SAP EWM 9.6 becomes part of SAP S/4 SAP EWM included in the cloud

SAP is consistently pursuing its S/4 strategy and has announced fundamental changes for the second quarter of 2019 that will be relevant for upcoming SAP EWM projects. Specifically, SAP has announced that there will be no SAP EWM 9.6 release based on the previous SAP SCM platform; instead, SAP EWM 9.6 will be available exclusively as part of SAP S4/HANA technology. The release designation SAP EWM 9.6 will probably not exist in this form either, but will be "counted up" in the versioning of the S/4 environment from Q2/2019. SAP EWM (SAP Extended Warehouse Management) based on SAP S4/HANA will therefore offer a (complete) system solution that is practically the "heart" of digitally oriented companies. In this blog post, we will inform you about the status of the planned functional scope of the new SAP EWM cloud solution and the key benefits of SAP EWM, powered by SAP S4/HANA. At the same time, we provide initial tips on who should consider a timely migration and what options are available to make the changeover as easy and smooth as possible.

What stays, what comes?

As part of the SAP Supply Chain Management system (SAP SCM), SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM up to release 9.5) supports all logistics processes along the supply chain and is one of the most powerful standard software solutions worldwide. This will not change with the next SAP EWM release ("SAP EWM 9.6" or S/4 EWM). However, SAP will not operate the SAP SCM product line and the S/4 product line for EWM in parallel in the long term, but will only launch future releases as SAP S/4 EWM.

The two proven models "embedded" (for small to medium-sized warehouses) and "decentralized" (for medium-sized to sophisticated warehouses) will continue to be available as installation variants. The logical consequence of the S/4 EWM product line is that SAP EWM in S/4 will only be compatible with the HANA database (and no longer with "external" databases).

What are the additional benefits? How does SAP EWM work in the cloud?

In addition to the new EWM releases, users will benefit from the option of using SAP solutions from the cloud. Cloud-based solutions allow location-independent access to data and create the conditions for simplified, cross-company collaboration. This technology can also be used to merge information from a wide variety of sources, enabling innovation potential to be tapped. This means that SAP EWM can also be used in the cloud in future. This can be a sensible and economical alternative to the on-premise solution for small to medium-sized warehouses or sales branches (depots, etc.).

In addition, SAP EWM in the cloud will in all likelihood contain three adaptable warehouse types in which all relevant processes for inbound and outbound logistics are mapped. However, the functional scope of the SAP EWM cloud version is clearly reduced (compared to the on-premise solution) and is therefore more comparable to that of the "old" SAP WM (SAP Warehouse Management). In this respect, its use is particularly interesting for companies with a manageable process landscape that want to continue their SAP strategy but only need a small solution.

What are the key benefits of SAP S4/HANA?

But what makes SAP S4/HANA so interesting in general? The key advantage of this high-performance in-memory technology is that it enables enormous performance increases that cannot be achieved with conventional databases. Transactions are accelerated and huge amounts of data can be evaluated and analyzed in fractions of a second - with reduced memory requirements. Pre-aggregation is no longer necessary. SAP S/4HANA Enterprise Management therefore meets the key requirements of Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data and machine learning.

The warehouse management module SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) has been available in SAP S/4HANA as "Embedded EWM" since 2016. This replaces older SAP WM applications and the Logistics Execution Modules LE and LE-TRA, whose support from SAP will expire in 2027. This also opens up potential applications for inbound and outbound warehousing. SAP EWM powered by SAP S4/HANA can also be used to make targeted optimizations in supply chain execution. In 2019, SAP S4/HANA in the cloud will be expanded to include warehousing functionalities.

The key benefits of SAP S4/HANA are

• Support for applications in real time
• Detailed analyses of large amounts of data virtually at the touch of a button
• Mapping and simulation of complex business processes
• Simplified and reusable data model
• Fast reporting based on daily updated information

How to migrate to SAP S/4 EWM ("SAP EWM 9.6")?

If you want to migrate from a previous SAP EWM version (up to 9.5) to the new SAP S/4 EWM, you should first find out from SAP (or IGZ) which release requirements must be met for a secure migration. Incidentally, due to the technological leap (SCM to S/4), this release change to S/4 EWM can certainly be described as a migration project.

Even if SAP will provide several migration tools and wizards, a greater migration and testing effort is to be expected in any case compared to previous EWM release changes. With its tools for test automation (e.g. Autom. Rapid Validation) and its know-how, IGZ provides the right project support for a secure migration in any case.