With the rise in SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) adoption to drive innovation, managing cloud costs effectively has become more important than ever. Running SAP BTP on public clouds such as AWS and Azure offers scalability and flexibility, but without cost-optimisation strategies, expenses can escalate quickly.
In this article, we explore practical tips and best practices to optimise your SAP Business Technology Platform costs on AWS and Azure, helping your organisation gain the most value from the cloud.
Understanding SAP BTP on AWS and Azure
SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering that brings together database management, analytics, application development, and intelligent technologies. While both AWS and Azure provide the infrastructure and managed services required to host SAP BTP environments, their pricing models and approaches to resource management differ significantly.
Why Cost Optimisation Matters
Cloud costs can quickly escalate due to:
- Over-provisioned resources
- Unused or underutilised services
- Inefficient scaling policies
- Lack of monitoring and alerting
Cost optimisation ensures your SAP landscape remains both high-performing and cost-effective, allowing you to maximise value without overspending.
Key Cost Optimisation Strategies
- Right-Size Your Compute Resources
- AWS: Make use of EC2 instance sizing tools and implement AWS Auto Scaling groups with SAP BTP to dynamically adjust capacity based on demand.
- Azure: Leverage Azure VM sizing recommendations and scale sets to align resources with your workload requirements.
Tip: Regularly analyse workload patterns and select instance types that reflect actual usage.
- Use Reserved and Spot Instances
Both AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Azure (Microsoft’s Cloud) offer significant cost savings when you plan your virtual machine (VM) usage effectively:
- By committing to use a VM for one or three years, you can unlock substantial discounts – ideal for predictable, long-term workloads such as production servers running 24/7.
- Azure: Azure Reserved VM Instances and Spot VMs can help reduce costs significantly.
- AWS: Reserved Instances and Spot Instances can offer savings of up to 70–90%.
Tip: Use these for predictable workloads and non-critical batch jobs.
- Optimise Storage Costs
Cloud storage can become costly if infrequently accessed or unused data remains in high-cost tiers. To reduce unnecessary expenses, consider the following strategies:
- Archive or delete unused data: Regularly clean up old backups, logs, and files that are no longer required.
- Use lower-cost storage tiers: Move infrequently accessed data to more economical storage options offered by cloud providers.
- AWS: Leverage S3 Intelligent-Tiering, which automatically moves data between storage tiers based on access patterns.
- Azure: Implement Blob Storage lifecycle management to automatically transition blobs to Cool or Archive tiers based on rules; and delete them after a defined period if no longer needed.
Tip: Set up automated policies to manage data lifecycle and avoid manual oversight.
- Leverage Managed Services Efficiently
Both AWS and Azure provide managed services integrated with SAP BTP, such as databases and analytics tools. Managed services reduce operational overhead but be mindful of overprovisioning.
- Monitor, Analyse, and Alert
- Use AWS Cost Explorer and Azure Cost Management + Billing to track and analyse spending.
- Set up alerts for cost thresholds.
- Use SAP BTP’s built-in monitoring tools to understand resource utilisation.
- Automate Start/Stop of Non-Production Environments
Non-production environments – such as development and testing – can be scheduled to shut down during off-hours to reduce costs.
At On Device Solutions, we specialise in helping organisations get the most out of their SAP landscapes. Our team of SAP consultants works closely with key stakeholders to align our clients’ business priorities, IT architecture, and project-specific needs. We can help you implement cost-effective, scalable solutions tailored to your environment.
Learn how our Architecture as a Service offering can support a smarter SAP Business Technology Platform deployment or contact us here to learn how we can support your cloud cost optimisation journey and unlock greater value from your SAP investment.
