You might have already seen the announcement made today @SAPPHIRENOW for Sap S/4HANA, cloud edition. Of course we are excited, especially as we are engineering the solution cloud first, but not cloud only. There is plenty of information here on the S/4HANA site in SCN, but in good tradition we wanted to keep going with our FAQ series (collection here SAP S/4HANA – Frequently Asked Questions – The Collection) and thought it is time for a next part – focusing on the S/4HANA n cloud edition. Here you go…

SAP S/4HANA is the next-generation business suite to help businesses run simple in the digital economy.  It is a new product fully built on the most advanced in-memory platform today – SAP HANA – and with the modern SAP Fiori user experience designed to drive instant value across lines of business and industries with the ultimate sophistication: simplicity.

SAP S/4HANA is available with on-premise, cloud, and hybrid deployments to give real choice to customers.

The SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition is purchased via subscription and managed by SAP.

SAP S/4HANA delivers massive simplifications (customer adoption, data model, user experience, decision making, business processes, and models) and innovations (Internet of Things, Big Data, business networks, and mobile-first) to help enterprises across industries drive their digital transformation.

The SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition is designed for enterprises that need a standardized cloud offering primarily covering the core business scenarios of an enterprise or specific business scenarios of lines of business in industries – combined with a fast innovation cycle (quarterly).

In addition, the SAP S/4HANA cloud edition offers the opportunity for customers to deploy real hybrid scenarios – combining on-premise and cloud solutions – for unprecedented IT flexibility and accelerated business innovation.

Yes. SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition is available as announced at the SAPPHIRE NOW event in Orlando on May 6, 2015. The cloud edition is intended to offer a quarterly innovation cycle.

SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition already covers specific business scenarios for the marketing line of business and for the professional services industry as well as the most essential scenarios to run an entire enterprise in the cloud with a digital core including: finance, accounting, controlling, procurement, sales, manufacturing, plant maintenance, project system, and product lifecycle management, plus integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central, Ariba Network, SAP hybris Marketing, Field Glass and SAP JAM. Three offerings are currently available as part of the SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition:

The cloud edition is intended to offer a quarterly innovation cycle.

SAP S/4HANA, on-premise edition, supports current lines of business and industries. SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition, is planned to ultimately have a similar industry coverage as the on-premise edition. SAP S/4HANA cloud edition is open for all industries, Support of specific industry solutions are planend according to market prioritization.

A free 14-day cloud edition trial system is available to help you experience the value of simplicity across key business scenarios: project manager scenario, cash manager scenario, general ledger accountant scenario, accounts receivable accountant scenario, and accounts payable accountant scenario.

You can access the trial at:

SAP customers and partners can access the detailed roadmap on the SAP Service Marketplace: here.

Yes. The SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition has all the qualities of a public cloud offering.  Please note that the SAP S/4HANA, cloud enterprise edition provides additional services for customers that require broader extension and configuration capabilities.

We are leveraging the same infrastructure as a service (IaaS), data centers, and security qualities, though the lifecycle management is different. Innovation updates for the cloud edition are planned on a quarterly basis, to be consumed by the customer, and managed by SAP.

Yes. SAP S/4HANA gives customers the option to leverage the HANA multi-tenancy functionality as provided by the SAP HANA platform (currently support package 9). And I absolutely know that there are some purists out there who would say otherwise, get over it. And for the records, i agree to disagree with them, as the reality is hybrid, and different levels of multitennacy do absolutely make sense.

SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition does not replace our existing portfolio of line-of-business cloud solutions; it will integrate with and expand it. Our comprehensive offering is planned to allow SAP S/4HANA customers to build hybrid scenarios between SAP S/4HANA and cloud solutions from SAP, including those from SuccessFactors, Ariba, SAP hybris Marketing, Fieldglass and SAP JAM. This way customers can leverage the cloud at their own pace, based on their needs, while keeping all the integration and business benefits of their existing SAP solutions. In addition, SAP S/4HANA, cloud edition is designed to easily connect with global business networks such as Ariba and Concur.

Yes, this service is provided as SAP Rapid Deployment solutions with SAP S/4HANA and is delivered with prepackaged integration (for example integration between SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA).