SAP in private or public cloud from Dakar: what to look at.

Let us briefly recall what we are talking about. GROW with SAP designates the path to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition: shared software, identical for every customer, operated and updated by SAP at the pace SAP decides. RISE with SAP mainly covers the private edition: a dedicated instance, operated by the vendor on a cloud infrastructure, with real configuration latitude and the option of converting the existing system. On-premise, finally, has not disappeared: you own the system, you host it wherever you want, you are fully accountable for it. Three models, which presentations describe as three stages of the same journey. They are rather three different distributions of power and responsibility between you and your vendor.

What each model gives, and what it takes away

The public edition imposes the standard. Your processes align with those of the software, your extensions live outside the core, and version upgrades arrive when the vendor releases them. In exchange for this loss of control, you receive discipline: nobody in your company can dig into the core of the system any more. The drift of custom developments, the one that made so many ECC systems impossible to evolve, becomes structurally impossible. For an SME or a subsidiary whose processes are close to the standard, it is an accelerator.

The private edition offers the opposite. It welcomes your existing system, its custom developments to a large extent, its history. Continuity is real, and so is room for manoeuvre. But discipline no longer comes with the subscription: it is up to you to build it, through explicit architecture governance. We have devoted a viewpoint to this question of the clean core.

On-premise takes nothing away and gives nothing. Total freedom of architecture, schedule and hosting; total responsibility for operations, security and durability over time. In the sub-region, it keeps serious supporters, for reasons of sovereignty or connectivity. But that responsibility must be assumed by teams sized and trained for it.

A cloud offering cannot be read in its brochure. It is read in what it leaves you the right to do, in what it forces you to become, and in what happens the day the connection drops.

Five things to look at from Dakar

To the classic questions (who operates what, what is reversible, what becomes of custom developments), the West African buyer must add five. None is technical in the narrow sense; all weigh on cost and risk.

• Latency and link quality. The nearest cloud regions of the major hyperscalers are not in Senegal. Every transaction therefore makes a round trip to Europe, South Africa or further. For finance or procurement, that is bearable. For a warehouse, a till or a loading dock, it must be measured before signing. Demand latency tests from your real sites, on your real links, at peak hours.
• Data location and Law No. 2008-12. The personal data of your customers, employees and suppliers falls under Senegal’s law on the protection of personal data and under the Commission de protection des données personnelles (CDP). Hosting outside the territory involves formalities and a contractual framework. It is not an obstacle to the cloud, it is a condition to be worked through with your legal counsel, before the choice, not after. The other UEMOA States have their own authorities and their own rules: a regional group handles them country by country.
• Total cost in foreign currency. A cloud subscription is paid every month, often in euros or dollars, for the whole life of the contract. An on-premise server is paid once, then in maintenance and energy, largely in CFA francs. Since the CFA franc is at fixed parity with the euro, exchange-rate risk vis-à-vis Europe is contained; it is not vis-à-vis the dollar. Simulate the full cost over the life of the contract, with your volumes going up as well as down, and in the currency of the contract.
• Dependency on the operator and the vendor. In the public edition, you depend on SAP for everything, including the update schedule. In private cloud, you depend on SAP and on a hyperscaler. In both cases, you depend on one or two international link operators. Ask for the responsibility matrix line by line, the availability commitments, and above all what happens in the event of a prolonged outage: degraded mode, recovery, priorities.
• Hybrid, without making it a religion. Many groups in the sub-region will end up with a mixed landscape: the core business system in private cloud, a subsidiary on the public edition, an industrial site keeping a local component to run without a link. That is a legitimate architecture, provided it is designed, with its flows, its master data and its governance. A hybrid you drift into is merely a collection of systems.

The right choice is an attribute of your situation

We are often asked which of these offerings is the best. The question is badly put. A company with processes close to the standard, or willing to constrain itself to it, will find a fast route in the public edition. A group with a long history, with specific SYSCOHADA and tax localisations, will argue for the private edition, provided governance follows. An activity that must run without a link, or whose data cannot leave the country, will keep a local component. The choice follows from the state of your processes, the weight of custom developments, your real connectivity, your regulatory constraints and your in-house skills. These are the very dimensions we detail regarding the 2027 deadline, because the two decisions are one: the operating model is chosen at the same time as the trajectory, not afterwards.

That is what our SAP · S/4HANA & ERP scoping delivers: an assessment of the existing landscape, scenarios compared in full costs and in foreign currency, and a recommended operating model argued on your data. The integration and hosting landscape, often the great forgotten item of these comparisons, is the subject of our cloud offering. Compliance with Law No. 2008-12 is worked through with our IT security & risk offering.

One last word. When we recommend a model, it is because it follows from your existing landscape and your trajectory; we write it down, and we stand behind it in front of you. That is the value of an opinion that seeks to convince only through its arguments.