With more than half of SAP customers still running on older ERP application sets, partners like Lemongrass are stepping up and leveraging the Rise with SAP software and services to help customers with their cloud migration and digital transformation projects.

SAP channel partner Lemongrass is expanding its services portfolio to help businesses and organizations migrate to the cloud with a new offering based on the Rise with SAP solution set.

Lemongrass, which has been providing SAP-related services since 2010, “soft-launched” the new Rise with SAP Advisory services earlier this year to select customers and formally debuted them this week, timed around this week’s SAP Sapphire event in Orlando.

The Lemongrass service launch comes as only about 40 percent of SAP customers, globally, have migrated to the company’s S/4HANA enterprise resource application suite and a majority remain on the older SAP Business Suite 7 application set (also referred to “ECC” for ERP Central Component). Maintenance support for the older software is scheduled to end in 2027.

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A recent survey conducted in North America by the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) found that 47 percent of its members were using S/4HANA or had begun the implementation process.

SAP “is very keen for customers to adopt S/4[HANA] for a variety of reasons and they’re trying to make it easier for customers to do that,” said Eamonn O’Neill, Lemongrass co-founder and CTO, in an interview with CRN. He said many SAP customers are trying to “understand the impact” of undertaking a migration and what are their options.

But with SAP developing some innovations – including new AI capabilities – only within its cloud software, O’Neill (pictured) said migration to the cloud is “an unstoppable train. To me it’s pretty obvious why. All the innovation is happening on the cloud. So getting your SAP system into the cloud is just the most obvious thing in the world to do.”

O’Neill said that while some organizations approach migrating to S/4HANA and the cloud as a more technical upgrade, many see it as a greenfield opportunity to change how they implement and use IT.

But moving to the cloud can be challenging because of big differences from on-premises computing, including financially (paying through subscription licenses, for example) and operationally, O’Neill said, and requires a lot of up-front readiness assessment services. “And that’s why we decided to launch these services to help customers get those questions answered.”

SAP launched Rise with SAP in January 2021 to help customers with cloud migration and digital transformation initiatives. Rise with SAP is built around SAP software and services, with S/4HANA Cloud and the SAP Business Technology Platform at its core, offered for a single subscription price. (Rise with SAP also includes business process intelligence and process management tools from SAP’s 2021 acquisition of Signavio.)

In his Sapphire keynote speech this week CEO Christian Klein announced that the company will now assign an enterprise architect to every new and existing Rise with SAP customer. He said Rise with SAP has been used by more than 6,000 customers.

SAP channel partners can work with Rise with SAP, either selling it as a packaged set of products and services or providing system implementation and migration services around it.

Lemongrass, headquartered in Atlanta, has worked with SAP since 2010, providing SAP solutions and a range of consulting, planning, migration and operational services. The company has more than 8,000 SAP servers and more than 400,000 SAP users under its management.

The new Lemongrass Rise with SAP Advisory services include strategic and advisory planning, S/4HANA readiness assessments, financial and operational planning, system architecture planning, and custom migration strategy and roadmap development.

“With the launch of our RISE with SAP Advisory offerings, Lemongrass affirms its commitment to delivering innovation through technology as well as offering strategic insights for our customers’ operational excellence,” said Lemongrass CEO Michael Rosenbloom, in a statement. “These added services, combined with the advisory experience of our team, help clients achieve a seamless and efficient transformation.”

Lemongrass said that through the earlier soft launch of the new services several enterprise customers have realized “substantial improvements in their operational capabilities and strategic alignment.” A global retail corporation, for example, utilized the Lemongrass advisory services to streamline its S/4HANA migration, reducing its operational costs by 40 percent and “significantly enhancing its data processing speeds,” according to a lemongrass press announcement.

In addition to the new advisory services, Lemongrass already provides a range of managed services that the company said “complement and support” Rise with SAP operations including migration services that use the solution provider’s proprietary migration technology and methodology, and operational services including Lemongrass Rise+, Lemongrass Rise Flex and Lemongrass Rise Wrapper.