By Stacey Meston, Sr. Manager Enterprise Programs
Virtualization continues to define the modern architecture of enterprise IT, establishing both a new model for how applications are run and a path to cloud computing. Still, for some organizations the migration of business-critical applications, such as SAP, to a virtual environment is a foregone conclusion.
SAP Virtualization Lagging Behind
Recently, Aberdeen Group conducted a survey of 100 organizations representing a global audience of enterprises of all sizes. Thirty-five percent (35%) of survey respondents were veteran users of SAP products, who reported that they have deployed SAP for more than 10 years. Within these enterprises, it was learned that only 31% of SAP deployments have been virtualized. SAP users appear slower to adopt the concept of virtualization than the general population. In fact, research of VMware’s own customers indicates the virtualization of SAP is lagging behind other key business-critical applications.
Perceived Challenges to Virtualizing SAP
Aberdeen asked the 69% of survey respondents that have only a physical SAP deployment about the challenges of converting to a virtualized implementation. Four key areas of concern emerged:
- Uncertainty as to the ROI (40%)
- Fear of harming performance (40%)
- Security (27%)
- Lack of resources to conduct the transition (27%)
Performance issues have been addressed in earlier blog entries. So let’s focus on the others.
Return on Investment
In a recent TCO Study of SAP running on vSphere conducted by VMS, a specialist in analyzing and optimizing SAP landscapes, a significant savings in TCO was identified and driven by four key items:
- VMware virtualization enables significantly better utilization of hardware, thus reducing power and floor space consumption.
- Faster and smaller hardware also reduces the additional cost for servers, cost for data center and the administration of servers.
- Even more important are savings in the area of upgrade, rollout and improvement projects, for these savings have much more impact on the TCO of SAP systems.
- Flexibility increases in project scenarios like rollout, upgrade and change. Building additional project systems, resetting test systems on the fly, adding training systems, etc. requires no change in adding or buying additional hardware but only in allocation of resources.
- Decoupling SAP and OS systems from hardware by virtualization enables more focused planning of each: the technical infrastructure and the SAP systems.
- Savings in the area of ongoing cost or operations are smaller, since the majority of the effort there is related to the SAP application itself, which is not affected so much by VMware.
Lack of Resources
Companies planning to virtualize their SAP deployments should consider the use of professional consultants. Over half of the SAP users captured in the Aberdeen survey report that they have virtualized their application with the aid of professional service providers. Professional consultants have deep experience in virtualizing SAP deployments, which is especially valuable if you feel you do not have the capabilities in your own IT headcount.
Virtualizing your SAP deployment has tremendous upside and the potential for positive returns for your organization. To fully investigate the potential to your organization, download the full Aberdeen report, “The Case for Virtualizing SAP” or VMS TCO Study, at our VMware Virtualizing SAP Knowledge Vault — a comprehensive resource center for assisting with your SAP virtualization journey.
