Understanding the difference between HANA On-Premise and HANA Cloud edition becomes very important when it comes to buying a HANA digital core from the SAP. Both versions differ in terms of function, cost and even how they are managed throughout their life-cycle. Of course, there is no good-bad comparison, however, their fitment to customer’s requirement is vital to select one of the approaches.
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Let’s see how they differ:
Differentiator | On-Premise | Cloud Edition |
Hardware | It is commisioned and managed by SAP Customer. A customer is responsible for the hardware upgrade | It is commisioned and managed by SAP. Cloud provider is responsible for the hardware upgrade. |
Costing | Traditional License cost | Subscription-based cost. This may be a key differentiator for cost-sensitive customers because the subscription-based model may be appealing due to no one-time huge cost. |
Upgrades | As per Customer’s need | Automatic upgrades without Customer’s intervention. These upgrades are meant to be based on best practices, bug fixes, and industry standards. |
Customization | Flexible | Difficult to deviate from the Standard process |
Features | Bundled features come with the license | Features available as per the subscription |
Another key matrix is Compliance, Data Privacy, and Security. In a cloud-based system, separate HANA instances of the same system may be shared among different clients whereas, in On-Premise systems, there is no such issue may arise.
Hybrid Model
Apart from On-Premise and Cloud Editions, there is also an option of a Hybrid model where e.g. Customer can choose to keep data on their private servers as On-Premise model and Subscribe to Cloud services like Ariba or Fieldglass services.
