How to Execute
This research note outlines best practices relevant
to running SAP applications on multiple cloud
hyperscalers and managed service providers. The
SAP-recommended solution, SAP Cloud ERP Private is
managed and operated by SAP on its reference
architecture. This research note highlights key
differences associated with this solution when
relevant for the reader.
Understand SAP Hosting Options on Cloud
Hyperscalers
Organizations evaluating the deployment of SAP
solutions built on SAP NetWeaver — including SAP
Business Suite, SAP BW, and SAP Process
Orchestration — or seeking to leverage SAP software
based on the ABAP platform, such as SAP S/4HANA,
within a cloud provider, are often overwhelmed by
the offerings of global and local providers. Many
providers market their services as delivering a
“cloud experience” or offer cloud-like billing
models. Customers need to differentiate between two
principal categories of providers: cloud IaaS
providers and SAP community clouds.
Cloud IaaS providers. These providers are among the largest public cloud
hyperscalers. They are officially recognized by SAP,1
which supports the deployment of SAP-based products
on their IaaS environments:
Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google
Cloud, Huawei Cloud, IBM Cloud, IBM PowerVS,
Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
(OCI). On each cloud provider, SAP prescribes the
prerequisites, supported SAP and database products,
and infrastructure components validated by
SAP.
Cloud hyperscalers offer seamless integration
between SAP systems and their portfolio of
value-added services, including AI such as machine learning and GenAI, as well as big data solutions and additional
capabilities. By leveraging these advanced
capabilities, organizations can enhance business
KPIs by enriching and augmenting data stored within
SAP systems. Achieve SAP S/4HANA Reliability and Extensibility
in the Public Cloud
provides further details about SAP architectures in
public cloud and extensibility options.
The alignment between these services and the
digital ambitions of an organization often drives
the cloud provider choice. This creates a compelling
business case for migrating and rehosting SAP
environments on hyperscaler cloud platforms. Also,
cloud hyperscalers provide a set of specialized
tools and reference architectures specifically
designed to optimize the experience for SAP
workloads. Numerous MSPs deliver implementation and
management services for SAP on cloud IaaS
providers.
SAP community clouds. Some MSPs and certain speciality cloud
providers
offer managed or unmanaged shared infrastructure
designed for running SAP-based software in a
cloud-like model. While most of these providers use SAP-certified hardware and software
stacks, not all providers can deliver end-to-end
quality of service to different customers across all
components. Customers selecting this deployment
model gain access to the same SAP software,
customization capabilities, and industry-specific
solutions as they would when running their systems
on an SAP-certified Cloud IaaS provider.
SAP does not certify a shared community cloud
stacks as cloud IaaS providers, and may require
issue reproduction in a supported, dedicated tenant,
prior to providing product support.
Customers choosing this model often benefit from a
lower price per compute and storage resource
compared to public cloud hyperscalers but cannot
consume any value-added hyperscaler-native PaaS or
SaaS services at low latency and egress cost, as
they are unique to hyperscalers. Additionally,
customers should understand during negotiations what
and how SAP community cloud providers will support
them in the event of any objections from SAP related
to performance issues.
SAP Cloud ERP Private Cloud Options
SAP Cloud ERP Private is a first-party solution in
which SAP provides managed outsourcing services and
end-to-end software support on top of various cloud
infrastructures. Within this offering, SAP supports
a different set of providers. While SAP delivers
multiple service variants, as outlined in Choosing a Suitable S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition
Service Variant,
hosting options for the SAP Cloud ERP Private
offering family can be broadly categorized into two
primary types:2
-
SAP private cloud on hyperscaler:
SAP offers SAP Cloud ERP Private
services3
on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud,
IBM Cloud,4
IBM PowerVS,5
and Microsoft Azure.
-
SAP sovereign cloud: SAP delivers SAP Cloud ERP Private services
within a range of sovereign cloud
environments, specifically designed to
address the regulatory compliance and data
residency requirements of individual
countries or geopolitical regions. These
environments encompass first-party
solutions, such as SAP Cloud Infrastructure
for EU customers, as well as third-party
offerings, including AWS European Sovereign
Cloud (Europe), AWS GovCloud (U.S.) and
Microsoft Azure Government (U.S.). Additional options, such as Delos Cloud, a partnership with
Microsoft Azure to provide sovereign cloud
services for the German public sector, have
been announced but are not yet generally
available.
Evaluation Criteria for Hosting SAP in Cloud
Customers choosing their cloud provider for SAP
workloads must extend their evaluation criteria
beyond pricing. Gartner has observed that, while
comparing different cloud providers offering similar
capacity on cloud regions within the same
geographical area, the difference is often
negligible.
Furthermore, public cloud hyperscalers often offer
migration incentives (such as AWS Migration
Acceleration Program,6 Google Cloud Rapid Migration and Modernization
Program,7
and Microsoft Azure Accelerate8) that decrease costs, including credits toward
migration
services from certified partners. These can present
a very attractive TCO going forward to develop a
closer relationship between the customer and a hyperscaler
for strategic long-term partnerships lasting 10
years or more.
Gartner recommends engaging with a MSP as a first
step, sharing your business goals and desired IT
outcomes. Leveraging their expertise and experience
with similar clients, the MSP can then guide you in
selecting the most suitable cloud hyperscaler for
your needs.
As shown in Figure 1, the five main distinguishing
capabilities for cloud hyperscalers relevant to SAP
workloads are: cloud resiliency, disaster recovery,
value-added PaaS and SaaS services, partner
ecosystem, and technicalities.
Figure 1: Critical Dimensions for
Choosing a Cloud Provider for SAP
Cloud platform resiliency — Explore the effective capabilities of the chosen
cloud provider to deliver a resilient cloud platform
to be used as the foundation for deploying critical
SAP workloads. Seek inquiry-specific public cloud
architecture and resiliency features, and favor
cloud providers that provide multiple zones in a
region, with each zone hosted in a geographically
dispersed physical location. These architectures
provide more resiliency to SAP systems.
Give preference to a regional-based cloud control
plane architecture with critical services, such as
identity and access management
(IAM) and key management systems (KMSs), spread
across at least three availability zones. Refer to Plan for Resilience Against Regional Cloud
Failures for additional details. Also, if you are planning to deploy multiple
systems without any multizone/high-availability
configurations (such as nonproduction systems or
sandbox systems), ensure that the SLA offered is for
a single virtual machine deployment.
Disaster recovery — Assess effective cloud providers’ capability to
support a disaster recovery scenario for SAP,
matching your RPOs and RTOs. Focus on:
-
Capacity reservations:
Organizations are experiencing an increase
in cloud capacity shortage issues,
particularly on Microsoft Azure, which may
impact your ability to implement failover
strategies for your SAP estate. Verify your
cloud provider’s capabilities and
constraints in reserving compute, storage,
and bandwidth capacity for systems that need
to be deployed as part of your disaster
recovery plan. Refer to Avoid Disruption by Planning for Public
Cloud Capacity Shortages
for additional details.
-
Cloud-native disaster recovery features: Some cloud providers — notably AWS and
Azure — offer cloud-native
disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS)
solutions. Other cloud providers offer more
complex native solutions (such as DIY
solutions based on custom scripts). There
may be a need to acquire and maintain
third-party software.
Value-added PaaS and SaaS services — Explore effective cloud providers’ capability in
shifting from being your organization’s next data
center, providing only technological capabilities
for running SAP workloads, to being able to augment
the value of data stored in SAP solutions. Major
hyperscalers allow the possibility to integrate your
SAP data with hyperscaler-native (non-SAP) PaaS and
SaaS services (such as data lakes, big data and
analytics, AI, ML, etc.) to build industry-related
use cases with a direct impact on your business’s
KPIs.
Data proximity between SAP systems and the most
data-intensive PaaS and SaaS services should be your
primary driver for selecting a specific cloud
hyperscaler, as this reduces latency and egress
costs.
Partner ecosystem
— Evaluate the number and experience of reputable,
SAP-certified MSPs in your geographical area by
focusing on the breadth and depth of their
capabilities in running SAP with chosen cloud
providers. Set up a proof of concept (POC) for
testing effective capabilities in the area of
interest and explore the MSP’s experience in
co-designing a public cloud transformation and
operations deal tailored to your needs.
Technicalities — Although SAP HANA is the standard database for
SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW/4HANA, and many other SAP
products, other SAP systems based on SAP NetWeaver
or SAP ABAP Platform might run on different
databases (AnyDB in SAP terminology). These include
Oracle RDBMS, IBM Db2, Microsoft SQL Server, and SAP ASE. If you have a AnyDB
landscape, ensure that your cloud provider can
support all the databases and the required operating
systems you plan to use for your SAP systems. This
also applies if you are planning to move to cloud
historical systems kept in read-only mode to satisfy
compliance/legal requirements.
Cloud providers are also able to offer different
CPU/RAM ratios of SAP-certified instances; this is
extremely important while deploying advanced
AI/analytics use cases within your SAP systems. Verify that your cloud provider can support all
the non-SAP systems connected to SAP (often called
“satellite systems”) that you want to move to the
cloud. They will also need to support third-party
appliances (notably NetApp-based appliances) to
reach the storage KPI that your solution
requires.
Key Differentiators of Major Hyperscalers for SAP Cloud
Services and Software
Table 1 below summarizes the key differentiators
relevant to SAP systems that each major hyperscaler.
While some of these differentiators can also apply
to SAP Cloud ERP Private, some of these benefits can
only be leveraged by customers deploying their SAP
systems on IaaS.
|
Amazon Web
Services
|
Google
Cloud
|
Microsoft
Azure
|
|
Solutions and
enterprise
support
through AWS
solutions architects
and TAM, specialized
in SAP and industry
verticals.
|
Dedicated AI
SDK9
and prebuilt
semantic data models
on BigQuery across
SAP and non-SAP data
such as Salesforce
and Oracle
EBS.10
|
Integration with
Microsoft broader
portfolio
of products
including Azure
OpenAI, Microsoft
365, Copilot, and
Entra ID.11
|
Comprehensive suite
of tools for SAP
workloads, enabling
end-to-end support
for migration,
management, and
innovation.12
This includes an
ABAP SDK updated
daily and supporting
all AWS
services.13
|
ABAP SDK
prebuilt
integrations with
over 290 Google and
Google Cloud
services including
AI, Gemini
Enterprise, BigData
and Google
Workspace.14
|
Microsoft Fabric
enables
organizations to
unify SAP and
non-SAP data by leveraging a
suite of data
platform tools —
including Data
Factory, Synapse
Analytics, Data
Explorer, and Power
BI.15
|
Leading Public
Cloud Architecture
and Resiliency
capabilities as recognized by
the Gartner Critical
Capabilities for
Strategic Cloud
Platform Services
evaluation.16
|
Uptime SLA
up to 99.95% for
single virtual
machines on select
instance families;
this includes all
supported SAP HANA
sizes.17
|
A SIEM solution for
SAP applications and
SAP BTP
seamlessly
integrated with the
broader Microsoft
Sentinel
platform.18
|
|
|
Source: Gartner (February 2026)
Key Differentiators of Major Hyperscalers
in SAP Cloud ERP Private Cloud
In the SAP Cloud ERP Private outsourcing model, a
cloud-agnostic management layer orchestrates the
life cycle of virtual machines hosting SAP
workloads, primarily using the foundational features
common to all cloud hyperscalers.
Only a limited subset of the unique capabilities
offered by hyperscalers is incorporated by SAP into
SAP Cloud ERP Private.
As a result, the advanced, value-added
functionalities specific to each cloud provider are
largely abstracted away. Instead, SAP’s strategy is to deliver differentiated
services through its business technology platform
(BTP). For choosing an hyperscaler for SAP Cloud ERP
Private consult Our Organization Committed to RISE with SAP; What
Now?
Engage an MSP Able to Master SAP on Cloud
Hyperscalers
Organizations moving their SAP estate to the public
cloud often realize that their internal team — or
their current MSP — may not be the best choice for
exploiting cloud computing benefits.
Therefore, many customers can benefit from an MSP
that possesses expertise in both SAP and their
selected public cloud provider for the
transformation and management of their SAP systems
in the cloud. Customers do not necessarily need to
identify a different MSP for SAP on the cloud. They
can rely on their incumbent MSP, which manages their
current on-premises SAP environment, provided that
this MSP has demonstrated expertise in public cloud
services. Alternatively, they can depend on their
current cloud-aware MSP, provided it is fully
capable of transforming and running SAP.
Organizations assessing a dedicated MSP for SAP
workloads — or seeking to ensure their chosen MSP
demonstrates robust expertise in managing SAP
solutions on cloud infrastructure — should evaluate
the five key dimensions outlined in Figure 2. These
dimensions include co-design capabilities to tailor
the offering to your organization’s specific
requirements, MSP’s ability to support the
application layer, proof of concept (POC) success,
industry-specific knowledge, and availability of
credible customer references.
Figure 2: Critical Dimensions for
Selecting an MSP for SAP on Cloud
While engaging with an MSP to handle your SAP
workloads in cloud, consider the following main
dimensions:
-
Engage through dynamic sourcing: Verify MSPs’ expertise in engaging on
dynamic sourcing to co-create a complex SAP
transformational and managed service
solution tailored to organizations’ needs.
This lowers the uncertainty of
specifications in terms of solution
architecture, automation and performance.
For further information, see Use Dynamic Sourcing to Negotiate Complex
Managed Services Deals.
-
Evaluate support for the application
layer:
Check whether the potential MSPs can also
provide support on the application
management layer or whether it is limited up
to SAP Basis. This support might include
partial or complete application management,
or support for cloud extensibility. Contrast
the approach of adopting a single provider
for managing the whole SAP stack but risking
a higher lock-in and losing in control,
versus using different providers for cloud
and SAP Basis management and for application
management.
-
Organize a POC:
Examine the strength of each MSP’s claimed
capabilities in building, transforming and
running SAP in the cloud provider of choice.
Consider POCs and/or demos as a means to
test these capabilities and explore
important aspects like how (and if)
self-service access to the capability is
possible.
-
Assess industry knowledge:
Assess the industry knowledge of your
potential MSP in order to bring to your
lines of business (LOBs) value-based
enhancement to your SAP platform through
public cloud PaaS and SaaS services.
Industry-oriented MSPs must be able to
engage in generative relationships and agree
on industry- or enterprise-specific outcomes
that will be achieved through collaborating
in co-creation or similar
arrangements.
-
Obtain/gather references:
Request that the MSPs arrange reference
calls (ideally at least three) with clients
that are similar to your target profile.
References should refer to activities
performed in the last 12 to 18 months and
delivered by the same pool of resources to
be used in your engagement. Engage reference
clients to gain their feedback on the
provider’s strengths and weaknesses across
tools, skills, and processes.
Prepare an Exit Strategy From the Chosen MSP
When comparing the average duration of a
partnership between a customer organization and an
MSP, it is shorter than the average relationship
with a cloud provider and even shorter than the life span of an ERP suite such as SAP.
Thus, customers subcontracting the management of
their SAP systems in the cloud to an MSP must
carefully plan their exit strategy from that MSP.
They also need to seek contractual protection to
ensure that exit activities occur with minimal
downtime and no or few extra costs.
As part of a planned exit strategy from an MSP,
organizations should focus on:
-
Directly acquiring cloud capacity.
Procure cloud capacity directly from the hyperscaler, rather than through your MSP of choice or
a third-party cloud reseller. While these
alternative arrangements may appear simpler
or necessitate less governance, they often
require a technical migration to relocate
the workload when changing cloud
resellers.
-
Evaluating the MSP’s tooling.
Assess which capabilities are provided
through cloud-native tooling and which are
provided by the cloud management platform
offered by the provider. Inquire about the
ownership of the intellectual property of infrastructure as code (IaC) artifacts and ensure which
licenses/subscriptions will be passed to
your organization after the end of the
contract. Contrast the advanced features
offered by the intellectual property of the
provider versus the portability to another
provider.
-
Planning an exit.
Most modern, SAP-oriented MSPs allow the
customer to take over cloud subscriptions to
new providers after they have uninstalled
any proprietary or as-a-service tools. Less
sophisticated providers can require
customers to undergo a migration (such as a
full SAP reinstallation on another cloud
subscription and a homogeneous system copy)
while exiting the contract. Ensure that your
provider supports the first scenario or
contractually limits the maximum downtime
you can afford on the production for your
exit plan. For a deep discussion of this
topic, see How to Create a Public Cloud Integrated
IaaS and PaaS Exit Plan.
What Is the Exit Strategy From SAP Cloud ERP Private?
When a customer transitions to SAP
Cloud ERP Private (an option often
called “buying SAP RISE”), any existing
perpetual licenses are terminated, and
the customer adopts a subscription model
in which software usage rights, cloud
infrastructure, and managed services are
bundled. Customers are not permitted to
use software subscriptions acquired
through SAP Cloud ERP Private to operate
their systems outside the SAP Cloud ERP
Private environment.
If a customer wishes to exit SAP Cloud
ERP Private at the end of the contract
term but continues to leverage SAP
software such as SAP S/4HANA, they must
terminate their SAP Cloud ERP Private
agreement and purchase new perpetual
on-premises licenses from SAP. This
constitutes a new commercial transaction
between the customer and SAP, subject to
SAP’s pricing and policies at the time
of purchase.
SAP indicates support for multiple data
handover methodologies between SAP Cloud
ERP Private and the customer
environment, including data replication
where technically feasible.
