Month: February 2021

We are excited to drive the adoption of S/4HANA and Cloud along with RISE for SAP and our partners.

“RISE with SAP” is a subscription offering that bundles software licenses, Infrastructure-as-a-Service from your hyperscaler of choice, Cloud Managed Services, and Application Managed Services. SAP leads with One Offer, One Contract, and Unmatched TCO as the benefits to the customer.

In our view, RISE is about SAP establishing itself in the ever-growing Cloud market and taking back control over customer adoption of the latest SAP feature sets. SAP customers who maintain their own systems usually and inevitably lag behind on updating their systems due to the high degree of complexity, especially when considering customizations.

SAP wants to change that, becoming more agile, and delivering continuous value to its customers via a Software-as-a-Service model. This is a fantastic goal for sure, but what happens to all of the custom code that has been self-written, paid for, working well, and is critical for the customer’s business operations? Quite often, some of our system integrator partners end up walking the customers down the greenfield or re-implementation path, which is sometimes a fit, but what if it isn’t? Successful transformation of any kind, including RISE with SAP, starts with proper analysis and expert level planning. smartShift strongly believes that our 20+ years of experience deep in the heart of code analysis, automated code remediation, and modernization should absolutely be a key component when considering the RISE with SAP offering.

What are the benefits of RISE with SAP for customers?

One of the main benefits of RISE is a clearer explanation of the path to S/4HANA and the cloud. The different S/4HANA editions provide customers flexibility with various extensibility concepts. Ultimately, businesses can run S/4HANA in the public cloud, and customizations can run decoupled on another instance, retaining past investments. Custom and standard code can coexist “side by side,” and communication will run via standardized (REST) interfaces.

This revolutionary approach has significant benefits for customers, allowing them to become more agile and innovate faster with a DevOps approach. This is a key competence of smartShift. We have been helping our customers to go down this path for quite some time now. We have built up an expert knowledge of the SAP Codebase, which is the backbone of our intelligent automation platform™ that we have built over the last 20 years. smartShift’s automation platform focuses on the customers’ strategic custom developments that they have implemented to differentiate from their competitors. Over the last few years, smartShift has systematically started working with our customers to identify their key business processes and prepare them for future cloud architecture.

While manual modernization approaches are very time consuming and often not feasible after all activities are known, an automated approach is highly supportive, repeatable, fast, and always delivers the same high quality. Algorithms can be used to determine which processes can be decoupled, whether they are used often, the frequency with which they are adapted, and how they fit into the new FIORI-supported architecture. Lengthy manual approaches that can take months while algorithmically done in hours! Models that visualize dependencies in graphs and identify interfaces to be generated as REST APIs allow fast, agile development. By doing so, not only is the customer code decoupled from the standard, but “services” can be generated depending on the business domain. This allows companies to reuse their existing software assets, resulting in huge cost and time savings for a migration project.

At smartShift, we are incredibly excited about the rejuvenated messaging from SAP to drive adoption for S/4HANA, cloud, and ongoing continuous modernization. We believe in the RISE for SAP program because we know that it will enhance the return on investment in both time and money spent on modernizing SAP systems. In fact, we have been successfully delivering smartSuite for SAP on Cloud by smartShift, a single-source bundled solution similar to RISE, for years! The solution has already proven successful for numerous customers, such as Nilfisk, a major supplier of professional cleaning equipment for industrial, commercial, and consumer markets. Last week, we posted a video about it that you can check out here.

What are the benefits of RISE with SAP for our system integrator partners?

In addition to our RISE-like bundle, smartShift automation for custom code modernization will fast-track RISE implementations for our partners. Leveraging our automation, SAP and its SI partners can complete transformations exponentially faster and with significantly less risk. For years, partners like DXC, Deloitte, IBM, and PWC have relied on smartShift’s automation and expertise to accelerate transformation programs for customers such as BMW, Airbus, Döhler, Procter & Gamble, and Sika, among others. smartShift’s Intelligent Automation Platform™ complements the RISE with SAP program to provide customers with:

1. Automated system analysis enabling rapid understanding of the entire custom code base accelerating planning & project delivery
2. Automated simplification of existing custom code through decommissioning of obsolete code, accelerating adoption of future releases, and simplifying upgrades to reduce cost and time significantly
3. Automated analysis to identify, repackage, containerize and transform custom code to SAP’s modern frameworks in RISE like RAP, CAP, Fiori as native SAP cloud code
4. Automated modernization of custom code to support all SAP projects, including S/4HANA, Security, Stability, M&A, and system consolidations

1. Speed: 4 weeks guaranteed
2. Quality: Error rates <0.1%
3. Issue Resolution: <2hrs

smartShift has been leading the way in providing automation to help customers realize SAP strategic initiatives on the journey to the Intelligent Enterprise via cloud adoption and S/4HANA transformation. As a global business partner to SAP, we are excited and expertly positioned to walk alongside the RISE program and help you fast track your business transformation. Stop running your SAP like you did ten years ago and evolve to RISE with SAP and Shine with smartShift. The time is now! Reach out to us for a technology-enabled data-driven analysis and planning to fast track your business transformation.

 

smartShift, known for its intelligent automation platform™ for SAP and Cloud digital transformations, announced today that the Company’s Board of Directors has appointed Derek Oats as Chief Executive Officer and Kendall Walker as Chief Financial Officer.

“At smartShift, we have developed turnkey solutions for our customers powered by our unique patented platform that automates the analysis and rewriting of software code from legacy architectures to the cloud. Derek and Kendall’s addition to the company will be a catalyst for driving results and accelerating growth, and we are thrilled to welcome them to our team,” said Vyom Gupta, Chief Operating Officer at smartShift

Derek will assume day-to-day leadership of the Company and be responsible for expanding the smartShift business globally. Derek has a successful track record of Global and American sales and leadership roles. He was recently the CEO of Americas for SNP, a leading software suite for data transformations. Prior to SNP, he was Global Vice President, Database and Data Management for SAP, the World’s Largest Provider of Enterprise Application Software.  He is naturally customer experience focused and solution minded and has held various leadership roles at top technology companies including Tata Consultancy Services, IBM, and Oracle.

“It is an honor to be named the new CEO of smartShift, a company that has a truly unique software automation platform that helps SAP customers take advantage of real S4 transformations and also migrate to the cloud.  I first became familiar smartShift back in 2014 just before I joined the SAP leadership team, within their Global Database and Technology division, on a direct referral into the company by Hasso Plattner.  I’ve kept my eye on smartShift ever since because I think it’s the best kept secret when it comes to digital transformation. Given the recent launch of the RISE WITH SAP program, I am very excited about the future at smartShift and delivering an unparalleled value to many customers,” said Derek.

Kendall is a seasoned finance expert with over twenty years of experience in investment companies, operations, legal, accounting, and finance. Previously, he served fourteen years as the CFO for a quantitative model-driven investment adviser, where he guided the firm from a start-up to a multi-billion dollar platform. He also spent several years working within this financial services audit practice of E&Y and is a CFA charter holder and a CPA.

“Companies have very complex IT environments and are more focused than ever before on reliable and seamless cloud operations. I am excited to join smartShift which has powerful technology to make such cloud transformations a reality for its clients,” said Kendall.

About smartShift
smartShift is cloud migration, technology optimization, and managed services partner to the world’s leading businesses. smartShift’s patented Intelligent Automation Platform™, reduces the risk, cost, and duration of complex IT transformations, enabling organizations to upgrade to next-generation cloud computing environments seamlessly. smartShift’s automation platform has been used in over 1,000 application modernization projects, analyzed, and converted over 2B lines of code.  smartShift has offices in the USA, Germany and India.  www.smartShift.com.

For more information, please contact:
Melissa Simon, Director of Marketing, smartShift
Phone:  630-320-9427, E-mail:  msimon@smartShift.com