What is our primary use case?
If you have different databases, each one has been created to manage a certain type of transactional data very efficiently. One has been created to manage application and accessory data efficiently. But they both have to communicate with one another. You have duplication data, and it has to be shared back and forth between those two databases. That means you've basically doubled the amount of storage you need, and you've reduced the transactional time because it has to talk to each other before it can talk to you. That's what the technology eliminates: the duplicated databases. You can have multiple databases but only one instance that is used globally, eliminating a lot of replication.
This version of SAP came out in 2015, and everybody's moving to it because they're not really supporting the old version.
You can pick one of the hosted cloud services as opposed to owning it and doing it yourself. Smaller companies cannot buy a bunch of big servers and storage devices and hire people to run the data center. They want somebody else to do it. SAP is also a multi-tenant, so SAP will work with AWS, Azure, and IBM.
If you're one of the tenants in a big server and don't want people to see your data, you can have your own database separate from customer B and customer C. There's a price for that. That's basically private. There's a certain kind of cloud hosting where you're the only tenant. For government companies that are high-tech and don't want their data stolen, they tend to do a private solution, which means they're the only one using it.
You can also use this as a hybrid solution, which allows you to be a tenant in the solution. Your data could even be shared, but company A's data can't be seen by company B or C and vice-versa. That's a public solution where you're using the same database but different people can't see your data in that database.
What is most valuable?
It speeds up the performance in terms of how fast you are able to access the data, look at it, get it reported to you, and send it to somebody. It also reduces the amount of storage. The performance and the cost of ownership are better because of that technology.
What needs improvement?
The private solution is expensive. If you're in a situation where you're paying IBM or AWS or somebody just to host you specifically, you're paying people to run it and you're taking care of all the upgrades. As a company, you're either hiring or paying an outsourcer to do that, and you have to manage it, keep up with the updates to the hardware, software, and the operating system. It's very expensive because there's a lot to control and take care of.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for two years.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The reason why there has been a move toward cloud services and service as a software is because it's so much easier. There are fewer databases, and the cost is lower to have it hosted.
You can pick one of the hosted cloud services as opposed to owning it and doing it yourself. Your cost of ownership on the hardware, the data storage, and the maintenance all go down. It depends on what service you use.
The costs start going up as you move to a hybrid solution where you have your own dedicated pieces, but you're sharing parts of it in the public version. That costs a little bit more because you've bought your own database server that keeps your data separate from everybody else.
The private solution is going to be the most expensive version.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.
It's a game-changer in technology and allows you to use the service as a software, hardware as a software, platform as a software, etc.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
