Survey finds majority of SAP licensees plan to continue running ERP release
Rimini Street, Inc., a global provider of enterprise software products and services, and the leading independent support provider for Oracle and SAP products, revealed the findings from a recent global survey of SAP licensees conducted by Rimini Street to better understand their SAP application strategies and future plans. A key finding in the report is that the dominant strategy for SAP licensees, selected by 89 percent of respondents, is to continue running their current proven SAP ERP releases, given that the rich functionality of their current releases meet business needs and also form the foundation of a preferred hybrid IT model.
Additionally, 65 percent of survey respondents have no plans to, or are currently not committed to, migrate to S/4HANA2, with the number one reason for not committing to S/4HANA cited as “no strong business case and unclear ROI.” The report, “Rimini Street Survey: 2017 SAP Applications Strategy Findings,” is based on responses from CIOs, CTOs, IT VPs, directors and managers from a broad range of industries and company sizes across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.
Of the survey respondents that plan to stay on their current SAP Business Suite application, 30 percent are already adopting a hybrid IT strategy to maximize the value of their core SAP system as a system of record, while also freeing up funds and resources that can be used to more quickly and flexibly drive innovation through systems of engagement. A hybrid IT strategy offers the best of both worlds — it provides the ability to reliably run the business on a robust core ERP application, and at the same time enables an organization to more quickly adopt new innovative applications and services, including cloud, mobile and analytics. Organizations have the flexibility to deploy systems of engagement from any technology provider, including SAP, which enables faster time to innovation and overall competitive advantages.
In addition, an increasing number of companies are running their SAP ERP implementations in their private cloud or hosted environment, realizing many benefits of the cloud model without a costly, risky reimplementation. By shifting IT funds from expensive, disruptive upgrades to innovation, a hybrid strategy can accelerate the achievement of business objectives.