SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition (GROW) is constantly evolving and expanding. It has particularly evolved in recent years with the introduction of several innovations that make it a true enterprise-grade SaaS Cloud ERP solution:
Service Level Agreement (SLA):
Starting with version 2408 (August 2024), SAP has increased the availability commitment (SLA) from 99.7% to 99.9% at no additional cost. The actual availability rate is higher than SAP’s commitment.
Three-system landscape (3SL):
SAP provides the standard solution with three systems (DEV, TEST, PROD) enabling the customer to test configurations and customizations in the test environment before propagating changes to the production environment.
Parallel Project Line (PPL):
The Parallel Project Line (PPL) enables customers to create new DEV and TEST environments (in parallel with the main line) to make major configuration changes (such as adding companies and countries), and to test these changes before reintegrating them into the main line. This branch-and-merge functionality is necessary for larger projects that introduce new configuration batches into a real-world environment. Typical use cases include deploying new brands, subsidiaries or acquisitions, or using the parallel instance for blank migrations or dress rehearsals (not merging). This feature is scheduled to move from the early adopter program to general availability in Q2 2025.
Technical evolution:
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition is designed to adapt to customers’ needs as they increase their data footprint and application consumption. SAP is able to supply and operate systems with up to 12TB of HANA memory, meeting the needs of the vast majority of companies.
Continuous delivery of functionality:
SAP offers monthly features with no downtime, which customers can activate as they wish.
Upgrade windows:
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition receives major upgrades twice a year (in February and August). Over the course of 2024, SAP has reduced planned upgrade downtime windows from 24 hours to 8 hours (see the 3SL maintenance schedule). Actual downtime, during which end users are unable to perform transactions, is closer to 2 hours on average. This is the result of investment in the green-blue deployment, which enables SAP to perform much of the preparation work in a parallel environment and minimize actual downtime for end users. Other activities, such as access to change configuration, have longer restriction windows.
Maintenance windows :
As with upgrade downtime, the reserved weekly downtime windows of 4 hours are generally closer to ½ to 1 hour on average if used.
Location:
La couverture de localisation et les éléments de portée disponibles avec SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition a été considérablement élargie, ce qui a conduit à une couverture géographique accrue. La solution est localisée pour 59 pays et disponible en 33 langues à partir de la version 2408 et l’objectif de SAP est maintenant d’étendre la localisation des éléments individuels du périmètre, afin d’atteindre la parité des fonctionnalités dans tous les pays localisés fournis par SAP. Pour évaluer les éventuelles limitations nationales, une évaluation de la découverte numérique (Digital Discovery Assessment – DDA) doit être réalisée pour identifier les éléments du périmètre pris en charge par pays.
Self-service localization :
For countries other than those localized by SAP, SAP has launched self-service localization to enable our partners and customers to meet the needs of non-standard countries by copying content from a standard delivered country and adapting it using configuration and extensibility tools. More information on how to create new local versions is available on the blog. SAP has customers running businesses in over 40 countries within a single SAP tenant.
Integrated ABAP environment:
In addition to standard in-application extensibility and side-by-side extensibility with BTP, SAP now offers a development environment in the stack where customers and partners can create extensions without hindering the qualities of the cloud solution. For more information, visit the SAP Extensibility Explorer.
Scalable delivery:
To enable partners to make their intellectual property widely available, SAP now offers them the possibility of developing their extensions in their test and demonstration environment, and publishing them via the SAP Store. Customers can then discover, purchase and install these solutions. This is a much more scalable option than other single or multiple delivery options.
