One of the key highlights of the latest Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG)-Onapsis research on customers’ SAP and cloud migration experience is that 57{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} of SAP customers are already in the process of completing or planning to complete SAP S/4HANA migrations.
Compliance and security expert Onapsis teamed up with ASUG to get the pulse of SAP customers implementing major transformation projects, including SAP S/4HANA migrations. The “Digital Transformation and Security” research looked into the status of modernisation projects, the role of security in cloud migration, the decision-makers involved, and the overall business outlook in consideration of COVID-19.
The global pandemic has forced many enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation. Strikingly, the majority (43{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}) of the respondents said that COVID-19 has not changed their digital transformation plans, stressing that going digital is key to its business strategy. However, respondents from the government sector and professional services (23{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}) said that they had to slow down or pause their modernisation plans due to the global crisis.
SAP and Cloud Migration Status
A majority (57{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}) of the respondents said their organisations are in the process of completing or planning to complete SAP S/4HANA migrations. In terms of business application migrations from on-premise to the clouds, 48{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} are already in the process of completing or planning projects.
While only 29{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} are in the process of completing cloud migrations, almost half (47{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}) have already completed custom application development to extend ERP functionality and a third (35{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}) are already planning to complete SAP S/4HANA migrations.
Of those moving to SAP S/4HANA (48{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}), 30{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} are taking the Greenfield approach while 28{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} are using the Hybrid approach and 27{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} are taking the Brownfield approach.
45{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} of SAP customers stated that their organisations implement specific digital transformation strategies. Aside from migrating to SAP S/4HANA, other strategies mentioned are migrating to cloud platforms to leverage Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or data analytics and dashboards and using a best-of-breed approach to build a single digital core.
Role of Security
Almost all (91{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}) agreed that security plays a critical role in the SAP S/4HANA project, highlighting that security is highly important (54{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}) before and during COVID-19 time.
The top five factors that are extremely important to the security of modernisation projects are:
- Threat detection (98{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd})
- Infrastructure vulnerabilities (98{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd})
- Regulatory compliance (97{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd})
- Application availability and performance (95{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd})
- User access controls (93{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd})
Aside from C-levels (51{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}) as decision-makers in determining the role of security, project teams with IT, C-level, and departmental staff as members (48{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}) are also expected to be responsible for the task. However, specific to maintaining the security of SAP systems, IT staff (77{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}) is still expected to take the lead.
Cloud Migration Outlook
Within 2021, the top areas that will be moving to the cloud are Analytics (23{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}), ERP (23{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}), and HR/Payroll (20{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}).
39{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} of the respondents said that their organisations have changed their security approach due to cloud use. Many organisations will look into updating security policies for standardisation, increase the use of multi-factor authentication rules, and impose strict monitoring on business use of cloud products to ensure compliance and security.
80{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} of respondents will be acquiring externally from either a migration partner or independent consultant/temporary staff to meet the gap of lack of in-house knowledge (33{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}) and security challenges (32{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd}).
The ASUG- Onapsis study involved a total of 141 participants, the majority of which are from the U.S., from various industries such as professional services, consumer products, and utilities.
