It’s no secret that SAP is a worldwide leader in enterprise software solutions. SAP Enterprise Central Component (ECC6 — a part of Business Suite) is its most popular integrated software solution that helps you manage various business areas like finance, accounting, human resources, supply chain management, and more.
However, SAP has announced that they will discontinue support for ECC6. That’s because SAP wants its existing customers to transition to S/4HANA Cloud, SAP’s latest cloud service.
To help customers adopt S/4HANA, SAP released RISE with SAP, a monthly subscription that lets you access different SAP tools. Unfortunately, RISE has particular challenges, such as the complexity of implementing it, significant upfront costs, and vendor lock-in.
In this article, we’ll look at RISE with SAP in-depth, explain the key differences between RISE and S/4HANA cloud, and share how third-party support can be a better option if you don’t want to transition to SAP’s newer software versions.
What is RISE with SAP?
RISE with SAP combines SAP’s intelligent suite of applications with the expertise of SAP’s partners. It offers various SAP solutions under a single contract. SAP has bundled its existing services, technologies, and products in what it calls a “business transformation-as-a-service.”
What is included in RISE with SAP?
RISE with SAP comes with six components.
- Business process intelligence: Optimizes core operations through intelligence from data analytics.
SAP S/4HANA cloud: Encompasses various cloud-based applications for core business functions like procurement, sales, manufacturing, and finance. - System hosting: Includes deployment and running of applications, which can include SAP systems running remotely via a cloud service provider.
- SAP business network starter pack: Integrates Concur, Fieldglass, and Ariba to support workforce management and improve collaboration.
- SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) consumption credits: Let you pick the best services and technology tools for your business and build customized applications.
- Embedded tools and services: Helps businesses with process configuration and data migration.
How is RISE with SAP different from S/4HANA Cloud?
Though SAP S/4HANA Cloud is an offering that comes under RISE with SAP, here are five key differences.
- Scope
RISE with SAP offers business transformation as a service, including infrastructure, migration, and ongoing support.
S/4HANA Cloud focuses specifically on providing a cloud-based ERP system.
- Capabilities
RISE with SAP provides end-to-end capabilities, covering all aspects of a company’s digital transformation journey.
S/4HANA Cloud offers industry-specific functionalities to streamline business operations and gain real-time insights.
- Flexibility
RISE with SAP lets businesses choose the right components and services for their specific requirements.
On the other hand, S/4HANA Cloud offers a standardized approach with pre-configured industry solutions.
- Deployment options
RISE with SAP can be deployed on-premise or with a public or private cloud provider.
S/4HANA Cloud is a cloud-native ERP solution primarily deployed in the public cloud.
- Cost
RISE with SAP follows a subscription-based pricing model, where organizations pay a monthly fee based on usage.
In contrast, S/4HANA Cloud has a fixed pricing structure based on your required functionalities and the number of users.
How to know whether RISE with SAP is right for you?
SAP released S/4HANA in 2015, and it was a major overhaul to its SAP flagship software Business Suite. Like most digital transformations, migration to S/4HANA is also a two to three-year project.
Many enterprises can’t afford so much disruption, downtime, and implementation costs. See the infographic below for the top three challenges of S/4HANA migration:
However, SAP has been aggressively pushing its existing customers to adopt S/4HANA. The motive is clear from its recent support cost hikes.
For example, effective 2024, SAP will increase support costs for its on-prem offering by 5%. Moreover, SAP has put all its innovation revenue into cloud-only solutions.
Despite the push, two-thirds of SAP customers have still not transitioned to the cloud.
RISE with SAP is SAP’s initiative to increase the adoption rates of the S/4HANA cloud. However, just 1 in 10 want to implement and use RISE with SAP.
That’s because of the following challenges:
- RISE with SAP has limited customization options compared to its other models.
- Organizations that have already implemented complex customizations may want to avoid redoing the process.
- Many organizations that have already adopted S/4HANA want to avoid going through another migration process to RISE with SAP.
- If you want to use generative AI from SAP, RISE with SAP will charge you a 30% premium.
- Right now, only a few experts have in-depth knowledge about how RISE with SAP works.
With all these challenges, how do you know if RISE with SAP is right for you?
In our experience, it comes down to three things:
- You want to move from a perpetual license model to a subscription-based model.
- You want to transition to a cloud solution.
- You are a new SAP customer and are looking at greenfield adoption.
However, if you don’t tick these boxes, want to stay on your current SAP systems, or don’t want to transition to S/4HANA or RISE with SAP, there’s a small challenge.
SAP will discontinue supporting its previous releases like Business Suite 6 and ECC from 2027. Customers can purchase extended maintenance till 2030 for an added fee of 2%.
However, if you want to use these previous versions after the sunset date, you won’t get any support and security upgrades. So, what’s the way out?
The great news is that you can opt for third-party support.
With third-party support, you can:
- Delay your migration and stay with your roadmap instead of succumbing to SAP’s support deadlines.
- Use your current systems (even end-of-life products) and business applications without worrying about security.
- Assess when you will be ready for the transition and validate whether you have a strong business case to move to cloud managed services.
- Take time to think whether you want to move to RISE or S/4HANA and invest the funds saved from the migration into more pressing IT projects.
How is this possible?
Let’s learn in the next section.
Third-party support: How does it help if you don’t want to adopt S/4HANA or RISE with SAP?
Third-party support is when you opt for IT support and maintenance from another party instead of the software’s support offerings. Third-party support (3PS) can help you with ongoing maintenance at affordable rates. Gartner shares that organizations can save up to 50% of their support costs while maintaining their legacy systems if they opt for third-party services.
Spinnaker Support started in 2008 and has since served 1,400+ clients. We provide 3PS, managed services, and consulting for SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, JDEdwards, Salesforce, and open-source software.
We offer highly personalized and customized services to our clients, which is why we received a 96.3% customer satisfaction rating in 2022.
Here’s more about each of our offerings in detail.
Support for end-of-life products
We don’t think making critical decisions based on software publishers’ fee increases and timelines is wise. Your software maintenance should support your needs and not the publishers.
We provide full support for all versions of the SAP solutions you currently use and extend the lifespan of your legacy systems.
That way, you don’t have to fall into uncompromising roadmaps and can continue using systems with which you and your employees are most productive.
Our contract terms are flexible and transparent, with multi-year support agreements. The longer the term, the more of a discount you get.
Reduced support costs
Most publishers earn around 90% of their profits from support costs. SAP in-house support costs around 17-22% of license fees, and maintenance fees see a yearly hike of 2-4%.
In contrast, with Spinnaker Support’s 3PS, you can save 50-62% on support costs vs. in-house SAP support.
You can imagine how you can use these savings to fund your other critical IT projects. For example, D+M Group will likely save $3.75M over five years after opting to work with Spinnaker Support.
Quick issue resolution process
If you have a problem to fix, SAP usually wants you to self-diagnose it and direct you to their self-service knowledge base. Doing this can often lead to frustration and unnecessary delays.
In cases where they offer you live help, their junior support reps usually take up the issues, which may lead to frustration and lack of resolution due their inexperience.
At Spinnaker Support, we ensure that we answer your issues within 15 minutes or less — 24/7/365 days. Plus, you’ll always get SAP experts, not junior-level support staff, to talk to you.
Like SAP, we don’t worry about the type of issues you face. We take equal ownership as you in resolving the problems and even handle issues that originate outside the base application code, like integrations or customizations.
In addition, our ultimate support guarantee promises you’ll receive the best support when and where you need it.
Customer-specific, highly experienced team
At Spinnaker Support, our SAP engineers have 20+ years of experience. Our Level 2 and 3 engineers offer ITIL-centric resolutions. If you ever need to escalate an issue, Level 4 engineers are available to help.
Every client of ours has a customized team of cross-functional development, technology, security, and interoperability experts headed by an Account Support Lead (ASL).
We appoint ASLs who have an experience of 16+ years. Our team of SAP software specialists becomes an extension of your IT team and gets in-depth knowledge about logged tickets and your technology stack.
Team members soon become proficient with your environment, which makes the hand-offs easier and leads to shorter resolution times.
Robust security methods
You can’t rely on patches alone where cyberattacks are increasing. We understand Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) and protect your environment by reducing surface attacks and adopting defense-in-depth principles.
Our Seven-Point Security Solution allows us to employ full-stack security and address vulnerabilities at all levels of your infrastructure. We have a two-part philosophy to security.
First, we target the weakness category and provide layered system protection.
Then, we analyze your systems based on Defense Information System Agency —
Security Technical Implementation Guides (DISA-STIG) and Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmarks — popular, industry-accepted security benchmarks. The analysis allows us to create customized hardening and compensating techniques so that your systems are successful in penetration testing and auditing.
Regular updates for tax and regulations
Tax, legal, and regulatory processes get constant updates. To be in the know, Spinnaker Support regularly researches and gathers your requirements for all regulations. You receive timely updates, and we also help you implement them in your systems.
We also help you with time-sensitive tax, compliance, and regulatory issues and customize our solutions depending on your geography and industry.
Support for interoperability
Today’s enterprise software solutions are interconnected. In fact, nine in ten businesses have non-SAP to SAP connections. If something breaks for one connection, other systems get affected.
However, most vendors won’t provide you with interoperability support.
At Spinnaker Support, we have deep expertise in all interoperability-related issues and can tackle them at any technology stack’s application, database, and server levels.
Contact Spinnaker Support to follow your own IT roadmap
If you don’t want to move to S/4HANA and RISE with SAP, Spinnaker Support’s 3PS can be a great alternative.
We support SAP business suites and apps, SAP BI components, SAP database and technology, and SAP Sybase/ASE.
We can also provide expert advice on your business planning roadmap and suggest when it would be advisable for you to take the transition.
If you’d like to talk to a Spinnaker Support expert, contact us today.
