Migrating SAP Applications to the Cloud, Lessons from the Front Lines

Read the transcript below of the chat with Virtustream’s Lee Johnson and Nitesh Arora for in-depth technical information on migrating SAP systems to the cloud.

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About the Speakers

Lee Johnson – Virtustream

As a Senior Solution Architect at Virtustream, Lee Johnson’s responsibilities include being a trusted advisor for senior client executives within the business and IT organizations. Lee designs and delivers IT and business transformations and cost-optimization programs using the potential of cloud services and related technologies. Additional responsibilities include business case development using ROI and TCO analysis and the design of migration roadmaps for private, public and hybrid clouds. Lee held previously held positions at CSC, Accenture, Deloitte, and Symmetry.

Nitesh Arora, Sr. Systems Engineer / Virtustream

Nitesh Arora is a senior systems engineer at Virtustream. He is passionate about providing technology strategy and driving SAP centric solutions to the Virtustream cloud. He has over 16 years of experience in IT with principal background in managing large scale ERP ecosystems. Before joining Virtustream, Nitesh has led many SAP projects while working for Broadcom, Deloitte Consulting, Microsoft and HCL in various capacities including solution architecture and client delivery roles focusing on business enablement using innovative technology solutions for multiple clients across the globe.

Matthew Shea: I am excited to be joined by Nitesh Arora and Lee Johnson of Virtustream.

Matthew Shea: Welcome to today’s Q&A on migrating SAP applications to the cloud. I am excited to be joined by Nitesh Arora and Lee Johnson of Virtustream.

Virtustream pioneered running SAP systems in production in multi-tenant cloud, and over the years, from new greenfield deployments to production migrations, upgrades, and ongoing management of production systems, they’ve seen it all. With more than 225 customers running production SAP systems in Virtustream Enterprise Cloud and more than 600 migrations of SAP HANA, under our belts, they have built tremendous experience migrating and operating these mission critical systems.

As a Senior Solution Architect at Virtustream, Lee Johnson’s responsibilities include being a trusted advisor for senior client executives within the business and IT organizations. Lee designs and delivers IT and business transformations and cost-optimization programs using the potential of cloud services and related technologies.

Nitesh Arora is a senior systems engineer at Virtustream. He is passionate about providing technology strategy and driving SAP centric solutions to the Virtustream cloud. He has over 16 years of experience in IT with principal background in managing large scale ERP ecosystems.

Comment From Imin Meshed: Why do so many people claim cloud is cheaper even though when questioned they have no idea what their existing setup costs? What are the best tools to analyze existing costs ?

Lee Johnson: Hello Imin, while I cannot speak for other vendor products and services. Virtustream has an Advisor service. This service helps clients to understand their workloads and consumption. We can also assist in building the business case for your cloud adoption.

Comment From Imin Meshed: What about hotfixes in the cloud? If we take software-as-a-service (SaaS), do we get control over when they are applied?

Lee Johnson: Hello Imin, it seems your question is related to a SaaS delivery model. SaaS solutions in most instances have one version of the code and all changes are applied at once. However, other delivery models such as PaaS and IaaS allow for more control.

Comment From Michelle Wallace: When migrating to HANA, what additional needs to be installed or activated to use HANA Live? We currently don’t have BW, or any BI reporting tool.

Lee Johnson: Hello Michelle, it seems your question comes in two parts. 1) What is necessary when migrating to SAP HANA and 2) What is needed to enable SAP HANA Live.

Comment From Michelle Wallace: To clarify, once on SAP HANA, what is needed to enable SAP HANA Live?

Lee Johnson: HANA live comes in many flavors. I would direct you to SAP Note 1778607 – SAP HANA Live for SAP Business Suite for specifics on the solution being deployed and steps to activate.

Comment From Kris: Best test strategy for SAP migration to the cloud and how do you measure the success of this migration?

Nitesh Arora: Hello Kris, every migration is different. Virtustream suggests mock cutover prior to migrating production systems. This helps us iron out the migration procedure so that there are no surprises during the actual cutover. Post cutover, the functional team conducts test identified in the customized mock cutover plan to validate integrity of data and system state. Most migrations follow the Waterfall approach and lesson learned against downstream system are carried forward.

Comment From RupaliS: What are things I should consider to migrate SAP BW to the cloud (AWS)? Our objective is to move SAP BI 7.01 NUC to Cloud and perform an upgrade project on cloud (SAP BW 7.4 UC). What all things I would need to consider, like network bandwidth, performance which communicating with source systems (ECC/CRM) or EP for reporting, and sizing based on Quick sizer.

Lee Johnson: Hello Rupalis, Latency is a strong consideration which I often see overlooked as part of the cloud adoption planning.

Comment From Scott: What organizational learning is needed for a successful migration?

Nitesh Arora: The organization must understand and document what are the success criteria for the cloud initiative before the first system moves. Different clouds are built for different workload profiles. The client must understand the application profile and select the most suitable cloud provider i.e. Cloud Native vs Mission Critical.

Comment From Huseni: We want to move our current ECC landscape to the cloud, our ECC version is ECC 6.0 EHP1

Lee Johnson: Hello Huseni, ECC 6.0 EHP1 is supported on the Virtustream cloud. If you can provide further details on the objectives and whether this is a lift and shift migration or an upgrade. We can further the conversation.

Comment From Huseni: We can afford only 1 hour of downtime. Is there any way we can achieve this?

Lee Johnson: Hello Huseni,

Using advanced replication technologies, downtime can be minimized. However, does the 1 hour downtime include functional testing?

Comment From Jack: How do you know when it’s ready for primetime post migration?

Nitesh Arora: Every migration is different. Virtustream suggests mock cutover prior to migrating production systems. This helps us iron out the migration procedure so that there are no surprises during the actual cutover. Post cutover, the functional team conducts test identified in the customized mock cutover plan to validate integrity of data and system state. Most migrations follow the Waterfall approach and lesson learned against downstream system are carried forward.

Comment From Sean: How do you execute pre-production testing without breaking the systems?

Lee Johnson: Pre-Production testing is usually executed against a standalone systems. The intent of testing is never to break the system. If conducting a stress testing of the infrastructure, then yes the objective is to understand system behaviors under extraordinary loads, but even then the goal should not be to break the system.

Comment From Nick: What do organizations consistently overlook in migration planning?

Nitesh Arora: 1. Identify business drivers; Performance, Reliability, Cost etc. Research cloud options (Virtustream, AWS, Azure etc) for the features that they bring to the table. What XaaS are you looking for? Their pros and cons. The business drivers and motivations of the cloud migration must be known. Many clients move to the cloud just for cost savings; however, the cost savings are in most cases one-time and do not drive the business value needed by IT. At Virtustream, we focus on delivering business value over cost savings and transition the discussion to how can IT be an innovation enabler.

2. Assess current IT infrastructure for size, complexity, support, costs etc. Identify apps that will potentially move to the cloud. Identify which cloud makes most sense for which apps. Identify integrations between apps On-Premises and Cloud/Third Party (Like banks). Many clients do not have in place a strong governance models having the control mechanisms to ensure the value aspects touch upon above are being met; moreover, that corrective actions are being instantiated when the plan deviates.

3. Estimate expenses for the cloud of choice

 a. Infrastructure

 i. Compute, Network, Storage

                                 ii. Right sizing

b. Services

   i. Migration

   ii. Operation and Support

   iii. SLAs

 c. Licensing

                d. Security

4. Others

 a. Application complexity and platform compatibility

 b. Training for staff

 c. Testing

                d. Migration time, Acceptable downtime etc

Let’s not forget foundational services such as Active Directory or LDAP along with end-user authentication and print services. Finally the Service and Incident support models must be accounted for e.g. What ticketing solution is the client using and integration into the Cloud Service Providers solution. E-Bonding is always an interesting topic.

Comment From Matt: How to decide between a greenfield and brownfield transition?

Lee Johnson: Hello Matt,

This is really a business decision. Factors that must be taken into account would be the level of customization within the system e.g. the number of Z programs.

Comment From Gus: What does the typical timeline, planning, and benchmarking process look like?

Nitesh Arora: This depends on the scope, the number of applications, complexity, size, client’s release cycle and their internal projects.

Onboarding at Virtustream could take anywhere from a few weeks to months depending on the above parameters.

Comment From Sean: How do you figure that out how much downtime is needed during migration?

Nitesh Arora: This depends on the scope, the number of applications, complexity, size of the systems in scope. Downtime duration is also dependent on the migration methodology. SAP Export/Import, V2V, P2V, OVF/OVA import will all have different downtime duration. We closely work with customers to make sure that there is minimal downtime and business disruption.

We could use different ways to reduce downtime. For e.g. if we are doing 2TB HANA migration, we could setup a HSR target on the cloud and once the DBs are in sync we could schedule a time to switch over. This of course comes with a lot of planning for the DB, App server migration etc.

We do recommend the clients to conduct a cleansing exercise to minimize moving data without business value. This would include operational logs and the like.

Comment From Imin Meshed: If we move to the cloud what happens to Excel add-ons like EPM ?

Lee Johnson: Hi Imin, it has been my experience with Excel add-ons that a number of round-trips are necessary to gather the data on the desktop. In cases where latency is a concern, my suggestion would be application or desktop virtualization technologies such as Citrix.

Comment From Imin Meshed: How is the SAPGUI configured on my PC to point to my cloud SAP servers. What encryption is there?

Lee Johnson: Hi Imin, SAPGUI is deploy in similar fashion to an on-premise deployment. Yes, encryption can be enable to secure the channel.

Comment From Jeremy: What kind of performance and ROI benefits can an organization realize?

Nitesh Arora: Our Architects work closely with customers to conduct a detailed scoping exercise. During this, we determine how the existing landscape operates. We also prepare cost estimates for the to-be landscape for the desired duration. These data points help customers make educated decisions on how to proceed with their migration to the cloud.

Our true consumption model helps customer realize cost benefits. Some customers have reported anywhere between 30-40% cost reduction in their operating expenses after migrating to VST cloud.

Virtustream guarantees best in class SLA for environment uptime and performance. Even though our platform stays the same, we engineer a customized solution for every customer to make sure it caters to the specific needs of the customers.

Keep in mind, just moving to cloud does not guarantee perform benefits. For e.g. If the current system has a bad code that slows down the system, those issues would remain even after migration.

Many clients measure ROI using various measures. One that we do not see spoken about enough is the ability to innovate faster. A cloud model is an enabler for innovate giving the business access to infrastructure resources on-demand.

Comment From Ted: How can the IT department help with change management?

Nitesh Arora: The IT department must have a seat at the table during the business strategy phases of planning. This is the only opportunity for IT to bring value to the business.

Comment From Liz: What driver are you seeing the most in the migrations to cloud? Cost savings? Better performance?

Lee Johnson: Hi Liz,

Our Architects work closely with customers to conduct a detailed scoping exercise. During this, we determine how the existing landscape operates. We also prepare cost estimates for the to-be landscape for the desired duration. These data points help customers make educated decisions on how to proceed with their migration to the cloud.

Our true consumption model helps customer realize cost benefits. Some customers have reported anywhere between 30-40% cost reduction in their operating expenses after migrating to Virtustream cloud.

Virtustream guarantees best in class SLA for environment uptime and performance. Even though our platform stays the same, we engineer a customized solution for every customer to make sure it caters to the specific needs of the customers.

Keep in mind, just moving to cloud does not guarantee perform benefits. For e.g. If the current system has a bad code that slows down the system, those issues would remain even after migration.

Comment From Imin Meshed: How about licensing, can our licensing be transferred to the cloud setup? Would there be an extra charge? Does SAP take offence if you don’t use their cloud?

Lee Johnson: Hi Meshed,

The SAP licenses are transferable to the cloud. SAP does not take offense. However, you will want to work with the different vendors for Operating System and Database licenses. Each vendor has a different model.

Comment From R: What’s the best way to limit business disruption during a migration?

Lee Johnson: Several options are available to limit the disruption to the business including usage of replication technologies.

Comment From Imin Meshed: If we adopt SaaS, what control do we get over the time upgrades happen

Lee Johnson: Hi Imin, each SaaS offering is different. If the SaaS provider only maintains one version of the product, you will have limited control. This is really a discussion that must be had with the solution provider.

Comment From Manoranjan Any experience in migration ECC or BW from AS400/DB2 to Cloud (Linux & Oracle / Sybase )?  What are risks and how do we mitigate them?

Nitesh Arora: We can talk to migrations to Virtustream cloud. Virtustream cloud supports any workloads that can reside on x86 architecture including DB2, Oracle, Sybase etc. Our architecture is built ground up with high performance for enterprise class workloads and security in mind.

A solid migration strategy addresses technical and business risks and our dedicated and specialized onboarding team helps with that.

Our Architects work closely with customers to conduct a detailed scoping exercise. During this, we determine how the existing landscape operates, existing issues and any potential risks of moving to the cloud. We also prepare cost estimates for the to-be landscape for the desired duration. These data points help customers make educated decisions on how to proceed with their migration to the cloud.

Comment From Michelle: After migrated to an SAP HANA database, how long does it take before you see performance gains on standard transactions? For example, does FBL3H run immediately faster, or does it take a while for the system to “learn” which data to have in memory?

Lee Johnson: Hi Michelle,

My experience is that performance is noticeable at go-live. All of the data is loaded into memory, leading to a significant performance improvement.

Comment From Jonathan: Do you see people doing lift and shift mostly? Or upgrading/migrating?

Lee Johnson: I would say 60% lift and shift is the preferred method if cost-take out is the business driver. If the drivers are other than cost then I see many clients using the outage to deliver additional benefits to the business.

Comment From Dan: Are there any major trends you see? Migration off UNIX to X86? People retiring mainframes? Moving away from DB vendors to SAP HANA?

Nitesh Arora: Many of the clients we encounter have or are enabling a Cloud First strategy. However, we have also encountered clients very attached to their mainframes. At this time, the trend is the Cloud and as in stocks, the trend is your friend. You shouldn’t fight it, in other words.

Comment From Imin Meshed: In your experience, are you finding that those who have on-premise SAP move to the cloud when they adopt SAP HANA?

Lee Johnson: This is on a case-by-case basis. My experience has been that clients are moving traditional RDBMS to the cloud.

Comment From Imin Meshed: Because the HANA DB is in-memory, how long does it take to warm up after a server restart?

Lee Johnson: There is a configuration parameter controlling which tables are required to be in-memory before the database can be opened.

Comment From Kathryn: What is the best piece of advice you’d offer for an organization considering a move to the cloud?

Lee Johnson: Hi Kathryn, there are many business drivers for moving to the cloud. Cost, Performance, Innovation are many that come to mind. Would you like to dive deep into any one?

Comment From Sai: What options are available for SAP S/4HANA 1709 HIGH availability and disaster recovery with new SAP HANA 2.0 deployments?

Nitesh Arora: Our cloud architecture provides the benefits of VMware HA (High Availability) and FT (Fault Tolerance). We could also deploy HANA HSR (HANA System Replication) for HA or DR.

In addition, we can support Multi-Node (scale-out) for SAP S/4HANA. Refer to the note below for more info.

https://accounts.sap.com/saml2/idp/sso/accounts.sap.com (log in required)

Comment From Imin Meshed: Do you have a gut feeling on who is the cheapest Cloud Provider for a SaaS adoption?

Lee Johnson: Cheapest is relative. I would recommend choosing the best vendor that meets your business requirement.

Comment From Imin Meshed: Are there any showstoppers for adopting a cloud migration?

Lee Johnson: Any data that is very sensitive to the business. However, this hurdle can overcome with strong encryption. Legal or Regulatory constraints are also hurdles that can prevent cloud adoption.

Toni Page, Virtustream: Thank you  for joining us today! If you have more questions and will be at SAP TechEd US or Europe, please stop by and see Virtustream.