The initial setup is not complex. The initial setup is a straightforward process. For those who work on SAP S4HANA on AWS, it's simple. Otherwise, more time has to be given to development. If there is some pressure to deploy SAP S4HANA on AWS, then the person doing the deployment has to read all the books of technical documentation side, and he has to go step by step with SAP on AWS technical documentation where he is preparing the clusters or without clusters, and how the planning strategy over there, whether it's just planning to go with HSR, without HSR, or software management. So, it all would be different from the technical part or the optimization side. I did just design over here, along with the implementation part. So I know this in and out of AWS.

For a new setup, a person will have to follow the books and details given by SAP on AWS technical documentation. Considering that if certain steps are missed out, I rate the initial setup an eight or nine on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy. So, it's a very large theory part with the embedded solution, but the functional team should be given a very good exposure related to extended warehouse and other such details related to SAP. So I think if I can rate myself, I can rate SAP S4HANA's initial setup an eight to nine. It is hard to be deployed with the technical document. It's single documentation to be referred for deployment.

For HANA, I can say thirty minutes to deploy the solution. Now, consider the downloading part of the software. It should take a day. Also, a good developer can do it within a day. We have to do a testing part of hardware system efficiency for SAP. So, there's one tool available over there, and we have to download that report whether the hardware is properly working or not in relation to I/O file data logs and volumes, and then we can just do the NFS part of switching after the setup of HANA. Then, we had to do the testing part of how the backup will take time since stop and start in SAP will be very fast, but how much data load will take time, so we had to check, monitor our index servers and on an upgrade and, you know, SAP installation results, while also we to do a configuration with our paths, applications, and everything. So that should be done on SAP S4HANA.

SAP S4HANA on AWS is still difficult to configure. It requires professional help. If the client can do it themselves it would be great. The implementation needs to be a lot easier than it is today, that would be great.

I would rate the complexity of the deployment of SAP S4HANA on AWS a four out of five.

I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as an eight out of ten. It took about a year to deploy the solution. We deployed SAP S/4HANA on AWS with a team of around 13 people, including IBM specialists for implementation and license management.

There were no complexities. It was a smooth deployment, with no troubles at all. We completed this project in nine months. It was quite simple and straightforward, so there weren't many issues. We just followed the best practices of the system, and then we rolled it out according to our requirements.

We have a separate SAP team and a separate IT team, and we both work together in troubleshooting. Moreover, the maintenance is taken care of by SAP from the cloud, so we don't need an additional support layer. So we are not directly involved in the maintenance. It is handled automatically by the vendor.

Our company is structured with separate teams for implementation and support. The implementation team consists of over a hundred professionals dedicated to efficiently deploying SAP S4HANA for our customers. We prioritize professionalism and ensure the software's effective implementation, emphasizing its strong security features.

There are three different ways to implement SAP S4HANA. You can do an onsite deployment where you have your own servers and you purchase the software, license it, and control everything. You have the database, data, You've got the software. You've got the hardware. You've got to manage everything.

You can do a hybrid deployment where you have some of the hostings on AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM, or other people who will host the server. They have the hardware and host the software for you and you can do a public version for sharing it with other people. Your database is secure. Nobody can see your data, but you're using a version of the software that everybody else is using because it has multi-customer capability. 

The drawback of this tool versus an on-site tool is that you've got to upgrade the tool. The software is upgraded as it gets upgraded and you've got to be ready to change whatever processes and do whatever training you need to do.

You've got some control over if you want to have private data on a private server. You could have your data more private versus public but you're still running, a tenant on the same version of the software. Then there's a completely public version where it only serves as a software as a service where you are buying timed seats within an application. Everything is being run by a third party, the hardware, database, software, et cetera. 

Having these three different ways to implement it, the fact that this has this database is a large benefit for users. If they're using an older version you will have to upgrade at some point. For example, it is similar to having an iPhone, where Apple sends an advisory out indicating they are no longer going to support the older versions. Microsoft does the same thing, if you are using Microsoft Windows version 10 eventually they will stop supporting it because Windows 11 is the most recent version available.

Right now that's starting to happen with the ECC, and SAP as a company wants you to be on the latest version. Since 2015, it's time for you to upgrade. We don't want to keep supporting this old version and this is what I know and understand about it.

Even with the economy slowing down and inflation going up and this is one reason why you want to invest in IT. You have to try to reduce costs somehow. People are upgrading and it is a larger install base, there's more activity going on in that space right now. SAP S4HANA is such a drastic change in technology. Many people have changed but a lot of the larger companies weren't making the change because it meant a very large change in the organization. Most people implemented SAP and what Germany did was different than what the US did, and what France did was different than what Japan did. When they do this, they have to align on how they will do things in general, such as the P2P procure-to-pay process. Their country-specific regulator would be put in there but if you are going to do the same thing. You're all running down the same system now.

I worked for a company, for example, that had 40 instances of SAP running, every one of them was different. That's hard to maintain. Imagine eliminating 40 different systems, and having one system. That system runs much better than the 40 in terms of speed, memory, and reporting capability. 

The initial setup of SAP S4HANA is straightforward.

There weren't a lot of challenges with the setup.

I would rate the setup as five out of five.

This is a complex application so the initial setup is not straightforward and requires planning and expertise. Migration time depends on the size of the landscape and the database. It can take a couple of years in an enterprise environment. The main work is around configuring the solution. Deployment usually requires a team of six to eight people. Managed services or maintenance depends on the size. Our in-house consultants are multi-skilled in both SAP and the cloud.

The initial setup was a complex landscape with many problems which have to be solved initially.

The company had a much older implementation. It's not a full SAP and that makes the whole landscape very complex.

With the HANA database, the company has been busy with it for two or three years, as it's taken much time. Last year, things went better and they migrated to HANA.

The setup that we have done for our business has been straightforward.

I rate the initial setup of SAP S4HANA on AWS an eight out of ten.

Depending on your business, the solution's initial setup is doable but complex.

S4HANA can be complex if your customer makes it complicated. At the same time, it can also be a straightforward solution if you meet a customer who is just willing to use the best practices. It's the same as SuccessFactors. You have standard rapid deployment and tools that SAP provides to deploy S4HANA within a short period. Some clients complicate the entire thing and say, "Well, I want to do this." In those cases, the project can last six months or longer than a year.

Or deployments for HSDF and OSA took six months. We expect to complete MDEP in six months because they have a simple process.

The initial setup is very simple - they have the AWS launch widget, which helps to enable the deployment on cloud.

The initial setup is difficult. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a three out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy. 

It is usually deployed on the cloud, and then it is moved to on-premises.

The deployment takes two years. 

I have been using SAP for 20 years. The initial setup process for deploying it on AWS is similar to the on-premise infrastructure.

Based on the opinion of my company's customers, who find the product's initial setup process to be complex, I rate the product's initial setup phase between seven to eight on a one to ten scale, where one is a difficult setup process, and ten is an easy setup process.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in a year and a half to two years.

The tool's installation is easy. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

The initial setup of SAP S4HANA on AWS is easy. The full implementation of the solution could take between 15 to 20 days. If it is only one system and it is a straight version with no upgrades and other things, then it will be only maximum of five to 10 days.

The initial setup was not an easy installation. It was very complex. 

The initial setup was not a big task. We haven't had any kind of issues. The last time we did it within two months by completely making the setup of the SAP landscape quality. If the requirements and the services are getting properly identified, then the integrations became very easy.

For technical staff, we deploy four to five staff members from our side. We have a couple of cloud architects, one DBA wherein we have to align sometimes the SAP person to take care of the SAP node implementation, all those things, and to our SAP business side. They all ensure the implementation part is getting done. If it's a very small stack, then two to three consultants are enough. If it is a big one, then we might require four to six staff. It all depends upon the size of the landscape, how many cloud instances, and how many data instances we have to implement. 

I rate the ease of setup a nine out of ten.

As far as the deployment on AWS is concerned, it is the cloud deployment. It is a little complex. But once it is deployed, the post maintenance and the support services are very easy because the upgrades and maintenance are not handled manually. It is just like on smartphones where the patches get auto-upgraded. In the same way, the patches or the upgrades are automatically pushed to the ERP on cloud. So there is no manual maintenance required going forward. There is no downtime required. For these reasons, clients are attracted to going with cloud deployments. But others are still going with on-premises deployments for various reasons.  

With the S/4HANA, it's very simple. But prior to that in ECC it used to take a lot of time, whereas, in S/4HANA, you can easily deploy, and have an implementation in three months.

The solution is rather difficult to set up. It's not simple or straightforward. Only a few people know how to install SAP in our country. 

That said, I do not install the solution myself. We only sell the license. Our customers have someone else handle the implementation, which may take about 20 hours or so to deploy.

We are not a service provider or deployment provider for SAP and therefore, we do not handle maintenance. We do resale only. For that, we have a pre-sales team of two members and we have a sales team. We sell licenses only.

The initial setup is really fairly simple. If you have a basic understanding of databases and SAP the setup is not something that is complicated. It is pretty simple. The deployment process takes about 20 days or a little more than two weeks because you need to reconfigure everything. There are other things that will take more time.  

The deployment of S/4HANA takes maybe two or three people. You will need one who is a DBA setting up the back-end database configuration and the one who is an application specialist. They will be doing all the configurations.  

The initial setup is quite straightforward. 

The initial setup of SAP S4HANA on AWS is complex. The deployment took approximately one year. We had approximately 80 working on the functionality of the solution and 40 people from the IT department assisting with the deployment.

The business teams and technical teams have not complained about the initial setup, so I think that it is ok.

The initial setup is straightforward because they have templates that you can use to build on it. In terms of how long it takes to deploy, if it's basic it can be done within a day. 

There are a lot of factors, if there are migrations it usually takes around three months plus.

The initial setup is straightforward. It can take one or two days depending on the setup. 

It usually only requires one person for the setup but on occasion, it can require two.