Is Running SAP with AWS Worth It?
Why does Amazon allow the use of AWS?
Amazon is the market leader in cloud infrastructure deployment. Amazon started this business because its infrastructure is only fully utilised during Christmas and Easter. When the infrastructure is not adapted to the slowest capacity of the year, Amazon will charge a certain fee to provide these surpluses, so the concept of cloud computing was born. Today, the company works closely with SAP, so you can get almost all SAP applications from the AWS cloud.
You can choose from Amazon data centers located in ten regions, 26 availability zones, and 51 content offering edge locations. The figure below shows the distribution of data centers.
Important AWS definitions
Area
A region is an independent AWS service group in a geographic area. Each region operates in accordance with local data privacy laws and regulations. You can choose the area where the data is stored. Amazon will not change this.
The distinction between regions allows you to design web applications so that they are located in the geographic area closest to a specific customer and comply with legal or other regulatory requirements. In addition, each zone contains two or more availability zones.
Availability zone
An Availability Zone is a location that operates in isolation in a region and is not affected by failures in other Availability Zones. They also provide cost-effective connectivity and low network latency for other Availability Zones in the same region.
Although there are many reasons to use SAP on AWS, the most important reasons are summarized below:
Low cost-By running SAP on AWS, you can save infrastructure investment costs and some operating costs. If you are running SAP on AWS instead of locally, you will find a detailed analysis of the cost savings later in this article.
Flexibility: AWS allows you to expand the SAP system infrastructure in two directions as needed. For example, you can provide the system with more resources for overnight batch processing or month-end settlement, thereby significantly increasing its scale.
Agility and speed-If you are running SAP on AWS, you can start the SAP system in a few minutes without spending time setting up the SAP system. In this way, you can avoid the entire internal process from ordering hardware to configuring the operating system.
Security: AWS provides a secure platform for your SAP applications. The platform has passed multiple certifications and audits, which means that the platform meets relevant requirements. You are responsible for supporting and managing the SAP systems running on the platform so that they also meet these requirements.
No capacity planning: If you use SAP on AWS, capacity planning is usually not necessary. Instead, you can add computing, storage, or network instances as needed. You don’t need to plan strategically; just order what you need from Amazon.
Easily integrate with data centers: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) allows you to establish a secure connection between AWS and data centers to ensure the security of data and application connections.
Pros and cons of running SAP on AWS
In short, you can see that there are many benefits to using AWS Cloud. However, you should also be aware that these many benefits may also bring some challenges that must be overcome. These challenges mainly occur in the operational model (who is responsible for tasks related to IT operations) and security. However, for many companies, the most important benefit is cost benefit, which we will discuss later.
Based on what we have discussed so far, this is the current situation: AWS provides you with public cloud services for SAP services. AWS Cloud is a certified platform, so in theory, it also applies to the SAP live system. Expansion options allow you to also run very large SAP systems in the AWS cloud.
The cost is divided according to the general cost model in the research. The study includes the following cost elements:
Hardware and software investment: technical infrastructure, system software and application software costs
Implementation: process design costs, organizational changes, technical settings, business settings, project management, testing
Continuous hardware and software costs: the cost of technical infrastructure, system software, and application software.
Operation: Typical operating costs of system operation and application operation
Continuous improvement process: implementation cost and continuous technical and operational improvement
Update items: activity costs, such as application updates and system updates
The study also broke down the potential cost savings based on these cost elements (see table below).
In conclusion
As you can see, running the SAP system in the AWS cloud can bring significant cost advantages. Therefore, running the system in the AWS cloud is a reasonable choice to consider. Before making this leap, be sure to consider your unique business environment, but if running SAP with AWS seems to be the best choice for your business, then you can be confident in your decision.
