduction of SAP S/4HANA with RISE with SAP offers the opportunity to consolidate and optimize these kinds of SAP landscapes. Important for modernization: The clean core is both a solution and a goal in order to stay as close as possible to the SAP standard.
The clean core principle involves using the central ERP functions as they are provided by SAP. As a rule, companies rely on a central finance, HR, and business warehouse (BW) system. Depending on the industry, additional SAP offerings such as merchandise management, warehouse management, or production planning are also available. The overriding aim is to keep the core of the SAP systems free of customer-specific modifications. Functions that cannot be mapped in the central ERP core can be developed via the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and supplemented in the SAP environments. This means that the core remains “clean” and the systems can be upgraded in the future, for example to make optimum use of the new AI features of SAP Business Data Cloud.
Clean core has several advantages for companies: Using the SAP standard simplifies maintenance, and this promotes system stability and reduces operating costs in the long term. It also speeds up and simplifies the installation of updates or upgrades, as no adjustments are necessary, meaning you get prompt access to the latest innovations from SAP.
The cost factor is another strong argument in favor of the clean core. Consolidating the SAP landscape eliminates redundant systems and service chains, which reduces both license and infrastructure costs for databases, as lean SAP systems contain less data.
The use of RISE with SAP supports the idea of the clean core: By keeping their SAP landscape lean and flexible, businesses can position themselves to be agile and future-proof. They can react more quickly to changing market requirements without the need for time-consuming customizing, and they also benefit from SAP innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) and ESG management.
SAP provides various “best practices” with the clean core. These are predefined, industry-specific business processes, whereby the major challenge is to set them up in such a way that they fit in with the company’s workflows and avoid individual changes as far as possible. If the latter are necessary, they can be realized via SAP BTP. We therefore advise you not to pack more into an SAP system than necessary.
In this context, customers need to ask themselves the following questions: How many users access the SAP system? How many transactions are processed in SAP? Which business processes run via the system? We can help to analyze and optimize business processes with our Value Consulting. We carry out an analysis of the existing SAP landscape and design and plan the new SAP landscape in SAP S/4HANA. We offer Cloud Readiness Assessments to find out what your own cloud journey could look like. They show which route to the cloud and which solution is best for the customer: The Future Cloud Infrastructure (FCI) from T-Systems or solutions from hyperscalers.
With RISE with SAP, we support companies in implementing their SAP strategy, allowing them to hand over SAP operations, infrastructure, and responsibility for the clean core to us. You can think of RISE with SAP as like the ingredients of a hamburger: SAP offers infrastructure, operating services, database management, SAP software, software support, backup, etc. from a single source – virtually all the ingredients of the “RISE burger”. However, these are very standardized and look more like a typical fast food product.
The difference with us is that we deliver RISE with SAP, map all other SAP business requirements, and provide them from a single source. Similar to delicious, individual hamburgers: The patty and the bun stand for RISE with SAP. T-Systems provides slices of spicy cheese, caramelized onions, or fresh salad leaves to suit your taste, and also takes care of the rest of the “menu”, for example non-SAP systems or the implementation of enhancements to SAP BTP in order to keep the ERP core “clean”.
Our offering is particularly suitable for companies that use many different SAP systems over a long period of time. With RISE with SAP, we first set up your central core applications as a clean core. We will continue to operate the remaining systems in their existing form and move them to SAP S/4HANA at a later date – but no later than the planned end of maintenance for SAP ECC. Thanks to our long-standing partnership with SAP and our experience from many SAP client projects, we know that the clean core helps companies with mature and complex SAP landscapes to:
To make the SAP transformation easier for businesses, we offer a wide range of SAP services that support the implementation of the clean core. Our archiving and historization services help to analyze all systems before migration to SAP S/4HANA, and to decide which data should be taken to S/4HANA and which should not. For example, our archive services can be used to specify that new SAP S/4HANA systems should only include data from the last twelve months. All older data, on the other hand, is moved to an archive, for example that of ImageMaster. They remain accessible there for as long as necessary, but do not place a burden on the productive systems.
To provide a little background, the ImageMaster document solution is certified for Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS), an open standard for connecting different content management systems. As the successor to SAP ArchiveLink, CMIS is an important standard interface for connecting SAP S/4HANA and ECM systems in cloud environments. ImageMaster offers great potential for efficient document management and significant cost savings. This is because companies consistently relieve their SAP HANA database with an archive solution, saving them license and maintenance costs. At the same time, the demands on the cloud infrastructure go down.
In addition to archiving, data management plays an important role in the SAP transformation: Legal requirements – such as the German Fiscal Code (AO) – stipulate that some data may only be deleted after a certain period of time, or possibly even never. T-Systems offers the Managed Application Retirement Services (M.A.R.S.) historization solution for this purpose. Thanks to the historization of data records, companies save costs – and still have access to all relevant information. In practice, we use M.A.R.S. to reduce our customers’ data stocks by up to 85 percent, as superfluous and redundant information is deleted. Our services help to restructure the data landscape, sort it out, and decide which information should be archived, or better, historicized.
Speaking of data management: Large volumes of data are constantly being generated in SAP production systems. In previous on-premise SAP installations, relational databases from Oracle or IBM were often used. As the storage disks required for this are not expensive, the required storage capacity of 100 terabytes only resulted in low costs. Modern in-memory databases such as SAP HANA are different. They enable business processes to be carried out in real time, for which the data is stored in RAM. This can be expensive, as the following comparison shows: Whereas the infrastructure costs for a 40 TB Oracle database used to be between 10,000 and 15,000 euros per month, today the database server alone for a 40 TB HANA database costs between 90,000 and 100,000 euros per month. A strategy for reducing data that is no longer required, for example through historization, helps to keep costs in check.
Be it archiving, historization, or data management: As a premium supplier, we offer a wide range of SAP services – and provide them end-to-end. Our plus is that we can operate both RISE with SAP and non-RISE with SAP landscapes as well as third-party solutions in the SAP environment.
Our project at Deutsche Telekom shows how a successful SAP transformation with a clean core strategy works in practice. Here we are introducing RISE with SAP together with Deutsche Telekom IT (DTIT). Read our next blog post to find out why the clean core strategy is crucial for innovation and future growth.
