SAP S/4HANA is an ERP business suite based on the SAP HANA in-memory database that allows companies to execute transactions and analyze business data in real time. The letter S in the name of SAP S/4HANA, which is the fourth version of SAP Business Suite after R/3, means "Simple", while the number "4" indicates that SAP is the fourth generation business software set. S/4HANA is designed to be easier to use and manage, while helping to solve more complex problems and process larger amounts of data than previous software suites. Available in on-premises, cloud and hybrid deployment models, with SAP strongly pushing its customers towards the cloud option.

What is SAP HANA?

SAP HANA is an in-memory columnar database designed to accelerate SAP applications and business processes, released in 2010. SAP HANA is now the primary way to run SAP Business Suite products. In-memory, on the other hand, is a column-oriented database. It simplified data structure and improved performance to increase user productivity, provide real-time visibility and leverage analytics. It was created so that companies can react to the most up-to-date data instead of static quarterly reports.

What is SAP S/4HANA?

To leverage the performance and data analytics capabilities of SAP HANA, SAP reconfigured SAP ECC in 2015 and created SAP S/4HANA. This brought with it a great advantage and a great disadvantage. S/4HANA can only run on SAP HANA, while SAP ECC can run on a third party database.

S/4HANA is designed to solve complex problems and manage larger amounts of data than ECC and R/3. With SAP Fiori, it provides a better user experience and transitions from transactional systems that record data to real-time data from internal and external sources. So why are some companies reluctant to switch to S/4HANA despite the advantages it provides? Due to the nature of some companies, they need to completely overhaul their existing business processes in order to switch to SAP S/4HANA, and they may not want to take on this workload.

What is the Difference Between SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA?

It is possible to explain the difference between SAP HANA and SAP S4/HANA in a single sentence. SAP S/4HANA is an ERP system like SAP ECC while SAP HANA is a database.

What is the business value of SAP S/4HANA for customers?

Written natively for the SAP HANA platform, SAP S/4HANA is a completely new generation SAP Business Suite characterized by attractive features such as simplifications, greatly increased efficiency, and options for planning and simulation in many traditional processes.

SAP S/4HANA signals a move from the transaction system that just records the data to provide end users with active decision support in real time based on data from both internal and external sources.

In SAP Business Suite in SAP HANA, customers already have the option to calculate business cases enabled by TCO savings and optimizations. These calculations apply equally to SAP S/4HANA. However, the simplifications created by SAP S/4HANA also bring other benefits that the business value calculator will consider, such as the use of new user interfaces, reduced data volume, greater flexibility and higher efficiency. Finance departments, for example, will benefit from more efficient shared services and accelerated financial close.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud

SAP released S/4HANA Cloud, a cloud-based version of S/4HANA, in March 2017. S/4HANA Cloud is best suited for large-scale organizations with 1,500 employees or more that may want to use a two-tier ERP system powered by a corporate entity's SAP ERP Central Component or a complete business suite such as S/4HANA. Such firms can deploy and implement S/4HANA Cloud at the divisional or subsidiary level. S/4 HANA Cloud includes next-generation technologies such as machine learning through a tool called SAP Clea and a speech-based digital assistant bot called CoPilot.

S/4HANA Cloud is a SaaS application with new versions released quarterly.