Faster migration to RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server

SAP^® introduced RISE with SAP to help customers modernize their SAP ERP landscape and move to cloud. With the 2027 deadline for the end of mainstream maintenance of SAP ECC, more customers are considering their transition to RISE with SAP.¹ It contains outcome-driven services, Cloud ERP on SAP S/4HANA^® and platforms that help customers focus on driving value for their business instead of managing complex infrastructure with specialized talent.

Nearly half of the respondents to the 2024 ASUG survey on SAP S/4HANA adoption said they are already live on SAP S/4HANA or have started to move.² However, 49% of respondents indicated that their costs exceeded original budgets and 46% of respondents noted that the multi-step nature of migration—combined with existing business complexities—made the process more time-consuming and resource-intensive than anticipated to stay on schedule.

For customers running their SAP landscape on supported IBM Power servers in their data centers, RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server offers a unique advantage: it can help reduce risk and improve SAP S/4HANA migration time from IBM Power Systems on-premises to cloud within 90 days.³

The average time to migrate to SAP S/4HANA is 1.5 years with customers reporting a time range from four months to six years on either end of the spectrum.⁴ Based on IBM’s experience in executing cloud migration of SAP ERP workloads for over five years, moving SAP ERP workloads from Power on-premises to IBM Power Virtual Server helps reduce risk profile and also reduces migration time by up to 15-25% as compared to the heterogenous move from Power to x86 environments in other clouds due to the architecture consistency between both environments and compute performance of the Power processors.⁵

Here is a breakdown of the reasons for the time savings when moving from Power on-premises to Power Virtual Server as compared to moving from Power to x86 environments in other clouds:

1. Speed up SAP workload sizing: The sizing parameters used to currently run SAP HANA on Power on premises environment can help reduce the time needed to size SAP HANA on Power Virtual Server.
2. Realize target architecture faster: Workload tuning that involves batch jobs scheduling, RFCs to related workloads, user load balancing, API and Web Services calls are optimized for Power on-prem app servers and can be replicated on Power Virtual Server with ease, whereas when moving to x86 environments additional time will be needed to realize the target architecture.
3. Reduce footprint, increase uptime: Fewer number of cloud server instances to provision and manage on Power Virtual Server instead of x86. as the infrastructure footprint of x86 app servers will be more when moving from Power to x86. Reduced footprint help reduce the effort to patch and maintain and increases uptime.
4. Reduce testing time: Due to known hardware and system configuration, reduced testing effort required with like for like migration to define optimal RFC/batch/Fiori workload distribution and load balancing in SAP HANA on Power.

As businesses modernize to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, businesses are looking for the fastest and least disruptive path to get there. For customers running their SAP landscape on IBM Power servers in on-premises environments, IBM Power Virtual Server can accelerate the transition to RISE with SAP.

RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server is planned to be available in second quarter of 2025. To learn more about RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Server, contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit here. 

Notes:

1. Read more about SAP Support Strategy here.

2. See trends, successes, and challenges of State of SAP S/4HANA Adoption here.

3. Estimate based upon internal IBM modeling of onboarding customers in an SAP landscape when moving SAP S/4HANA from Power on-premises to Power Virtual Server assuming the right level of customer collaboration around network integration and testing.

4. According to the State of SAP S/4HANA Adoption article linked in 2 above and here.

5. Up to 15-25% in Power8 or newer generation systems based on IBM’s blinded anecdotal feedback from actual customer migrations