May 23, 2017

May 23, 2017 | Karen Blazek | Director, Product Marketing

A cloud strategy is top of mind for most companies, but a more pressing concern is your database support.  Do you have a database problem? With the possibility of SAP ending their relicense agreement with Oracle Runtime Database, it appears that SAP’s push to the cloud isn’t the only thing to raise questions amongst customers. It has been over 2 years since SAP introduced their next generation business suite and database all in one: SAP S/4HANA. SAP claims that more than 5,000 customers have licensed SAP’s S/4HANA and more than 400 customers are live on the S4 applications. Based on SAPs own published statistic, they have seen less than 10% of the customer base adopting their highly touted release. Undoubtedly, the push to get to 10% of their customers licensed on S4 was achieved, in part, with some clever deal negotiations on upgrades with some expansion into existing accounts. Simply ripping out decades of embedded processes on stable platforms, and replacing it with a new way of working would constitute a major disruption for many of SAP’s customers. Is it worth the disruption?

So what is S4/HANA?

S/4HANA is SAP’s answer to terminating their dependency on Oracle databases:

  • S/4 – The next business suite release after R3 (with the S standing for “Simple”)
  • HANA – Columnar, In-Memory Database

What are the implications to current SAP customers?  How can Spinnaker Support help solve this costly implementation?

First, there isn’t anything simple about upgrading to S4 and SAP appears to be backing down from publicly promoting the ‘simplicity’ of upgrading to it. The real kicker is the S/4HANA only runs on the HANA database, so for SAP customers on other databases like Oracle, it could require a full platform re-implementation just to run their ERP applications. Is there enough business value just to stay current on SAP’s newest business suite applications? And, customers may be losing their option to buy Oracle licenses directly from SAP.

Gartner1 recently published a research note on the impact to SAP’s decision to force customers off Oracle Runtime DBMS. SAP is threatening to discontinue their relationship with Oracle as a re-seller of the Oracle runtime DBMS licenses and enforcing their decision that S4 business suites can only be run on HANA, all by the end of this year! Last year, SAP had claimed victory in their columnar, in memory database processing speed; however, Oracle has now surpassed that speed advantage with Oracle 12C.

If your organization views SAP as strategic and your roadmap includes remaining on SAP applications, you need to plan to adopt S/4HANA by 2025 to be fully supported. Although, most SAP Business Suite users have until at least 2025 to decide on their S/4HANA strategy, SAP customers using Oracle runtime database licenses could face a much shorter timeline.

Gartner goes on to outline the major options that SAP customers have, which highlights considering third-party maintenance as a critical transition path. Customers must evaluate third-party support as an option to maintain Oracle runtime DBMS support and to significantly reduce SAP application and database maintenance costs. This huge reduction in maintenance can be reallocated to other IT projects over the next 5-7 years, while you strategically plan your move forward with SAP prior to 2025.

Spinnaker Support’s solution to these costly implementations:

Increasingly more organizations that run SAP – including Fortune 100 companies – are choosing Spinnaker Support for several reasons:

  • To gain significantly better support while saving an average of 62% because we give credit for unused licenses
  • To benefit from our wealth of knowledge and experience – to help them today and partner with them into their future
  • Because we support their entire SAP footprint (as detailed below) and advise on how they run optimally, even as the surrounding technology landscape continuously evolves

Brewster Home Fashions is a customer example that utilizes Spinnaker Support for both SAP and Oracle Technology.

“As one of the two dominant global providers of third-party software maintenance, we chose Spinnaker Support for its personalized and flexible support model, financial stability, and its best-in-class 24 x 7 x 365 global support. We are impressed with Spinnaker Support’s depth of knowledge related to SAP and Oracle Enterprise systems and their proven track record of quick response and issue resolution.”

Whether you are planning to replace your high-cost support/maintenance provider with alternative support or are seeking supplemental support for your SAP applications, we have a solution to meet your needs. Spinnaker Support provides cost-effective, personalized support and maintenance that saves companies on the average 62% of their annual maintenance spend. You can migrate support for both your SAP applications and your Oracle DB to recognize significant cost savings and world class support.

We support HANA in conjunction with support for SAP Business Suite applications, SAP Business Warehouse, and the SAP BusinessObjects, Business Intelligence platform, HANA Database as standalone; and support nearly 5,000 instances of the Oracle database. Allow us to handle your most unique SAP configurations. Spinnaker Support also uniquely rationalizes unused licenses and/or shelfware to help drive cost reductions substantially more than our competitor.

Fund IT innovations and drive business grow with savings from Spinnaker Support Maintenance offerings.  We have built a third-party maintenance model in order to best server SAP customers with a team of engineers averaging nearly 20 years of experience.

Contact us today to be informed of your options, prior to getting locked into your 2018 SAP support contract on September 30, 2017. We can also help with the possibility of no longer being able to purchase Oracle DB runtime licenses directly from SAP.

  1. Gartner “SAP Customers on Oracle Runtime DBMS Must Make Decisions Now, Amid Price Increase and Year-End Uncertainty,” May 1, 2017, Bill Ryan and Rob Wilkes.