A new study has found that SAP users in EMEA enterprises were looking to migrate their workloads to the cloud.

The research, commissioned by Lemongrass and conducted by Norstat, polled senior SAP users in EMEA enterprises. It found that found that a majority of 55% of those surveyed planned on migrating their SAP workloads to the cloud within in the next 12 months, citing better agility (80%), security (78%) and a reduction in operating costs (73%) as the drivers.

Among those organisations surveyed that had not yet migrated to the cloud, security, finding the right provider and broader non-SAP estate and uncertain decision making around SAP S/4 HANA were highlighted as key concerns.

Interestingly though, among those that had already migrated SAP workloads, 41% of respondents had not seen a reduction in operating cost – and there were concerns over legacy applications, a lack of in-house skills and clarity on the right cloud services provider.

Mark Hirst, Managing Director for EMEA and APAC at Lemongrass, said, “This research shows a clear maturing of the SAP on cloud marketplace. The earliest migrations of SAP workloads to the public cloud were completed less than a decade ago. At that time, it was seen as a novel approach for early adopters and generally regarded as something risky to do with your core SAP applications. It is now clear that SAP on cloud has become the mainstream platform. It’s also great to see that the business case is both readily built and relatively easily delivered.” 

He concluded, “While some of the old concerns around SAP on cloud, such as security, still exist, they are now very much seen as one the major benefits as well. It’s also interesting that, although most of those surveyed realised significant cost reduction, a not insignificant proportion of those surveyed had not seen their costs reduced. In our experience, that’s usually down to poor post-migration management and low levels of automation which are key to achieving business outcomes in the cloud.”