Keeping SAP Systems Lean and Ready for Digital Transformation
Meet the Authors
As more companies move to cloud-based platforms, a key part of this shift is upgrading to SAP S/4HANA for better efficiency, agility, and insights. However, transitioning to an intelligent enterprise through the SAP RISE program requires careful planning in the preparation, migration, and run phases. During the migration to cloud-based environments, it is crucial to integrate only the most relevant and current data into SAP systems and a best practice to clean up and archive older transactional data before migrating to HANA. Data archiving helps organizations manage and reduce database size, lowering administration and hardware costs, which can significantly cut the total SAP landscape costs.
With tools like OpenText’s InfoArchive, businesses can ensure secure data lifecycle management and compliant access, making the transition to SAP S/4HANA smoother. OpenText InfoArchive offers a scalable cloud-based archiving solution that ensures compliance and efficient data retrieval. It minimizes productivity impacts often seen with other systems and is particularly effective for decommissioning applications. The process involves extracting data, analyzing legacy structures, configuring storage and access, archiving data, validating with a “chain of custody” report, and finally decommissioning the old application, all while maintaining data integrity, privacy, and compliance.
Case in Point
A global industrial machinery manufacturer leveraged SAP solutions to streamline operations and support its growth strategy by integrating products with maintenance, parts, and financing services. However, growing data volumes in their SAP systems led to inefficiencies, such as delayed reporting and costly storage. By archiving data, the company aimed to reduce storage costs, speed up development cycles, and enhance its ability to deliver new digital services.
The company chose OpenText Core Archive for SAP Solutions to archive and back up SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA data in the cloud, benefiting from high availability, disaster recovery, and reduced infrastructure costs. The solution’s seamless user experience and close compatibility with SAP systems played as key factors in their decision. With guidance from OpenText Professional Services and the Core Archive Migration to the Cloud FasTrak approach, the company successfully migrated its data in just six weeks, efficiently supporting their ongoing digital transformation.
The company reduced costs by archiving 20 TB of SAP data in the cloud using OpenText Core Archive, with a goal of cutting storage needs by 5 TB. This sped up CI/CD cycles by up to 70%, allowing faster digital product delivery. By moving legacy data to the cloud, the company accelerated business reporting and laid the groundwork for future innovations, such as potentially deploying OpenText Extended ECM for SAP Solutions to streamline document management and collaboration.
