SAP S/4HANA is an abbreviation of SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software package. Organizations use SAP S/4HANA to integrate and manage business functions – such as finance, human resources, procurement, sales, manufacturing and service – in real time. It natively integrates with line-of-business solutions from SAP SE. In addition to intelligent ERP functionality, the suite includes supplier relationship management (SRM), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), and product lifecycle management (PLM) functionality.
Generation 4 is the first SAP Business Suite to run only on the proprietary SAP HANA (High-Speed Analytical Appliance) database platform. SAP S/4HANA helps enterprises deliver mission-critical applications on a streamlined infrastructure with one OS, one database and one user interface. Streamlining allows IT teams to focus on service delivery rather than maintenance. SAP S/4HANA can also be a cost-effective option for organizations that seek to combine the analytical and transactional capabilities of different systems into a single source of truth for business decision-making.
SAP S/4HANA serves as the digital core for connecting enterprises with people, business networks, the Internet of things (IoT) and big data. It enables organizations to make business decisions informed by real-time insights, machine learning, IoT scenarios and predictive computing. SAP S/4HANA is deployable both on-premises and in the cloud. With tight integration between headquarters and subsidiaries, SAP S/4HANA lets companies run 2-tier ERP operations and also support multi-tier, extended enterprise environments. SAP recommends SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP HANA, and uses SUSE Linux as the underlying OS for its SAP Cloud Platform.