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HANA Moves to Cloud

Posted on May 16, 2013 by wftadmin

SAP has announced the latest enhancement to its in-memory platform, HANA and has launched SAP HANA enterprise cloud. With this announcement, SAP has provided its customers the option of running a cloud based version of HANA together with the applications that run on top of it such as SAP BW, SAP business suite or other analytic applications.

But what benefit do customers get with SAP HANA on Cloud?

If you want to deploy the in-memory platform, HANA on Cloud provides you more flexibility vis-à-vis configuration and setup. The customers can hand over some of the more mundane tasks associated with HANA’s set up and configuration such as provisioning hardware and disaster recovery whilst also being able to utilise the cloud’s elasticity to scale up resources as needed. In other words it has the potential to speed up the time to value of a HANA implementation.

However, customers still need to go through some sort of assessment services to determine which applications are going to benefit the most from HANA of Cloud deployment.

We advise the customers to have a HANA license ready with them before considering Enterprise Cloud to have a feel before-hand about the benefits HANA’s in-memory services can offer you. If you want to get an assessment done about your infrastructure and it’s compatibility with HANA on Cloud, you can always get in touch with us. We are sure SAP HANA on Cloud is going to benefit you a lot and you should certainly consider moving to Cloud. Once you are in the Cloud, you will just have to pay a monthly subscription for SAP HANA that is priced according to size, scale of data and applications used.

And what’s more? If you subscribe to us for HANA on Cloud services, you can save further money by utilizing our revolutionary pay-per-use model.

AboutWFT Cloud :

WFT Cloud (Wharfedale Technologies Inc.) is a leading technology consulting firm specializing in SAP infrastructure integrations and services, as well as private/public hybrid Cloud solutions. As an SAP certified provider of cloud services, Wharfedale also offers SAP solutions around – high availability, disaster recovery, advanced sizing for virtualization, back up/recovery Integration, systems refresh automation and landscape optimization. WFT has been the first official certified partner for providing SAP services on Cloud.

For more information on WFT Cloud services, please visithttp://www.wftcloud.com or reach us at (888) 533-3113. You can also connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Cloud, Enterprise Cloud, HANA, SAP | Leave a comment

The Cloud Modelling and Architecture Process:

Posted on May 16, 2013 by wftadmin

The Cloud Modelling and Architecture Process may be depicted in the following figure:

A brief Description of the complete steps involved may be as follows:

1. Cloud Modelling: If you want to determine, map and align your business drivers and key requirements with the range of potential cloud services and resources available, then you have taken a big step towards a proper Cloud modelling plan. It forces the explicit definition of business needs and establishes the technical patterns and resource models best suited for those business requirements. Service Models define the capabilities that are being provided to the “consumer” or end user of the service. There are three basic main types of service models

Software as a Service (SAAS)
Infrastructure as a Service(Iaas)
Platform as a Service (Paas)

For example, a business requirement for CRM application is a Cloud service that is different from a business requirement that would want to achieve better server utilization through the usage of Cloud services that focus on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

2. Cloud Deployment: The result of your Cloud modelling exercise is going to help decide about your Cloud deployment model. Based on the Cloud Modelling outcome of the Cloud Modelling efforts, one can decide about the Cloud Deployment model that best suits your organization’s business requirements and technical needs. It will help you decide whether you need a third party Cloud service provider’s assistance or you can setup an internal/private Cloud. Deployment Models define how the cloud infrastructure is provisioned to the consumer. There are four main types of deployment models

Private Cloud
Community Cloud
Public Cloud
Hybrid Cloud

3. Cloud Architecture: Once the Cloud deployment model has been decided based on the Cloud modelling practices, the Cloud architecture can be defined. Defining a Cloud architecture is paramount irrespective of the fact whether you are planning a purely internal private cloud or if you intend to leverage external public Clouds. Even if you decide to go for a third party Cloud service, you still need to be actively involved with your third party Cloud service provider to develop a robust Cloud architecture that is going to satisfy your business needs. Also, don’t forget to document, evaluate and test the proposed Cloud architecture before you actually deploy the same.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, IaaS, PaaS, private Cloud, Publc Cloud, SaaS | Leave a comment

SAPPHIRE NOW 2013: A WFT Cloud Perspective

Posted on May 15, 2013 by wftadmin

HANA has been the main focus for SAP at all SAP events since the past couple of years and that trend is continuing even at Sapphire 2013. The two topics that are generating lot of interest among attendees are SAP Business suite on HANA and the HANA Enterprise Cloud. HANA Enterprise Cloud is hosted in SAP datacenters and one interesting aspect of the HANA Enterprise Cloud is that it runs on bare metal for top performance. A SAP cloud offering without virtualization!

SAP will productize its HANA management stack (Cloud Frame) and share this IP as a blueprint with its large SAP hosting partners. SAP is also considering a managed service offering for on-premises installations. The licensing is not subscription based and it has to be acquired the same way as for other SAP products. This led to some mixed reviews from analysts.

Forrester Research analyst Stefan Ried had this to say regarding the announcement.

“Since HANA [became] available, I talked to many service providers and CIOs who wanted to operate HANA in a shared way for many customers, tenants or business divisions, unfortunately HANA was until today, basically bound to a physical hardware. Virtualization concepts or shared resource pools of memory did not really work. With HANA Enterprise Cloud, SAP seems to address this with an advanced management layer on top of the existing HANA software stack,” he added.

But SAP’s “bring your own license” model for the HANA cloud service is problematic, in Ried’s view. “While this is great for customers that have already a HANA license and [would] like to re-locate it into the cloud, it is useless for customers that might have largely fluctuating data volumes or user numbers and might specifically use a cloud because of its elastic business model.”

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“The Big 5 of Cloud” Does SAP Cloud deliver on five vital parameters – Part 5

Posted on April 29, 2013 by wftadmin

Marketing: SAP definitely has an edge over in the industry when it comes to marketing its products as it has a great marketing setup within the organization.

There are some great predictions for Cloud Computing trends in 2013:

As the cloud market matures, niche vendors continue to be consolidated; it is expected that SaaS acquisitions would exceed $25 billion over the next 20 months, a 50% increase from the past 20 months.
More than 25% of mid-market firms will leverage Cloud Computing services in 2013.
CIOs’ adoption of a “cloud first” strategy will double to 70% by 2016 as CIOs define architecture standards and service management processes.
Industry specific PaaS offerings will continue to emerge and will grow nearly 35% in 2013.
Cloud security will be another significant growth pillar. While North America will continue to have the largest revenue share, analysts predict emerging markets and Eastern Europe to have the fastest growth.

Based on the above trends, we can safely conclude that Cloud Computing has lot of scope for SAP to grow further into the industry across geographical borders if it markets its Cloud based offerings religiously.

There can be three main groups which can be targeted for SAP’s marketing strategies vis-à-vis Cloud computing as below:

Existing Customers: They should know what benefits they could achieve by shifting to Cloud and the marketing team can explain them the benefits of the same.
New Customers: Pitching in to new customers about SAP’s Cloud based infrastructure and services certainly forms one of the most important functional area of the SAP marketing teams.
Certified Partners: Getting in touch with the certified partners of SAP who will resell, host and extend the functionality of SAP’s base offerings, and explaining to them the benefits of selling the Cloud based services. Certain partners like WFT Cloud are already into providing Cloud based SAP infrastructure and this is a trend which is here to stay and grow further.

More small and medium enterprises will take advantage of the cost-efficiency and agility that cloud computing service provides. Since many cloud computing platforms are improving their database offerings to be able to compete well with others, SMEs will consider migrating to cloud-hosted database systems for better performance in data applications. With the advancements we see in the cloud computing Industry, it is evident that cloud computing will soar high in 2013 and future years.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Cloud computing, SAP, SME | Leave a comment

“The Big 5 of Cloud” Does SAP Cloud deliver on five vital parameters – Part 4

Posted on April 15, 2013 by wftadmin

Mobility: These days, people are well and truly excited about how mobile computing can change the face of the world and how it can change the way they do their business along with being more efficient as well as saving more money.

SAP ERP, CRM and BW systems are largely closed systems and are pretty complicated. SAP has tried many a times to address this difficulty over the years by releasing numerous web enabled services as a part of their Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) strategy. The problem arises when one realises that this SOA layer is just a replica of the complexity that exists below it and hence, it is still complex.

To counter this, SAP has already launched the project gateway which aims at providing a service layer that would ensure a simplified version of the complex processes and business entities of SAP, like CRM, BW etc, and make these entities available to users via modern user centric computing devices that would certainly include your favourite mobile platform. These devices are lightweight and easy to access and go in line with the vision of Mr Vishal Sikka, SAP CTO, to liberate all those legacy SAP systems from their complexity by moving over to a mobile platform and making it available to the next generation web 2.0 expert.

With all the hype surrounding the HANA, we believe that there could hopefully be a combined strategy that would serve SAP HANA on a Mobile platform as is the case with Project Gateway for other legacy SAP Business Processes.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged BW, CRM, HANA, SAP | Leave a comment

“The Big 5 of Cloud” Does SAP Cloud deliver on five vital parameters – Part 3

Posted on April 1, 2013 by wftadmin

Massive Scale: A major factor while thinking of making profit out of Cloud is to get it done on a Massive Scale. But how do we attain it?

From SAP perspective, it does not need to cannibalize its on-premise product offerings to gain profitability out of its Cloud based product offerings. It has a plethora of existing and potential Clients who can keep their license of on-premise products going on for years to come. Moving on to the Cloud for SAP will be their own business decision which they can take based on their business requirements.

Making Cloud affordable is an issue that SAP can very well take care of with its large pool of developers and excellent sales team. Being a large and reputed organization, it is quite safe to assume that they must have figured out some way of sensible pricing for customers.

SAP has a large pool of developers who can build on its products to make them more compatible with the cloud on a large scale. However, it is quite possible that SAP may not provide the kind of Cloud based infrastructure to its Clients, that are required for implementing SAP modules on Cloud at a massive scale. This is because it requires massive investment and needs very specialized skills. It is here that Cloud Services providers like WFT Cloud come into picture. SAP may buy out from Cloud infrastructures from an expert or get into a partnership with them as they have already done with WFT Cloud.

AboutWFT Cloud :

For more information on WFT Cloud services, please visithttp://www.wftcloud.com or reach us at (888) 533-3113. You can also connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Cloud, Cloud Services Provider, SAP | Leave a comment

“The Big 5 of Cloud” Does SAP Cloud deliver on five vital parameters – Part 2

Posted on March 22, 2013 by wftadmin

Moving ahead in this series, apart from money, there are various other important aspects of any business which SAP Cloud would aim to achieve.

Multi-Tenancy: Another very important aspect of SAP infrastructures on Cloud is the idea of multi tenancy. How can this be achieved ? Cloud service providers may use a shared database for multiple clients, with a common schematic for all its clients. However, customizations can be done on top of the common platform based on specific customer requirements without altering the basic code that affects every customer.

We don’t say that it is paramount for all the companies to go for a multi-tenancy based Cloud service as very often, the customers are a little uncomfortable with the thought that their data is not physically separate from others on the same platform. However, for a profitable business, it is always advisable to look for a multi-tenant Cloud service. More so, in case of the newer companies who would like to utilize each and every amount of money which is at their disposal. Utilizing the multi-tenancy services would help them utilize their money on other important aspects of their business like advertising and setting up a better infrastructure. Multi-tenancy services are also profitable for the Cloud service providers. As far as the security issues are concerned, the inherent technology and the vendor expertise will always ensure data protection of your projects. You just need to ensure that your data will remain secure by talking to your Cloud service provider and understanding their security infrastructure and services for your data. However, the final call is always with you.

What is SAP’s strategy on this? SAP Business One ERP suite is completely based on multi-tenancy. Success Factors, owned by SAP, has a multi-tenant hybrid architecture. With all the technological expertise at its disposal, SAP can build similar models for all its applications.

Moreover, SAP may like to use HANA as the database for its business suite components (like ECC etc.), as it would help in saving lots of money for the companies. We know that building our own HANA is very expensive. Shifting on a multi-tenant HANA Cloud platform will not only be favourable to you, but also, it will be favourable to your Cloud service provider. However, as advised before, the final call to do this always remains with you.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Cloud, HANA, Multi-tenancy, SAP Business One | Leave a comment

Layers of the Cloud – The SAP Approach (Part 2) : Cloud as Consumption

Posted on March 5, 2013 by wftadmin

Do you know?

There are dozens of different mobile devices currently running some form of SAP application or some functionality that interacts with an SAP system. And be assured that SAP wants to increase the consumption of SAP systems.

SAP believes that the users should be able to access SAP applications without having to worry about where those applications reside. It is here that Cloud Computing comes into picture.

At SAP, they have implemented massive reorganization and reallocations of resources to address demands for cloud based solutions. SAP works closely with its partners to ensure that SAP solutions run on any landscape, be it a virtualized data center of your own or of a third party web services company. SAP has been making extensive investments to support on-demand applications and are ensuring protocols so that one can manage their SAP landscape from any device.

Cloud Computing is the biggest change in the industry in the past 20 years since the adoption of the client/server architecture and it is because of this that SAP collaborates with its certified partners to provide most out of the box and satisfying services.

AboutWFT Cloud :

For more information on WFT Cloud services, please visithttp://www.wftcloud.com or reach us at (888) 533-3113. You can also connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Cloud computing, data center, SAP, virtualized | Leave a comment

SAPPHIRE NOW 2013: A WFT Cloud Perspective

“The Big 5 of Cloud” Does SAP Cloud deliver on five vital parameters – Part 4

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