The article aims to explore the cloud migration of SAP, using the Lift and Shift approach. The scope and impact of this migration method extend beyond its apparent simplicity, encompassing both IT and business domains. ‘Lift and Shift’ is a topic woven between Cloud Adoption Strategy, Digital Transformation, and Innovation.

What moves, what changes, what not

Migration to the Cloud is an opportunity for on-prem teams, especially business teams, to know that business design and processes are not changing however environment is changing. Environment is made up of physical servers, operating system, network, storage, firewall, central IT components and tools etc. SAP’s database and application are tightly integrated with the environment.

Database moves, application is mostly recreated at target and same goes with the environment (target components differ as per chosen cloud provider – that’s a different topic).

Picture given below depicts what changes and what not.

what changes what not

Lift and Shift Migration in SAP

In SAP environments, one typical cloud migration strategy adopted is ‘Lift and Shift’ (called Rehosting). Generally, a large focus remains around bringing database and applications into target. Database-native and SAP-native methods are evaluated for Database and Application. This matches the lift and shift/rehosting definition & scope. However, in the migration process, environment gets changed as it must be recreated at target. It does not change business processes directly, but indirect impacts are common.

Environment Consideration

Tightly integrated environment at source, where SAP database/applications are running, is unique. Business processes running within SAP landscape, could be part of business ecosystem beyond organization boundaries (using PI or Cloud Connector or any other middleware tool). SAP is designed to keep and process data within SAP however application extension might have taken data and logic outside SAP area (i.e., cron jobs, batch processing tools, business data in mounted file systems etc.). Other peripheral tools/applications coupled with SAP, are integral part of environment. Servers, various storage types and Network setup also constitute the environment.

The complete environmental stack plays a role in application design and consumption. Many times, it evolved over years. Same complete stack with its elements needs to move with SAP. It gets transformed in the design and mapping process of target environment. This transformation is not necessarily part of lift and shift/rehosting but comes under replatforming.

In other words, the attention to environment should be part of replatforming, where As-Is is first discovered and then adopted as per To-Be (based on Cloud Provider components). This cycle is the time when a natural transformation is happening, and some cloud advantages come by default.

Environment on cloud side is different in term of design and building blocks, both. The design goes through architect lens. Most cloud providers have reference architecture which are based on best practices and robust design principles i.e., different landing zones for common platform and applications. These design patterns are mostly future-ready and the mapping from As-Is to To-Be brings digital transformation and Cloud based innovation at the front yard. This is the first sweet spot of Cloud Adoption and Innovation. This is where business and IT teams can take interest in design and building blocks at target. This all happens under the ‘Lift and Shift’ umbrella quietly. This is where ‘Lift and Shift’ word is insufficient to justify its scope and impact.

Example

Lets see an example of environment below and understand why it gets changed and how it impacts application.

Consider on-prem S/4 on HANA database with SUSE has to be move to Azure/AWS. Following are few example components which may go through transformation:

 Conclusion

Referring to ‘Lift and Shift’, SAP migration should be approached with environment rebuild. Instead of merely considering it as rehosting, look at it as replatforming. This would ensure the migration process appropriately addresses the volume, opportunity, and stakeholders’ involvement.

Early awareness can trigger wholesome planning. The seemingly small migration can be linked to larger Cloud Adoption Strategy which can define various W (Why, When, Where and How much among others). These W questions and discovery of their answers would bring IT and Business team working together. Apart from cost consideration as one of the answers, the real motivators would be found in the realms of digital transformation and innovation. The initiative would get a boost in momentum.

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