Cloud migration is top of mind for most companies with SAP applications. While the advantages of the cloud for SAP customers is generally understood, the move itself can be complicated and disruptive. So what actually are the business benefits and cost savings? How long will it take to recoup such an investment? Two recently published reports from Forrester and IDC can help to quantify the benefits and ROI. 

Getting answers to the million-dollar questions
Forrester and IDC bring different methodologies to the table; they asked somewhat different questions and used different models to calculate their financial KPIs. This allows you to get two different points of view on the same basic questions about value, risk, and ROI.

As it turns out, both reports found that customers who migrate their SAP environments to Google Cloud see an impressive return on their investments. From uptime and infrastructure to efficiency and productivity—both Forrester and IDC identified major benefits to companies that have made the move to Google Cloud.

Let’s walk through some of the highlights from both reports.

Forrester’s TEI model spotlights the power of uptime improvements
Based on in-depth conversations and quantitative research with six companies, here are the key findings from the Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) study for companies running SAP systems on Google Cloud: 

• Direct cost savings. When they compare cloud subscription and related costs to what they spent on legacy systems and infrastructure, most IT leaders expect a cloud migration to deliver up-front savings. But according to Forrester, the companies interviewed reported average savings of more than $3 million a year, including eliminated hardware purchases, right-sized software licensing, staffing efficiencies, and other operational cost savings.

• Dramatically improved uptime. Customers told Forrester that migrating SAP to Google Cloud pretty much eliminates downtime—planned or unplanned—as a significant IT concern. According to Forrester, companies realized an average of $1.5 million in savings per year by avoiding the revenue and user productivity losses that had once been a fact of life for their IT teams.
• Significant efficiency gains. Because Google Cloud works to mitigate performance bottlenecks, infrastructure mishaps, network delays and more, the companies Forrester interviewed reported a yearly average of $500,000 in productivity gains for SAP business users and frontline workers.

Companies also reported an annual average of $500,000 in additional IT efficiency gains after migrating SAP to Google Cloud. This quantifies what happens when IT practitioners no longer have to deal with the bottlenecks that come with legacy systems, and are able to spend their time on tasks that actually build value and help the business. Based on the Forrester analysis, the companies interviewed could expect average three-year net benefits of about $15.4 million.

“We benefit from any technical innovation in the infrastructure area because Google Cloud is doing that for us,” one customer told Forrester. “So, whenever there’s new hardware available or new processes or whatever, I don’t have to run the specific project to migrate from A to B.” 

IDC finds that good things happen when SAP downtime is reduced 
The IDC report highlights four areas where Google Cloud generates the most value for customers:

1. Cutting infrastructure costs. According to IDC, customers running SAP on Google Cloud spent 31% less on infrastructure each year, or an average of $233,000 less per company. The ability to scale SAP environments dynamically and to keep them right-sized was a major factor; so were the advantages of automated infrastructure monitoring and savings on software licenses once these companies could stop overprovisioning.

2. Giving a team better things to do. IDC found that the infrastructure, database, and security teams of the companies they interviewed reduced the time they need to maintain and manage SAP environments by an average of 66% per year, for a savings of $443,000, per company. As a result, these companies got the equivalent of a major staff expansion from their SAP migrations—giving them both the staff time and the expertise to focus on far more valuable activities.

3. Limiting unplanned downtime. These companies reported to IDC an average 98% reduction in unplanned downtime. Migrating SAP to Google Cloud significantly reduces the threat of downtime and saves the business an average of nearly $770,000 per year in lost revenue and user productivity. For some firms, the downtime savings topped $1 million per year.

4. Making users more productive. The companies interviewed told IDC that by avoiding downtime and disruptions associated with upgrade and maintenance tasks for their legacy SAP systems, they saved an average of $363,000 annually in user productivity. But there’s an even more interesting under-the-hood stat contributing to these gains: These companies reduced the time required to deploy new SAP compute and storage resources from an average of 8.8 days to 1 hour.

When IDC added up these and other savings associated with running SAP on Google Cloud, it found an average three-year savings of more than $3.5 million and a five-month payback period. 

“We acquired another company, so basically overnight we needed to be able to deal with that increase,” said one customer IDC spoke with. “We doubled our footprint overnight, and we had to take on hundreds of additional employees. We needed a platform that we could easily scale up if we required, and that’s the benefit of running SAP on Google Cloud for us.” 

Explore the reports
There is a lot to think about when considering a move of SAP systems to the cloud. The cloud has many advantages, but migration can seem complicated and tricky; we appreciate that you are looking to understand the full picture. These papers are a great place to start. 

Download the reports—Forrester’s “Total Economic Impact of SAP on Google Cloud” and IDC’s “Business Value of SAP for Google Cloud Environments.” Then, get in touch.

Enterprises are increasingly seeking out technologies that help them create unique experiences for customers with speed and at scale. At the same time, customers want flexibility when deciding where to manage their enterprise data, particularly when it comes to business-critical applications.

That’s why I’m thrilled that Sprinklr, the unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) platform for modern enterprises, has partnered with Google Cloud to accelerate its go-to-market strategy and grow awareness among our joint customers. Sprinklr will work closely with our global salesforce, benefitting from our deep relationships with enterprises that have chosen to build on Google Cloud. 

Akin to Google Cloud’s mission to accelerate every organization’s ability to digitally transform their business through data-powered innovation, Sprinklr’s primary objective is to empower the world’s largest and most loved brands to make their customers happier by listening, learning, and taking action through insights. With this strategic partnership now in place, Sprinklr and Google Cloud will go-to-market together with the end-customer as our sole focus.

Traditionally, brands have adopted point solutions to manage segments of the customer journey. In isolation, these may work — but they rarely work collaboratively, even when vendors build “Frankenstacks” of disconnected products. These solutions can’t deliver a 360° view of the customer, and often reinforce departmental silos. All of which creates point-solution chaos.

Sprinklr’s approach is fundamentally different and is the way out of the aforementioned point-solution chaos. As the first platform purpose-built for unified customer experience management (Unified-CXM) and trusted by the enterprise, Sprinklr’s industry-leading AI and powerful Care, Marketing, Research, and Engagement solutions enable the world’s top brands to learn about their customers, understand the marketplace, and reach, engage, and serve customers on all channels to drive business growth. 

Sprinklr was built from the ground up as a platform-first solution, designed to evolve and grow with the rapid expansion of digital channels and applications. The results? Faster innovation. Stronger performance. And a future-proof strategy for customer engagement on an enterprise scale.

“Sprinklr works with large, global companies that want flexibility when deciding where to manage their enterprise data and consider our platform a business-critical application,” said Doug Balut, Senior Vice President of Global Alliances, Sprinklr. “Giving our customers the opportunity to manage Sprinklr on Google Cloud empowers them to create engaging customer experiences while maintaining the high security, scalability, and performance they need to run their business.”

To learn more about this exciting partnership and the challenges we jointly solve for customers, check out the recent conversation between Google Cloud’s VP of Marketing, Sarah Kennedy, and Sprinklr’s Chief Experience Officer, Grad Conn. Or read the press release on the partnership.

There is no one way to recover. The past year has seen unprecedented challenges for business across the world, with social distancing and quarantine measures forcing many organizations to quickly adapt to remote working. A new report from BCG Platinion, titled “Finding a New Normal in the Cloud”, points out that while companies have done well to survive so far, the overall business environment is still a tough one with contracted economies and lowered revenues. CIOs have to find the right balance between technological innovation and lowering their cash burn rate. 

The report identifies five key ways in which companies can use cloud computing to optimize their operations and reduce overall IT costs by as much as 10%. 

1. Go beyond VPN

The BCG Platinion report states that companies need “rapid, efficient, highly scalable, and device agnostic solutions”. Traditionally, when employees had to work offsite, companies provided them with VPNs. But the sheer scale of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown these solutions to be expensive, slow, inconvenient, and hard to manage when entire workforces are working remotely.

Instead, BCG Platinion emphasizes the need for cloud-based solutions such as BeyondCorp Enterprise for more secure, more effective, lower cost remote access at scale. BeyondCorp Enterprise offers customers a zero trust platform for simple and secure access with continuous end-to-end protection that can be used on any device at any time. Deliveroo, a global food delivery company headquartered in the UK, uses BeyondCorp Enterprise to bring the zero trust model to its distributed workforce. 

“Having secure access to applications and associated data is critical for our business,” says Vaughn Washington, VP of Engineering at Deliveroo. “With BeyondCorp Enterprise, we manage security at the app level, which removes the need for traditional VPNs and associated risks.”¹

With a low cost cloud subscription model, BeyondCorp Enterprise eliminates the need for hardware, operating, and maintenance costs that come with VPN solutions and can also enable organizations to offer protection to the extended workforce at a fraction of the cost. BCG Platinion estimates that solutions like BeyondCorp Enterprise can save companies as much as 50% versus the cost of a traditional VPN. 

2. Use SaaS to keep productivity up 

With so much of the workforce fragmented due to social distancing measures, the need for seamless, efficient collaboration is greater than ever. According to BCG Platinion, a fully functional Software-as-a-Service productivity solution such as Google Workspace helps to “alleviate the traditional costs and burdens around availability, backup, and maintenance of on-premise collaboration infrastructure.” BCG Platinion analysts estimate that adopting a SaaS solution can lower computing costs for end users by up to 35%. 

But working in the cloud does more than lower costs. The BCG Platinion report cites a 2020 study from Forrester that found adopting Google Workspace boosted revenue growth by 1.5%, reduced the need for on-demand tech support by 20%, and cut the risk of data breaches by more than 95%. Over the last year, companies of all sizes have looked on the conditions of the pandemic as an opportunity to change the way they work. 

“Airbus has spent the past year thinking about what it actually means to return to work and we’re looking to support greater flexibility with Google Workspace in a leading role,” says Andrew Plunkett, Airbus Vice President Digital Workplace. “In 2020, we held 5.6M Google Meet sessions and we now have more than 70,000 shared Drives where people collaborate. Google Workspace has changed the way people work at Airbus and that will continue as the solution empowers the hybrid work reality.”²

3. Reduce IT overhead and management costs with cloud-first devices

Working in the cloud can be made even more effective with devices specifically designed for the cloud, says the BCG Platinion report. “Cloud-native devices such as Google’s Chromebooks and Chromeboxes are cost-effective, easy to deploy, simple to use, and highly secure,” says BCG Platinion. Additionally, with “thin client” devices, companies can save on hardware costs compared with traditional laptops and desktops.The report suggests that a thin client approach can produce savings of up to 25% in end-user technology and support. 

Organizations and businesses of all sizes have found that Chrome OS and devices have greatly enhanced their capacity to work together in even the most challenging circumstances. Chrome OS provides employees with a modern experience and devices that stay fast, have built-in security, deploy quickly, and reduce the total cost of ownership. “Chromebooks are simple-to-use and cost-effective devices that do everything that our staff need them to do, which is mainly accessing Google Workspace online,” says Henry Lewis, Head of Platform for the London Borough of Hackney. “As soon as the Grab and Go Chromebooks were available, they were well used every day.”³

4. Lift and shift for easier transitions

While migrating to the cloud is a priority for many organizations to succeed, it does not have to happen all at once and in the same way. A total cloud migration can be a huge undertaking, involving redesigns of architecture and refactoring of applications. For many organizations, this process can take several months, even years. 

But in times like these, CIOs need to make decisions quickly and reduce cash burn as much as possible. When resources are stretched and time is tight, BCG Platinion recommends a “lift-and-shift” approach for minimal disruption. With Google Compute Engine, for example, organizations can simply rehost their existing workloads on virtual machines without transformation. BCG Platinion reports that moving non-critical workloads to the cloud with lift-and-shift approaches can reduce IT spend by as much as 4% in just three months. Additionally, a quick, effective migration paves the way for more advanced IT infrastructure changes, creating effects that ripple long into the future. 

5. Make data work for you with the cloud

Data is central to any industry and making the most out of it is more important now than ever before. With business as usual upended by the pandemic, organizations have turned to data for urgent tasks like demand forecasting or predicting supply-chain disruptions. A McKinsey report from last year points out that while many organisations had already started to engage with analytics and AI technologies, their progress was dramatically accelerated by the urgency of the pandemic: “Analytics capabilities that once might have taken these organizations months or years to build came to life in a matter of weeks.”

With the right setup a company can use data to drive efficiencies, respond quickly to its customers and open new markets. But big wins require huge amounts of information and powerful analytics, which means that effective data handling can be very difficult and expensive to do with on-premises architecture. 

Moving to a cloud-based infrastructure minimizes infrastructure costs while opening up cutting edge techniques like machine learning for greater insight. The BCG Platinion report found that using a cloud-based data platform was not only cheaper and more efficient for businesses, but could result in a 70% increase in “effectiveness” which it defined as increased sales, lower costs of procured goods, and reduced inventory holding costs. “Moving to cloud provides competitive advantage as you scale innovation, accelerating the creation of new services to keep ahead of the competition,” explains Norbert Faure, Managing Director, Platinion Western Europe at Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

The key mission of any data platform is to make sure that the right people have access to the right information at the right time. Google Cloud helps to unify data across the entire business, increase agility, and innovate faster with a range of products. BigQuery runs complex analytics at infinite scale while helping organizations save up to 34% on the total cost of ownership compared with alternative cloud-based data warehouse solutions.⁴ Cloud Spanner provides a fully managed relational database that operates at 99.999% availability. Meanwhile, with Vertex AI, businesses can access the same groundbreaking machine learning tools that Google uses itself for unprecedented insight on a unified AI platform. “The whole Google Cloud suite of products accelerates the process of getting established and up and running, so we can perform the ‘bread-and-butter’ work of data science,” says David Herberich, VP, Head of Data at fintech startup Branch.⁵

Minimize costs today, innovate for tomorrow

As the world recovers from the pandemic, continued success depends on staying nimble and adaptive, argues the BCG Platinion report. Cloud computing can make companies more resilient by helping them to keep costs low, reducing overall IT spend by as much as 10% overall according to BCG Platinion. “For CIOs, cloud migrations can offer important near-term savings and benefits, while also reinvigorating progress toward the long-term goal of digital transformation.“

To learn more, read the full report from BCG Platinion.

^{1. BeyondCorp Enterprise: Introducing a safer era of computing
2. Building the future of work with Google Workspace
3. Hackney Council: Empowering 4,000 staff to keep serving their community from home
4. The Economic Advantages of Google BigQuery versus Alternative Cloud-based EDW Solutions
5. Fintech startup, Branch makes data analytics easy with BigQuery}