SAP S/4 HANA

The platform SAP HANA has been available since 2010, and SAP applications like SAP ERP and the SAP Business Suite have been able to run on the SAP HANA database and/or any other database

SAP S/4HANA can be deployed on premises, in the cloud, or through a hybrid model. The S/4HANA product offering consists of two editions: SAP S/4HANA On-Premise and SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

SAP S/4HANA On-Premise is similar in terms of coverage, functionality, industry-specific support, and localization to the current SAP Business Suite (in 39 languages, 64 country versions).

SAP also offers SAP S/4HANA Cloud (in 18 languages, 33 country versions). SAP has emphasized the product as pivotal to its cloud shift.

Both editions consist of functionality for finance, accounting, controlling, procurement, sales, manufacturing, plant maintenance, project system, and product lifecycle management, plus integration with SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba, SAP Hybris, SAP Fieldglass and SAP Concur.

There are various ways to upgrade in S/4 HANA

  • New implementation - This is a new implementation of SAP S/4HANA (green field): customers who are migrating from a non-SAP legacy system or from an SAP ERP system and implementing a fresh system that requires an initial data load. In this scenario, the SAP S/4HANA system is implemented, and master and transactional data are migrated from the legacy system, thus standard data migration tools and content has to be used.


  • System conversion - This is a complete conversion of an existing SAP Business Suite system to SAP S/4HANA (brownfield): customers who want to change their current SAP ERP system to SAP S/4HANA. This scenario is technically based on Software Update Manager (SUM) with Database Migration Option (DMO) in case the customer is not yet on SAP HANA as the underlying database.
  • Landscape transformation - This is a consolidation of current regional SAP systems into one global SAP S/4HANA system or a split out of different parts of a system: customers who want to consolidate their landscape or carve out selected entities (such as a company code) or processes into a single SAP S/4HANA system.