In this blog, we explore the RISE with SAP journey, and how you can optimise your systems to facilitate a smooth transition to the Cloud. RISE with SAP offers a compelling promise: a modern, simplified path to the cloud that will boost agility, assist with driving innovation, and help organisations future-proof their SAP investments. For many organisations, however, that journey can be more turbulent than expected; especially if their SAP landscape is ‘weighed’ down by years of accumulated data and custom developments.
SAP has changed the terminology around some of its core solutions; RISE with SAP no longer refers to the target system of SAP's Private Cloud. RISE with SAP is now the journey which existing SAP clients are taking to move to SAP Business Suite, which could be either Private or Public.
In this blog, we explore the RISE with SAP journey, and how you can optimise your systems to facilitate a smooth transition to the cloud.
RISE with SAP offers a compelling promise: a modern, simplified path to the cloud that will boost agility, assist with driving innovation, and help organisations future-proof their SAP investments. For many organisations, however, that journey can be more turbulent than expected; especially if their SAP landscape is ‘weighed’ down by years of accumulated data and custom developments.
We’ve guided many organisations through SAP transformation projects, and one truth has stood out: the ‘lighter’ and ‘cleaner’ your SAP system is before migration, the smoother and more cost-effective your RISE journey will be. Simply put: success depends just as much on what you leave behind as what you take with you.
Here are four reasons your SAP landscape may be too ‘heavy’ to RISE, and what you can do to address each challenge:
1. Excessive data in Production and non-production systems
The challenge:
SAP systems naturally accumulate data over time, much of which may be outdated, unused, or no longer relevant. While it might not seem urgent to clean it up, this historical data can inflate the size of your HANA database, slow down your migration and increase hyperscaler costs once in the cloud:
- Increased HANA database size: You’ll be paying premium prices to store and process data that no longer adds value to your organisation.
- Higher cloud costs: Hyperscaler pricing is based on appliance size and utilisation. More data means more storage, which leads to higher operational expenses.
- Slower migration timeline: Transferring large datasets can delay your project.
- Inefficient testing environments: Non-production systems often hold full data copies, leading to a bloated development and QA landscape.
What you can do:
- Run a data analysis on all SAP systems to understand how much data you’re dealing with.
- Implement a strategic archiving plan to retain only the data you need for compliance and reporting.
- Trim your non-production systems by deleting redundant data or masking sensitive information.
2. Privacy compliance is keeping you on the ground
The challenge:
With data privacy regulations like GDPR, POPIA and PDPL, failing to control Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in non-production systems can put your organisation at risk.
- Compliance breaches: Many organisations unknowingly carry unmasked PII into development, QA, or training environments.
- Security vulnerabilities: More copies of PII equals a higher risk for a breach.
- Project delays: Addressing privacy issues mid-project can derail your project timelines.
- The ever-looming GDPR fines…
What you can do:
Ask yourself the following questions: What PII exists in your Production systems? And how are you managing risk in your non-production environments?
Then take action:
- The first step is to identify and classify PII across your SAP landscape. This isn’t so easy, as the SAP data model can be complex. The same information is stored in multiple tables. Learn more about how EPI-USE Labs can support your discovery here: https://www.epiuselabs.com/sap-data-privacy-assessment-service
- Adopt strong data governance policies for how personal data is copied, accessed, and retained.
- Apply data masking or anonymisation techniques in non-production environments.
- Create smaller data subsets for test systems instead of full data copies.
3. Custom code and unknown dependencies
The challenge:
Over the years, many SAP landscapes become cluttered with custom code, much of it undocumented or unused. As SAP’s strategy includes a clean core, businesses need to consider how they can change their own way of working and adopt the clean core mindset.
- Incompatibility with S/4HANA: Legacy code often won’t work out of the box on the new platform.
- More complexity and higher costs: Analysing, remediating, or retiring code takes time and expertise.
- Performance issues and security gaps: Inefficient or outdated code can slow your system or expose it to risk.
- Barriers to innovation: A bloated custom landscape makes it harder to adopt SAP standard functionality or innovate effectively on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).
What you can do:
- Conduct a custom code analysis to see what’s in use, what’s redundant, and what needs remediation.
- Categorise your code:
- Retire what’s no longer needed.
- Remediate what’s critical but incompatible.
- Rebuild what’s essential in a compliant way.
- Adopt a “clean core” strategy and keep future customisations modular using SAP’s extension frameworks.
- Establish governance for new code going forward.
- Leverage our BTP services to build your new use cases in SAP BTP instead of in the core application (link BTP)
4. Strengthen your security and access controls
The challenge:
Moving to SAP ERP Cloud transfers infrastructure responsibility to SAP, but your internal controls stay top priority. Weak authorisations or outdated access roles can create risks post-migration.
- Increased vulnerability: Privileged users with excessive access can create compliance or audit challenges.
- Failed audits or breaches: Unchecked roles and obsolete users often go unnoticed until it’s too late.
- Delayed go-lives: Security gaps can delay your cutover or result in rollbacks during testing.
What you can do:
- Perform a GRC readiness review before migration. Dudley Cartwright from our partner Soterion says:
"S/4HANA stands for Governance four times harder. So it is preferable to get your roles in order before your migration process.”
- Clean up your authorisations and roles: Remove outdated users, segregate duties, and enforce least privilege.
- Review privileged access controls to ensure oversight is in place before you move to RISE.
Ready to ‘RISE’ to the occasion?
Every successful cloud transformation starts with a data-driven assessment of your current landscape. If you don’t lighten the load by reducing data, improving data privacy, cleaning up code, and tightening security, you risk a longer, more expensive, and risk-prone journey.
The good news? You don’t have to do it alone. We'll help you evaluate all four areas and create a roadmap for a leaner, safer, and more successful migration.