Everyone has been talking about the SAP public cloud for a few years now, but what it actually offers in practice is often not clear. A current public cloud project with the customer Ocilion IPTV Technologies GmbH provides answers.
"First things first," says INFORMATICS Sales Manager Klaus Augner, "SAP remains SAP, whether as a public or private cloud. Both variants are based on a genuine SAP S/4HANA system, albeit with one or two differences." One of these differences is that the private cloud can be seen as a classic on-premise system. "Except that the servers are located at SAP or a hyperscaler such as AWS, Google or Azure and SAP takes over the basic activities," says Augner.
The SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, on the other hand, relies entirely on SAP Fiori as the only user interface. "In other words, there is no longer a classic SAP GUI and the focus is therefore fully on the standardization of business processes," explains Wolfgang Wiesmayr, Team Leader SAP Applications. These processes, mapped by SAP as so-called best practices, are run through with the customer in fit-to-standard workshops directly in a sandbox environment. Augner: "Deviations from the standard process are recorded, evaluated and implemented later." This is demonstrated by the example of an ongoing project with Ocilion: "Here, the standard functionalities for tracking components were not sufficient, which is why the business process was supported by our own apps."
"S/4HANA in the public cloud provides us with the desired functionalities that we expect from a modern ERP system without having to provide resources for technical availability."
Hermann Grabner, Head of Delivery Ocilion
Ulrike Schwaberger, Selina Weidlinger, Hermann Grabner, Sebastian Schätzl
STANDARD FIRST - AND STILL HIGHLY FLEXIBLE At a technical level, predefined customizing and authorization templates are imported with SAP Best Practices. "The former can only be adapted to a very limited extent, which should already be taken into account in the workshops," explains Wiesmayr. The motto of the public cloud is therefore clearly "standard first". However, this also has its advantages, as a public cloud can be implemented quickly and comparatively inexpensively, and it is a "state-of-the-art ERP system that grows with the company," says Wiesmayr. INFORMATICS is currently working with Ocilion on the implementation. Wiesmayr: "If everything goes as planned, we will be able to reveal more details in the next SAPspots."
Ocilion IPTV Technologies GmbH from Ried im Innkreis is a pioneer in IP TV solutions for network operators and in-house providers such as hospitals and hotels. Since 2004, they have been providing their customers with tailor-made TV programs including rights packages, content, apps and a video library.
