Dive Brief:
- EY and DXC joined the growing ranks of IT service providers offering engineering assistance to SAP customers migrating to S/4HANA cloud-based ERP systems Thursday. Both vendors rolled out new SAP service bundles as the clock ticks down toward the end of mainstream support for legacy SAP Enterprise Central Component ERP systems in 2027.
- EY launched a service to help SAP customers manage their ERP deployments across finance, payroll, human resources and other core functions, the company said in an announcement. The consulting firm also joined the SAP PartnerEdge ecosystem as a managed services provider with a focus on software and business processes.
- DXC bundled its SAP engineering expertise into a migration support and management service, the company said in a separate announcement. DXC Complete with SAP and Microsoft provides SAP customers with an ERP migration roadmap that can be completed in as little as one year, Keith Costello, global managing director and SAP lead for DXC consulting and engineering services, told CIO Dive.
Dive Insight:
SAP ramped up efforts to drive its business to cloud last year, investing more than $2 billion in an overhaul of its business that prioritized migrating customers from ECC on-premises ERP to S/4HANA.
ERP migrations can be a lengthy, arduous process, challenging engineering teams to cut away technical debt, reformat data and cultivate cloud management skills. EY and DXC are among a bevy of high-profile IT service providers that have rallied to help SAP customers make the move before mainstream support ends.
“The end-of-support deadline is driving a Y2K-like moment in the SAP ecosystem,” Costello said. “A lot of clients want to migrate finance first because the CFO cannot go to an auditor and say that next year they’re going to be on an unsupported version of SAP — that's an existential threat.”
Kyndryl built an SAP migration services practice around its own S/4HANA adoption, which began with the finance function last year. The IT services company rolled out an SAP cloud services suite after completing an 18-month migration that leveraged the RISE with SAP incentive program last month.
SAP is leaning on its channel partners to bring its ECC customers to cloud, particularly in the mid-market.
“We have a huge mid-market, where we can massively grow,” SAP CEO Christian Klein said last year, during a Q3 2024 earnings call. “We are expanding this highly profitable sales channel and pushing our future growth.”
DXC’s service bundle builds on SAP’s existing partnership with Microsoft to guide customers through the RISE program on Azure cloud infrastructure, which deployed globally in January. AWS announced a similar RISE with SAP partnership in December.
The EY partnership focuses on helping enterprises overcome post-migration hurdles to deliver a return on cloud ERP investments through leveraging SAP’s business suite and AI capabilities.
“Well-structured enterprise functions are critical to scaling and sustaining success, but without the right support, it can become a distraction from the strategic priorities that drive real value,” Raj Sharma, EY global managing partner, growth and innovation, said in the announcement.
