SAP is the backbone of your business. From sales to supply chain, it is responsible for mission-critical business functions that can’t afford any downtime. Moving SAP workloads to the cloud can be a daunting task, but selecting the right cloud provider can mean the difference to your success.
IT transformation projects come with inherent risks. CIOs are wise to bring in technology partners to fill gaps in their existing skillsets and leverage expertise from partners who have done it all before. Having the right people in the room will ensure faster time-to-value and avoid the common pitfalls, which can incur delays and additional costs.
When searching for your SAP migration partner, CIOs and IT leaders should ask the following questions:
- Do they prioritize risk mitigation?
It’s impossible to sell a business on long-term cloud agility while asking them to endure extended downtime in the short term. Once you’ve chosen your path to cloud, whether lift and shift or a complete re-platform, you need an SAP cloud provider who can help you minimize any disruption to the business. An experienced migration partner can quickly assess dependencies and design a migration plan from SAP to AWS that prioritizes uptime and anticipates known problems. Ask how they’ve avoided problems for past clients.
- How do they work with SAP?
When moving an application to the cloud, domain expertise is essential. Pick an SAP partner that understands the ins and outs of SAP backend services to leapfrog the learning curve. A company working side-by-side with SAP with close ties across the product, engineering, and sales team will be able to keep you on track and ahead of the curve when it comes to SAP’s moving deadlines.
- How do they collaborate with cloud providers?
When considering a migration to the cloud for the first time, enterprises start by meeting with cloud providers. While looking for experts in hyper-scale, it’s essential to consider a cloud-agnostic partner who can help navigate your options, whether one cloud or multi-cloud. The right cloud provider will design a migration plan keeping your best interests, like cost optimization, at the center of any project. Look for a long history of working with Azure, AWS, and GCP, and, better yet, ask if they’ve developed provider-specific frameworks.
- Do they have a proven track record?
Any SAP migration partner with a credible record of accomplishment should provide you with customer case studies and client references. If you have the opportunity to speak with a reference customer, take the opportunity to learn from their experience.
SAP migrations are highly visible, with the business relying on its outcomes. You can’t afford to pick the wrong partner. As an SAP partner for more than 25 years and preferred services partner for RISE on SAP, HCLTech is the smart choice for your migration and SAP transformation. Our end-to-end capabilities include everything, from advisory and implementation to managed services, as well as proprietary frameworks, to migrate to the cloud with minimal downtime and risk.
Read how HCLTech helped a global media & entertainment company reduce costs by 35% by migrating SAP to AWS.
