SAP Cloud: How to Manage Identities and Authorizations Correctly

Background

SAP’s transition from S/4HANA to the Public Cloud (now called SAP Cloud ERP) isn’t just a technical upgrade; it’s a broad transformation of the entire business and platform landscape. One area at the heart of this shift is Identity and Access Management (IAM), which plays a crucial role in security, compliance, and streamlined processes.

For companies still relying on SAP IdM, the need for a future-proof IAM strategy is becoming increasingly urgent. But the transition affects all SAP customers. Once you step into the (public) cloud, a solid understanding of IAM structures, authorization models, and provisioning mechanisms becomes essential. This applies to security and compliance requirements just as much as to efficient user lifecycle management and the implementation of Need-to-Know principles now demanded by many regulations.

SAP is evolving into a cloud platform where a broad range of SAP cloud applications are operated, integrated and managed. With that, the way identities and permissions are handled is changing fundamentally. SAP’s answer to this new architecture is Cloud Identity Services (CIS), a modular IAM toolkit made up of:

• Identity Directory Service (IdDS)

• Identity Authentication Service (IAS)

• Identity Provisioning Service (IPS)

• Authorization Management Service (AMS)

• Identity Access Governance (IAG)

These modules can be combined flexibly, enabling a wide range of IAM architectures – from simple setups to complex multi-tenant environments with several SAP Cloud ERP instances. And this is exactly where the key questions begin:

• Which infrastructure options are available, and how do they differ?

• How can identities and authorizations truly be managed centrally?

• What’s the right way to connect multiple cloud ERP systems?

• And what role do IAS, IPS, AMS, and IAG play?

Webinar Focus and Audience

IAM covers a broad field, spanning Identity Governance & Administration (IGA), Access Management (Identity Providers for SSO/MFA), and Privileged Access Management (PAM). This webinar focuses primarily on the upstream, centralized management of identities and authorizations in the SAP cloud landscape and on the role an IGA system can play in that context.

You will get a clear, structured overview of:

• The core infrastructure variants enabled through CIS

• The technical interfaces for the integration of SAP Cloud ERP

• Options for centralizing identities and authorizations

This webinar is designed for anyone making strategic decisions in the SAP ecosystem who wants to understand which IAM architectures will truly stand the test of time – and which pitfalls to avoid on the journey to SAP Cloud.