How to Choose Simple Over Complex Solutions with Cloud Versus SAP and Oracle

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Executive Summary

SAP and Oracle environments are very complex.
AWS, Google Cloud, and other cloud services have the potential of reducing this complexity.

Video Introduction: How to Choose Simple Over Complex Solutions with Cloud Versus SAP and Oracle

Text Introduction (Skip if You Watched the Video)

Something we find to be less discussed as a philosophical difference is the tendency to choose complexity. SAP and Oracle tend towards making things complex, which (in part) explains the high TCO of SAP and Oracle installations. Several years ago, SAP tried to trick customers that the term simple was an accurate description of SAP environments with their Run Simple marketing campaign. This is a topic we covered in the article Is SAP’s “Running Simple” Real? There was nothing beyond marketing to the Run Simple program, and the topic of how complex environments lock in customers is not something software vendors like to talk about, at least in public. You will learn how cloud services can simplify complex on premises environments.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem.
Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers.

How AWS and Google Cloud Contrasts to Run Simple

AWS and Google Cloud tend towards simpler approaches. The topic of Google’s focus on simpler approaches is explained here by Google.

“Google’s network hardware is controlled in several ways. As discussed earlier, we use an OpenFlow-based software-defined network. Instead of using “smart” routing hardware, we rely on less expensive “dumb” switching components in combination with a central (duplicated) controller that precomputes best paths across the network. Therefore, we’re able to move compute-expensive routing decisions away from the routers and use simple switching hardware.”

This quotation of how Google works goes back to 2006.

“This growth is driven by an abundance of scalable technology. As Google noted in its most recent annual report filing with the SEC: “Our business relies on our software and hardware infrastructure, which provides substantial computing resources at low cost. We currently use a combination of off-the-shelf and custom software running on clusters of commodity computers. Our considerable investment in developing this infrastructure has produced several key benefits. It simplifies the storage and processing of large amounts of data, eases the deployment and operation of large-scale global products and services, and automates much of the administration of large-scale clusters of computers.”

Google buys, rather than leases, computer equipment for maximum control over its infrastructure. Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt defended that strategy in a May 31 call with financial analysts. “We believe we get tremendous competitive advantage by essentially building our own infrastructures,” he said.

Google does more than simply buy lots of PC-class servers and stuff them in racks, Schmidt said: “We’re really building what we think of internally as supercomputers.”

Because Google operates at such an extreme scale, it’s a system worth studying, particularly if your organization is pursuing or evaluating the grid computing strategy, in which high-end computing tasks are performed by many low-cost computers working in tandem.”

Less Discussed Items

We find it to be less discussed as a philosophical difference is the tendency to choose complexity. SAP and Oracle tend towards making things complex, which (in part) explains the high TCO of SAP and Oracle installations. Several years ago, SAP tried to dispel this accurate description of SAP environments with their Run Simple marketing campaign, which we covered in the article Is SAP’s “Running Simple” Real? The issue? There was nothing beyond marketing to the Run Simple program.

Conversely, AWS and Google Cloud tend towards simpler approaches. The topic of Google’s focus on simpler approaches is explained here by Google.

“Google’s network hardware is controlled in several ways. As discussed earlier, we use an OpenFlow-based software-defined network. Instead of using “smart” routing hardware, we rely on less expensive “dumb” switching components in combination with a central (duplicated) controller that precomputes the best paths across the network. Therefore, we’re able to move compute-expensive routing decisions away from the routers and use simple switching hardware.”

This quotation of how Google works go back to 2006.

“This growth is driven by an abundance of scalable technology. As Google noted in its most recent annual report filing with the SEC: “Our business relies on our software and hardware infrastructure, which provides substantial computing resources at low cost. We currently use a combination of off-the-shelf and custom software running on clusters of commodity computers. Our considerable investment in developing this infrastructure has produced several key benefits. It simplifies the storage and processing of large amounts of data, eases the deployment and operation of large-scale global products and services, and automates much of the administration of large-scale clusters of computers.”

Google buys, rather than leases, computer equipment for maximum control over its infrastructure. Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt defended that strategy in a May 31 call with financial analysts. “We believe we get tremendous competitive advantage by essentially building our own infrastructures,” he said.

Google does more than simply buy lots of PC-class servers and stuff them in racks, Schmidt said: “We’re really building what we think of internally as supercomputers.”

Because Google operates at such an extreme scale, it’s a system worth studying, particularly if your organization is pursuing or evaluating the grid computing strategy, in which high-end computing tasks are performed by many low-cost computers working in tandem.”

AWS and Google as Successful Test Cases

In essence, Amazon and Google were two enormously successful implementations or test cases for approaches that rejected proprietary software and hardware, which happens to be the bread and butter of SAP and Oracle. Naturally, SAP and Oracle and HP, Dell, and Fujitsu would prefer not to talk about AWS’s and Google’s success with their homegrown hardware model.

SAP and Oracle, and the rest would have said that Amazon and Google could not have done what they did. They would have come up with a litany of reasons that what they accomplished was impossible. All of this would have fit very nicely in the conventional wisdom at the time. All of these reasons would have pushed Amazon and Google to become customers of the traditional proprietary model. However, Amazon and Google accomplished what they set out to do, and they legitimized their mold breaking approaches because of their success. Therefore the only response available from the promoters of conventional wisdom on enterprise software is to avert their eyes.

After AWS and Google Cloud mastered these capabilities internally, they opened up their internal capabilities. They offered the world a different way of doing things through what amounts to opening their infrastructure and innovative software to customers as a service.

This is stated as much by Google.

“Because of the size and scale of these services, Google has put a lot of work into optimizing its infrastructure and creating a suite of tools and services to manage it effectively. Google Cloud Platform puts this infrastructure and these management resources at your fingertips.”

The Rapid Rate of Change

This rapid rate of change is causing previous assumptions to be challenged. IT directors and CIOs that previously were tied up just managing on-premises environments must now consider how to and whether they should leverage the cloud for their companies.

That is where we wanted this book to come in.

This book is written to help people without much time to study the subject to get up to speed on the options that are out there. We combined three different authors with different exposures to AWS, Google Cloud, SAP, and Oracle for this goal. The primary author of the book is Shaun Snapp, a long-term SAP consultant and SAP researcher. Shaun combined with Ahmed Azim, an experienced technical resource in the development, Oracle, SAP, and AWS migration, and Mark Dalton, the CEO of Autodeploy, a company the migrates Oracle JDE customers to the cloud among other cloud deployments. We also used several technical reviewers, including Denis Myagkov, who has many years of experience in SAP programming and infrastructure. Therefore, this book is based upon both first-hand experiences and research. Many areas of this book overlapped with many years of Brightwork Research & Analysis’ research. Hence, there are numerous links to the Brightwork Research & Analysis website to substantiate assertions that would be far too expansive to include in the book.

We brought a combination of SAP, Oracle, AWS, and Google Cloud experience to bear on the question of how to best leverage the cloud for SAP and Oracle environments.

How AWS and Google Cloud Choose Simple Over Complex

AWS and Google Cloud tend towards simpler approaches. The topic of Google’s focus on simpler approaches is explained here by Google.

“Google’s network hardware is controlled in several ways. As discussed earlier, we use an OpenFlow-based software-defined network. Instead of using “smart” routing hardware, we rely on less expensive “dumb” switching components in combination with a central (duplicated) controller that precomputes best paths across the network. Therefore, we’re able to move compute-expensive routing decisions away from the routers and use simple switching hardware.”

This quotation of how Google works go back to 2006.

“This growth is driven by an abundance of scalable technology. As Google noted in its most recent annual report filing with the SEC: “Our business relies on our software and hardware infrastructure, which provides substantial computing resources at low cost. We currently use a combination of off-the-shelf and custom software running on clusters of commodity computers. Our considerable investment in developing this infrastructure has produced several key benefits. It simplifies the storage and processing of large amounts of data, eases the deployment and operation of large-scale global products and services, and automates much of the administration of large-scale clusters of computers.”

Buying Versus Leasing

Google buys, rather than leases, computer equipment for maximum control over its infrastructure. Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt defended that strategy in a May 31 call with financial analysts.

“We believe we get tremendous competitive advantage by essentially building our own infrastructures,”

He said.

Google does more than buy lots of PC-class servers and stuff them in racks. Schmidt said: “We’re really building what we think of internally as supercomputers.”

Building a Giant Computer

Here is where you can see that Google realizes its overall data center is a “giant computer.” The following is an obvious conclusion from understanding Google.

“Because Google operates at such an extreme scale, it’s a system worth studying, particularly if your organization is pursuing or evaluating the grid computing strategy, in which high-end computing tasks are performed by many low-cost computers working in tandem.”

In fact, some of the best research on server management comes from Google, which is continually analyzing its server performance. On the other hand, the performance in on-premises proprietary servers installed at buyers is very much shrouded in mystery.

What Amazon and Google Have Meant for Computer Hardware

In essence, Amazon and Google were two enormously successful implementations or test cases for approaches that rejected proprietary software and hardware. Naturally, SAP and Oracle and HP, Dell, and Lenovo would prefer not to talk about AWS’s and Google’s success with their homegrown/commodity hardware model.

Amazon and Google were told, when they made these decisions, that they could not have done what they did, just as the proponents of Linux were told that some “toy” open source operating systems like Linux would never be capable of managing “enterprise workloads.” They would have come up with a litany of reasons that what they accomplished was impossible. All of these reasons would have pushed Amazon and Google to become customers of the traditional proprietary model. However, Amazon and Google accomplished what they set out to do, and they legitimized their mold-breaking approaches because of their success. Therefore the only response available from the promoters of conventional wisdom on enterprise software is to avert their eyes.

Stage 2 for Google and AWS: Opening Their Low-Cost Infrastructure as its Own Business

This is stated as much by Google.

“Because of the size and scale of these services, Google has put a lot of work into optimizing its infrastructure and creating a suite of tools and services to manage it effectively. Google Cloud Platform puts this infrastructure and these management resources at your fingertips.”

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Conclusion

All three of the authors agree that AWS and Google Cloud are “shaking the tree” of IT and that there are so many areas of opportunity for Oracle and SAP customers to leverage. In our collective view, the most significant limitation in leveraging AWS for Oracle and SAP customers understands what is available combined with how AWS can change the way companies with on-premises experience have been doing things. It has been pointed out previously that incorporating the cloud into your IT environment is about gaining additional domain expertise and adopting a new way of thinking. One example of this is leveraging “serverless” or self-configured server computing (we place the word “serverless” in quotation marks in the book because it’s not an accurate term for describing what occurs as, of course, a server is still used). We think it should be called “auto-configured services computing.” When “serverless” is accessed, it means that the old paradigm of accepting specific batch job times based upon semi-static hardware is virtually gone. “Serverless” is particularly beneficial when the load is difficult to estimate. With things like “serverless,” it means that the assumptions have changed.

Google and Amazon became experts at making hyperscale data centers in a way that the proprietary on-premises server vendors never did. HP and Dell never managed such data centers with their hardware. Rather they sold their hardware for others to implement. And this is an important distinction because, over time, Google and Amazon gained domain expertise in managing hyperscale server environments that hardware vendors never did. Moreover, while Google and AWS are not ahead of the proprietary on-premises vendors concerning the individual server, they are far ahead in managing data centers or how large numbers of servers become, in essence, a giant computer. Google did this to focus on engineering and running internal efficiency, which supported a great product without ever having to satisfy enterprise software customers.