SAP Business Suite: SAP S/4HANA

Frequently Asked Questions - Part 3 - the

path to get there
Posted by Sven Denecken Mar 2, 2015
This part of the FAQ series we have prioritized for the questions around how to get to SAP S/4HANA,
lets go:
What is the typical journey for an existing SAP Business Suite customer?
Moving to SAP S/4HANA for a typical existing SAP ERP 6.0 customer will require a move to the latest
enhancement package, followed by a database migration from anyDB to SAP HANA combined with the
deployment of the exchange innovation (new code). From an execution perspective, these steps can be
executed in sequence or as a combined step.
Moving to SAP S/4HANA for an existing SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA customer is even faster
as only the deployment of the exchange innovation (new code) is required.
Both journeys are well proven in the market with several hundred of live SAP Business Suite powered by SAP
HANA customers as well as SAP Simple Finance live customers.

What is the typical journey for a net-new

customer?
The journey is defined by a net-new implementation of an SAP S/4HANA system with simpler
adoption example: guided configuration, easy on-boarding from the discovery of the solution
through cloud trials to the deployment with pre-configured best practices. We defined three major
scenarios supported by tools and pre-configuration delivered through our SAP Rapid Deployment
solutions (RDS):

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SAP Business Suite: SAP S/4HANA Frequently Asked Questions - Part 3 - the path to get there

How can SAP partners support the move of a

customer to SAP S/4HANA?
SAP has an established partner ecosystem (value-added retailers and systems integrators) that is ready to
resell and service SAP S/4HANA for our joint existing and new customers to implement future innovations.
More than 50% of the SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA projects were managed by partners.
Partners and SAP will support customers in their journey with predefined migration, system conversion in the
cloud, and deployment packages for quicker time to value. Companies of all sizes will benefit from the highquality service and reseller capabilities our partners provide

What happens to existing modifications when

a customer moves to S4/HANA?
In any scenario, the move to SAP S/4HANA is a great opportunity to validate the existing modifications and
simplify your solution. It has not been unusual for customers to realize that 50% of the modifications that
hamper fast release cycles and require long test cycles were no longer necessary to run the business, but were
leftovers from older projects while the remaining modifications could have been built in a less intrusive manner.

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SAP Business Suite: SAP S/4HANA Frequently Asked Questions - Part 3 - the path to get there

When moving to SAP S/4HANA, public cloud edition, customers will move their modifications to SAP HANA
Cloud Platform as an extension.
Also, customers that make the choice of the SAP S/4HANA, managed cloud edition, the recommended
approach is to use SAP HANA Cloud Platform extensions to provision enhancements.
In fact, standard field extensions can directly be done within the SAP Fiori UX while SAP HANA Cloud Platform
can be leveraged for more significant developments.
SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition, provides maximum customization opportunities: on premise as traditionally
done in the past or through SAP HANA Cloud Platform. SAP has several references of SAP Business Suite
customers using SAP HANA Cloud Platform extensions for on-premise systems.
In general, the SAP HANA extension framework of SAP HANA Cloud Platform uses SAP HANA as
the common platform for SAP S/4HANA and offers additional choices such as the integration
of open source solutions. The extension framework has the advantage to isolate modifications
from the core and drive agility for the on-premise deployment and safeguard agility for cloud
deployments. This means that rather than modifying the core code, enhancements are put in a
safe environment so that innovation packages can be easily applied. The core SAP S/4HANA
system remains clean and can be quickly and easily updated when new innovations are added
in just the same way that consumer mobile apps are updated on a regular basis.

What happens to existing legacy interfaces if a

customer moves to SAP S/4HANA?
SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition, currently supports the existing published legacy interfaces.

How does SAP S/4HANA relate to and co-exist

with the existing SAP landscapes?
A single system can always only be on SAP S/4HANA or on the traditional SAP Business Suite (on
SAP HANA or anyDB). However, customers can decide to move separate installations within their
landscape individually to SAP S/4HANA and do not have to do a big bang for their whole system
landscape and thus run in a mixed environment. As SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Suite are
using semantically consistent data structures, a move to SAP S/4HANA is nondisruptive.

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SAP Business Suite: SAP S/4HANA Frequently Asked Questions - Part 3 - the path to get there

Can a customer choose to run the traditional

SAP user interface and custom screens or is
SAP Fiori mandatory?
All SAP S/4HANA innovations are intended to be delivered with SAP Fiori UX providing the same experience
on all devices. However, a customer using SAP S/4HANA is planned to still be able to consume the traditional
user interfaces.

Can customers run different SAP S/4HANA

editions in parallel in their enterprise
architecture?
Yes, SAP S/4HANA editions are integrated and run mostly on the same data semantic.
Is SAP S/4HANA multitenant?
SAP S/4HANA gives customers the option to leverage the HANA multitenancy functionality as provided by the
SAP HANA platform (currently support package 9).
Now working on collecting further input for the next part. Keep the feedback and your questions
coming, we will prioritize accordingly and update our FAQ for you. Also check frequently sap.com/
s4hana.
Part1: SAP S/4HANA Frequently Asked Questions - Part 1 - the fundamentals
Part2: SAP S/4HANA Frequently Asked Questions - Part 2 - the value
Lets stay connected @SDenecken
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Sven Denecken in response to Axel Hauser on page 5

May 3, 2015 1:33 AM
The ERP Foundation Extension (EFE) is expected for external consumption on 07.07.15 via amazon web
services - as a cloud system with SFIN1503 released (for demo, POC, ...) - For Reselling Partners as Blue
Ray.

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SAP Business Suite: SAP S/4HANA Frequently Asked Questions - Part 3 - the path to get there

In the meantime, you could

a) use the old EFE (v3 make use) and a sFIN migration or
b) use a best practice system, the import Fiori, Hana Live, GRC RDS if necessary, and then make a Migration.
Sridhar Karra
Apr 6, 2015 4:38 AM
Is there a technical deep dive on the system or any document which shows what scope it holds for ABAP?
Axel Hauser
Mar 26, 2015 2:51 PM
Hi Sven,
if we build a prototyping System with Finance 2.0 can we still deploy the RDS ERP Foundation Extension?
When can we expect the RDS ERP Foundation Extension to have Baseline Settings for Finance 2.0?
Thank you
Axel
Sven Denecken in response to Allan F. Andersen on page 5
Mar 14, 2015 5:15 PM
The awesome about S/4HANA is, we keep the semantic data model in tact. So custom code and interfaces
most work. We offer tools/services to check.
Allan F. Andersen
Mar 12, 2015 10:21 AM
Hi Sven,
could you please elaborate a bit more on the customer enhancements. Applying a new simplified data
strucuture would to my best opinion also ean that the exiting badi's, bapi's and exits would not be able to
persist ?
Ratna Chengappa
Mar 9, 2015 5:26 AM
Thank you Sven for a very helpful and informative set of articles.
Bushair Thayyil in response to Sven Denecken on page 6
Mar 5, 2015 5:10 AM
As an IBM partner in Saudi Arabia we are required to keep DB2. And especially when BLU can run In-Memory
and give performance like HANA. I understand that SAP will support DB2 BLU for all new features. So let us
hope S4 will have a DB2 BLU option soon.
I want to thank you for your excellent MOOC . I am attending now ( The Digital Transformation ) and looking
forward to complete it.
Do we have a better solution than the DMS on MaxDB for Document Management in SAP ? Any cloud
solution ?

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SAP Business Suite: SAP S/4HANA Frequently Asked Questions - Part 3 - the path to get there

Thanks in advance.
Sven Denecken in response to Bushair Thayyil on page 6
Mar 4, 2015 9:45 PM
SAP S74HANA is for SAP HANA, no other data base as of today - as only SAP HAN delivers the
simplifications we want.
Please check with our HANA experts, why cant you move?
Bushair Thayyil
Mar 4, 2015 8:40 AM
Hi Sven,
I read here.
"Moving to SAP S/4HANA for a typical existing SAP ERP 6.0 customer will require a move to the latest
enhancement package, followed by a database migration from anyDB to SAP HANA combined with the
deployment of the exchange innovation (new code). From an execution perspective, these steps can be
executed in sequence or as a combined step."
Is there any plan to support S4 on DB2 BLU ? I do not think we will be able to move to Hana, but want to take
the max out of EHP7 now. with real time Analytic and ODP etc.
Any planned BLU support ?
Bushair
Jeddah.
@bushairt

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