SAP and Dell Transforming Data at the Edge, Cloud, and Core
Wed, 17 May 2023 15:05:08 -0000
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Organizations understand that to thrive in the digital economy, they must derive better insights from the data they own—and do this in a more automated, reliable way. The faster this process, the faster the time to insights.
SAP, supported by Dell Technologies and Red Hat, organized the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) Packathon, engaging the APJ partner community to design and develop industry solutions of high business value by leveraging BTP services that were hosted between the SAP cloud and the Dell Technologies Sydney Customer Solution Center (CSC).
SAP data intelligence and SAP HANA infrastructure were hosted from the Dell Technologies Sydney CSC, running on the Red Hat operating system and Red Hat OpenShift Cluster 4.6. These systems were integrated into SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud, S/4 HANA systems, and partner environments (hosting external systems and data sources).
The following image shows a high-level overview of the BTP Packathon architecture:
This is a testimony to the role Dell plays as customer infrastructure strategy evolves: at the edge, in the cloud, or at the core.
Edge
Enterprises want to become smarter when it comes to their operations, their cloud strategy, and their approach to extracting value from an ever‑increasing volume of data.
For businesses running SAP, the key lies in adopting SAP HANA and S/4HANA applications with a cloud‑smart strategy. SAP S/4HANA and SAP Intelligent Technologies address this integrative approach by bringing transactional data together with Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT).
That means fueling business processes with insights from data across all information sources: at the edge; in core SAP environments; from IOT, data lakes and Hadoop repositories; in the cloud.
When exploring the edge, customers will look to solve one of these objectives:
- Minimize latency and maximize availability for distributed operations
- Build an agile cloud-native application development platform
- Minimize costs of edge data management, transport, and associated network bandwidth
- Run artificial intelligence applications closer to machines or devices
Deploying artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge opens a whole new world of possibilities. Edge deployments with AI can deliver real-time, actionable insights at the point of decision while incurring lower latency and costs than by transferring data back and forth between the data center and the cloud. Limited staffing and harsh environments can make it difficult to turn the vision of the intelligent edge into a reality, however. This is where the Dell Technologies and SAP end-to-end approach comes in. To help empower you at the edge, Dell Technologies is taking a three-pronged approach:
- Designing and launching specific edge solutions that target current edge implementations and use cases
- Optimizing our portfolio for the edge, building a foundation by delivering necessary capabilities across our portfolio
- Integrating our technologies into the Dell Technologies Edge Platform, creating edge-specific technology that is purpose-built for the platform
In a recent joint podcast, Dell Technologies and SAP discussed some of the key components of the intelligent enterprise: cloud, edge, data analytics, and automation. See Dell and SAP: Powering the Intelligent Enterprise.
Cloud—Complementing RISE with SAP
Dell Technologies is now at the very center of SAP’s transformation strategy to RISE and S/4HANA. Our customers can consume SAP S/4HANA “as a device” with all the benefits of the Dell Technologies APEX model. RISE with SAP powered by APEX simplifies the path to the SAP Intelligent Enterprise with an on-premises cloud experience in either the customer’s own data center or a co-location environment.
A turnkey cloud subscription offering with Dell Technologies APEX, which is available through SAP, reduces the risk of implementation and outages and frees up resources so that customers can focus on the business outcomes that SAP S/4HANA provides.
The subscription helps customers leverage cloud economies and capabilities while keeping their SAP software landscape and data securely in their own data center or co-location—for data sovereignty concerns, for latency or application entanglement reasons, or because they simply lack access to hyperscalers.
APEX offers the ease and scale of cloud delivered as-a-service with simplicity, agility, and control for our customers. Create your own on-demand environment with infrastructure and services you customize to order. Deploy a pay-per-use consumption model or an enterprise-scale managed utility. See Introducing RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, powered by APEX - Dell Technologies.
Core—Choosing the right platform
According to Gartner, by 2022 80 percent of SAP HANA deployments will continue to be on-premises. IDC and Gartner survey results and deployments show a preference for an on-premises deployment and hybrid model for SAP applications running on the SAP HANA database and edge-based applications. Organizations prefer a cloud-like experience, where they have features such as simplicity, flexibility, quick turnaround for faster innovation, and pay-for-use at their fingertips.
One of the most critical decisions a customer makes when planning an SAP S/4HANA migration is selecting the type of deployment option which best suits their business needs: on-premises; private cloud; public cloud; or hybrid cloud. As they evaluate the options, the total cost of ownership (TCO) is top of mind.
Based on business requirements and global surveys, top priorities for our customers are migrating some of their SAP landscapes to cloud while keeping their crown jewels on-premises. Also, some customers that are repatriating from public cloud to on-premises have primary reasons such as data residency and regulatory requirements, cyber security, overhead costs, and so on.
The following document presents the result of a three-year TCO comparison of an SAP HANA database and S/4HANA application server landscape that is deployed on-premises, running on Dell EMC VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure, against one that is deployed on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform: The Total Cost of Ownership of On-Premises SAP on Dell EMC VxRail HCI Versus Amazon Web Services Public Cloud | Dell Technologies Info Hub
The SAP, Dell, and Red Hat BTP platform and services are available for customer and partner proof of concepts, demos, events, and industry-aligned solution developments. Contact your SAP, Dell, or Red Hat account manager for more information.