On-premise vs. Managed Cloud: The People Problem
IT executives continue to ask themselves if now is the time to transition away from running complex SAP environments internally and move to a managed cloud. As they do so, most are able to quickly provide a list of reasons why it might be beneficial to their organization.
Some items on this list might include:
- The increased complexity of SAP environments and technologies
- Reducing large capital expenditures
- Keeping up with maintenance and updates of the applications
- Disaster recovery concerns
One of the most important considerations, however, is the potential to alleviate the struggle with acquiring, retaining, and properly utilizing your pool of technical professionals who run and administer your SAP applications, databases, and underlying infrastructure.
The Problem: IT Staff is Stretched Too Thin
Many companies struggle with maintaining a proper SAP Basis and infrastructure administration staff for supporting their SAP environments. A small team of SAP administrators can easily be stretched very thin while providing both run support for their critical enterprise applications and also trying to flex to support various business initiatives. In addition, these team members are challenged with spending the requisite amount of time keeping their technical skills and knowledge up to date while juggling the aforementioned day to day duties.
As most SAP environments must operate to support 24×7 operations, these teams are often burdened even more by having to provide after business hours support for these hyper critical applications. Seasonal challenges can also present themselves when trying to juggle support around vacation times, holidays, and sick days. All of these challenges add up and often lead to high turnover and difficulty in finding qualified resources. This inevitably puts the reliability of your SAP environments at risk.
The Solution: SAP Focused Managed Cloud
So, how can you help alleviate this problem for your IT staff and your company as a whole? Many organizations today are looking to partner with a managed cloud provider to help. Those considering the move to an SAP focused managed cloud provider will be happy to know that many of these challenges go away when a competent managed cloud provider is leveraged.
Your SAP managed cloud provider will have a large pool of experienced and qualified resources who are ready to respond to the needs of your environment, precisely when those needs arise. By spreading work across a “right sized” team of global talent, IT departments can rest assured that there are always qualified resources who understand their environment, actively monitoring and supporting their SAP systems regardless of day or time. With the burden of run operations removed from internal teams, they are now left with the time and energy to focus on future business initiatives and strategic projects.
Learn More
Acquiring and retaining top talent is just the tip of the iceberg for many IT organizations. Check out our free infographic – On-premise vs. Managed Cloud – to learn about 7 key infrastructure considerations to understand when researching the move from an on-premise to a managed cloud model.