SAP Commerce Cloud Migration ​

Learn the benefits and plan your successful on-premise SAP Commerce Cloud Migration with our 3-step approach.

THE CLOUD

Cloud adoption has become the new standard in 2020. In Germany alone, almost 92% of all companies are either using or considering using cloud services. While the migration to Commerce Cloud v2 becomes necessary for on-premise users, it also brings clear benefits to your business.

Cloud offers full accessibility to data, data recovery and flexibility, relieves the IT staff and helps to cut costs. The choice for cloud is one that 9 out of 10 companies is making according to research by 451. The average business runs 38% of workloads in public and 41% in private cloud, RightScale reports. From the very start, SAP has been on top of this trend, transforming from a software licenses vendor into a leading cloud services vendor.

SAP Commerce Cloud Migration ​ahead

With the SAP Commerce Cloud solution now available as Commerce Cloud v2 running on Microsoft’s Azure platform, cloud migration becomes necessary for on-premise or Commerce Cloud v1 users. Starting with release 1905, provided in May 2019, SAP Commerce on-premise is planned following an annual release cadence. SAP Commerce Cloud v2 is planned following a monthly release Cadence, using Cloud Extension Packs (CEP). CEP includes new innovations for SAP Commerce Cloud v2 customers. To prevent an untimely, forced migration and to reap the benefits of cloud early on, a cloud migration to Commerce Cloud v2 within the next 12 to 18 months is strongly recommended.

Plan your on-premise Cloud Migration: 5 Key Questions

Whether you want to wait for SAP’s support for on-premise to run out or plan cloud migration according to your business needs, depends on the following five key questions:

    • When will the support and maintenance of your version run out of life?
    • How much time, effort and money do updates currently asks of your IT staff and external providers?
    • How costly is the current hosting of your SAP CX solution?
    • How are performance peaks handled? How quickly can you scale up?
    • How time-consuming or costly are rollouts and improvements?

    The answers to these questions will help you determine how timely your cloud migration to SAP Commerce Cloud v2 (CCv2) should be. In addition, there are clear business benefits to consider as well.

    Benefits of the Cloud

    Compared with on-premise or the SAP Commerce Cloud v1 (CCv1) installations, choosing for CCv2 comes wit the following business benefits:

    The existing back-end integration in SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Suite makes implementation quick and easy. Integration with other cloud solutions like Marketing and Sales becomes much easier than ever before.

    CCv2 runs on Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure with database-as-a-service (Azure SQL). This offers scalability to meet traffic demands and smooth out peaks and committed low page and API response times at a low TCO.

    Rapid onboarding and simplified operations allow for faster time-to-market. The self-service auto-deployment portal with continuous delivery/integration pipeline makes your organization flexible and provides true business agility.

    With fixes and updates installed in short iterations, you can rely on working with the most up to date version of SAP CX available.

    Dedicated to providing security at the highest levels available, CCv2 complies with the SAP Cloud Security mandate with a five-star rating.

    Our 3-Step Approach

    1. Assessment

    You start with considering the business and system requirements. The assessment is an overarching process that encompasses organizational readiness as well as a code review by an experienced SAP Commerce Solution Architect. These actions are typically taken in an assessment for cloud readiness:

    • Cloud Check: Q&A session to check the current status
    • Architecture and infrastructure review
    • System Quick Check: a functional overview
    • Business Requirements, Roadmap and existing pain points
    • Code Review: Tool bases static code analysis and review by an experienced SAP Commerce Solution Architect 

    2. Preparation

    The actual migration preparation depends on the defined requirements. With this, we create a cutover plan that lists all the activities and their dependencies. It may include an upgrade to the latest v6.7 version and describes whether refactoring/code adaption is needed. We prepare on your data and media transformation and check the 3rd party configurations. Last but not least comes Testing and User Acceptance Testing (UAT):

    • Cutover plan
    • If needed: Refactoring/Code Adaption
    • If needed: Upgrade to at least v6.7
    • Setup Commerce Cloud v2 and environment
    • Data and Media transformation
    • 3rd party configurations (interfaces)
    • Testing & UAT

    3. Migration und Go-live

    Finally, the conversion can begin according to a well set up planning. Key tasks include code migration, data and media migration and sanity checks:

    • Code migration
    • Data & media migration
    • Sanity Checks

    Licensing Costs

    With the benefits for migrating from SAP Commerce Cloud on-premise to Commerce Cloud v2 clear, your next question will be on the licensing model. Unfortunately, the impact on licensing costs will vary from customer to customer. As an experienced SAP partner, we’re happy to help you clarify the consequences of migrating to CCv2.Please reach out to us for any questions on licensing and support continuation.

    Are you considering migration, but not sure whether your system fulfil the needed requirements?
     

    To transfer your on-premise solution to the cloud, you must have at least SAP Commerce version 6.7 in use, better version 1905 or newer. There are also a number of commerce modules whose use is currently NOT supported in the cloud V2. Here is an overview:
     

    • Synchronous order management modules
    • Commerce Infrastructure Services
    • Entitlement & Metering System (EMS) modules
    • Subscription billing gateway (SBG) modules
    • SAP Invoice Module
    • SAP Product Configuration, on-premise edition

    In addition to the modules mentioned, no integration to the following services is currently granted:
     

    • ImageMagick (Mediacoversion extension)
    • OpenText (DAM)
    • SAP Hybris merchandising

    You should analyse further customer-specific integrations into other systems in detail or have them analysed by experienced experts. Let us jointly work together and find out what the best migration strategy would be for you.

    WHY SQLI

    Your SAP cloud migration requires careful planning and execution. As an experienced SAP partner with hundreds of delivered projects, SQLI is best suited to make your SAP cloud migration successful. Companies such as Carlsberg, Miele, Grohe AG, Hansgrohe and Stiebel Eltron chose SQLI for their SAP project.

    • #1 Implementation partner for SAP CX Solutions in Europe
    • 200+ Successfully delivered SAP projects
    • 15 Years of experience with SAP Commerce
    • 700+ SAP CX Specialists to support your Cloud Migration

    Ready to migrate your SAP Commerce Cloud on-premise to CCv2? Or do you have specific questions on licensing and requirements you need addressing first? Our SAP experts can support you in any phase of your cloud migration.

    CURIOUS TO LEARN MORE?

    Get in touch to set up a consultation session. We are dedicated to your digital success by ensuring a smooth transition to the cloud.

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