SAP S/4 Hana is the intelligent ERP for the modern enterprise, natively built to leverage the speed, agility and flexibility offered by the in-memory technology. It offers a personalized, consumer grade user experience built on a modern UI framework SAP Fiori. No matter what is your industry or business size, SAP S/4 Hana can help you help you drive instant value across all lines of business.

SAP S/4 Hana is designed with SAP FIori user experience. With SAP Fiori UX, business users can now get a personalized, responsive and simple experience to get the job done from anywhere. The role-based experience built with the modern design principles provides instant insights on any device for a completely reimagined user experience.

Focussed on business’s user needs, the award winning SAP Fiori 2.0 extends the personalized user paradigm of the SAP Fiori user experience, enabling easier onboarding and greater productivity.

The SAP Fiori Launchpad is evolving into a “viewport” a personalized access page with ready access to individual notifications and profile information. From a single point of entry, each user can see his or her task list, key performance indicators, and access apps through tiles, links or search. Users will have a single visual design across all applications making it easier for your workforce to transition between daily activities.

SAP S/4HANA on-premise

The on-premise deployment option gives organizations full control of the hardware and software of your application and maintenance schedules. SAP will follow an annual innovation cycle for the on-premise solution, but you are not forced to upgrade. This is a good option if you’re looking to achieve maximum flexibility regarding integration with other systems and custom enhancements. However, you’ll be fully responsible for the security, access, and system availability as well.
If you want to upgrade and migrate your existing SAP ECC environment to S/4HANA, then the on-premise deployment option is your best choice for you.

SAP S/4HANA private cloud

The private cloud option is essentially an on-premise implementation hosted in a secure private cloud. 2 possible options are:

SAP’s HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC) offering, which is a preferred deployment model for early implementations, where SAP managers infrastructure and software as the “cloud provider” but version update schedules must be approved by the customer. Some software modifications are allowed but will increase the fees to run your systems because it’s harder to manage.

Hosting the on-premise edition in an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) environment with big cloud providers, like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, where big cloud providers manage the infrastructure, but your organization is still responsible for managing the application (i.e. tuning, applying patches, upgrades, etc.). With this operating model, you can use all available functions of S/4HANA on-premise, including maintenance schedules and enhancement options.

SAP S/4HANA public cloud

SAP offers a pure Software as a Service (SaaS) option that’s fully hosted and managed by SAP with quarterly updates. Although it’s a slimmed-down version of the on-premise solution, the offering is limited and focused on specific industries. In return, the implementation time will be shorter and effort will be far less. This cloud edition supports the most common end-to-end business processes, particularly in finance, logistics, and procurement. You will not be able to modify or adjust the software according to your own requirements since it will run on a shared system.

Hybrid approach

There is also a 4th option that’s actually proving to be one of the most practical ones for large organizations. SAP customers can choose to deploy hybrid scenarios that combine on-premise and cloud instances. This accelerates business innovation and reduces IT resources in certain business areas while keeping core areas/systems robust and customizable. Companies can opt for a hybrid cloud model that combines public cloud and private cloud deployments or choose a full hybrid operating model where some business scenarios are handled on-premise and some are handled in the cloud.