Preface – This post is part of the SAP on Azure series.

Introduction

In previous articles, we have discussed about SAP on Azure and types of Azure sizing based upon use case. In this article we will discuss SAP on Azure Migration Journey.

SAP on Azure Migration Journey

When we say migration, it is either ECC to S/4HANA migration for on-premise or from on premise to cloud migration. It involves the following steps:

1. SAP on Azure Planning
2. Mapping On-premise SAP Instance to the required one among the following:
   1. SAP AnyDB on Azure
   2. SAP HANA on Azure
   3. S/4HANA on Azure
3. Performing Migration Operation:
   1. Lift & Shift
   2. Lift & Shift/Migrate
   3. Transformation to S/4HANA & Azure Consolidation, Re-implementation

Image source: Google

SAP on Azure Planning

We have already discussed the phases involved in SAP on Azure Projects, you can read them here. SAP on Azure planning is a very critical process and it requires all checklist to be ready. The six phases includes:

1. Project preparation and planning phase
2. Pilot phase (strongly recommended)
3. Non-production phase
4. Production preparation phase
5. Go-live phase
6. Post production phase

Performing Migration Operation

Once you identified what exactly you want in terms of Infrastructure, then you can perform any of the following paths:

Path A: We can do a lift & shift of our existing environment up to Azure without any DB changes, and later we can do migration to HANA or conversion to S/4HANA.

Path B: We can do a lift & shift of our existing environment up to Azure without any DB changes, and then migrate the database to HANA database. Till now, we will be running ECC on HANA. From here again we can perform the conversion from ECC on HANA to S/4HANA.

Path C: We can directly perform transformation to S/4HANA & Azure Consolidation or Re-implementation of ECC in S/4HANA (which will be then a Greenfield implementation).