SAP S/4HANA Survey 2022: Is RISE with SAP Driving the Switch to the Cloud?

In the SAP community, valantic’s annual survey is seen as a key mood barometer regarding experts’ opinions on the acceptance of S/4HANA. valantic has been conducting the market survey since 2018, providing useful insights into trends and companies’ outlooks on migrating to the new ERP suite.

The fifth edition of the survey is now under way, the focus this time being on the topic of the cloud as well as the RISE with SAP migration offering that has been on the market since the start of 2021. With RISE with SAP, customers wishing to forge ahead with their digitization initiatives can migrate to S/4HANA on the basis of a Transformation as a Service (TaaS) model.

S/4HANA Migration: Trend Towards Private Cloud

In previous years’ S/4HANA studies, companies still attached less importance to cloud-based ERP system operations than providing this in-house. Even in the 2021 Expert Survey, more than half of the participants (58%) still favored an on-premises operating model, citing the limited customization options of cloud solutions as a major hurdle to switching.

At the same time, a change in mindset was already materializing in the 2021 survey: compared to the previous year, the private cloud had gained importance, with 22.6% of the participants naming it as their preferred operating model, up from just 14.7% in 2020. For the future, while most companies surveyed in 2021 were expecting a fall in the market popularity of on-premises operations over the long term, they also believed that they would not be entirely displaced by cloud solutions. A clear trend towards hybrid operating models such as the two-tier approach has thus already emerged.

RISE with SAP as Driver for S/4HANA Cloud Solutions

At valantic, we believe that private cloud usage will continue to gain importance quickly this year. In doing so, we expect the RISE with SAP portfolio, which helps companies digitize and migrate to the cloud using a Transformation as a Service model, will also be a driving force behind this development. What do you think? Is private cloud a feasible option for your own system operations, as well?