Running SAP S/4 HANA on Azure

• Moving SAP S/4 HANA to Azure can yield benefits such as scalability and cost savings, but there are many choices and challenges.
• Options for running SAP on Azure include Azure VMs, bare-metal servers, and SAP-hosted offerings.
• IT leaders migrating SAP to Azure should consider process and timing of migration.

Given the prevalence and complexity of SAP applications such as S/4 HANA in the enterprise, Microsoft has implemented Azure-specific capabilities and guidance for deploying and connecting to SAP applications. Customers need to consider which is the best approach based on performance, costs (of migration and operation), security, regulatory compliance, and other factors.

Overview

Many enterprise customers rely on SAP products, most notably S/4 HANA, as systems of record for sales, finance, and customer relationship management (CRM). S/4 HANA is the latest version of the SAP Business Suite and runs on SAP HANA, an in-memory database designed to process large volumes of transactional data at high speed. S/4 HANA is available as on-premises software and as a cloud offering.