As they prepare their companies to thrive in the digital era, IT executives are transforming their own organizations and resources. To optimize application delivery and support business goals for speed, agility, and innovation, they are deploying new applications in a private or public cloud environment.

Existing applications are also coming under scrutiny, as IT leaders seek to enhance their long-time critical workloads with benefits such as automated scaling and ease of integration. Consider a complex, missioncritical ERP system such as SAP, the workhorse that supports operations for many enterprises. According to a recent Frost & Sullivan survey, 26% of US-based enterprises have deployed SAP’s modern, cloud-based S/4HANA system for at least some of their SAP workloads; another 44% say they plan to do so.

But simply deploying some workloads on a cloud platform is not sufficient to meet escalating business needs and competitive challenges. As they consider their far-reaching legacy ERP systems, IT leaders are challenged to determine where to invest for maximum return. Which workflows and applications should be moved first, and which should be left on-premises? Which workloads require refactoring, and which can remain in “legacy” mode? How can they reduce the management burden while still ensuring optimal performance and delivery? How can they ensure security and compliance requirements are met in a cloud environment?

For assistance, an increasing number of enterprises are turning to cloud managed services providers for their critical ERP workloads. A managed services provider will lead the migration effort, ensuring that data and applications are moved with minimal business disruption. The provider can enable you to optimize workloads and add efficiencies without necessarily doing a complete “rip and replace”; for example, integrating legacy SAP data with your new S/4HANA environment. And the right managed services provider will provide ongoing management of your environment, enabling your team to focus on strategic business initiatives.

Can your business benefit by engaging a cloud managed services provider for your SAP or Oracle workloads? Among businesses that have already migrated, 76% say cloud
managed services are an essential part of their IT strategy, and they cite benefits including cost reduction, greater flexibility and efficiency, improved speed to market, and increased security and compliance.

In this paper, we present results from a 2017 survey of enterprise IT decision-makers who utilize managed cloud services for their SAP or Oracle workloads. We show how
to start quantifying business benefits in your own company, as well as offer user tips on selecting the right managed cloud service provider.