SAP’s HANA innovation has brought in a discussion wave around the SAP customers and users. This blog will help us understand why it is high time to migrate to SAP BW/4HANA.
Definition of BW 7.5 on HANA and BW/4 HANA
SAP BW 7.5 on HANA is a BW system running on an SAP HANA database.
SAP BW/4HANA is a re-engineered application suite designed to harness the full power of the HANA database. The BW/4HANA is a new data warehouse solution. It is not an upgrade of BW 7.5.
Why is BW4HANA preferred?
Deployment
Flexible deployment as an on-premises or cloud or hybrid system.
Business Content
Rich predefined data models enable quick implementation and easy customization for all application modules (extractors, data models, data flows, standard reports).
Modelling
Supports BW modelling and SQL-driven approach in a single interface. Native integration of factory calendar(s) -Transfer and use factor calendar from connected SAP ECC/S4HANA system & Centralized factor calendar used across all modules.
Dynamic Tiering
Classifying data storage by having critical data in-memory and less frequently accessed data in the data lake.
Centralized data
Transfer and use of master data attribute without any complex transformation from connected SAP ECC/S4HANA system.
Performance
High processing performance through the power of SAP HANA: Multi-model, hybrid transaction, and analytics processing in real-time.
Security
Tight integration with SAP ILM to delete sensitive data after the end purpose.
UOM/Currency
Transfer and use of exchange rates from connected ECC/S4HANA, UOM Conversion rates at global/Material level from connected ECC/S4HANA, Centralized framework for UOM/Currency conversion which can be utilized directly at report runtime or during data flow transformation.
Why do I have to migrate now?
BW/4 HANA is not something new, it has been in the market since 2016, and many customers have started adapting and benefiting from it. The BW/4 HANA 2.0 is a more stable version. SAP offers migration paths to get to BW/4 HANA.
Please find below the links related to the product availability matrix of BW/4 HANA 2.0 and information on all the innovations happening:
- https://help.sap.com/viewer/product/SAP_BW4HANA/2.0.8/en-US
- https://support.sap.com/content/dam/launchpad/en_us/pam/pam essentials/TIP/BW4HANAPAM.pdf
The SAP support maintenance for SAP BW 7.5 is only till 2024, which means we have only three years to migrate. A typical migration project takes about three months ideally. If we start provisioning, licensing, upgrade, testing, validation, the project duration can go up to one year depending on the chosen upgrade mode and methodology. That means we must begin to migrate latest by 2023. So, we have a maximum of two years left now. To take full benefit of BW/4 HANA features, many other developments can be done, which might take another six months to one year up to user testing. This stresses the point that it’s high time to start migrating now.
Any new feature, performance tuning, and innovation will come in BW/4 HANA and not BW 7.5. So, migrating to BW/4 HANA is the ideal choice. It is the right time as the product has stabilized, and many customers are going to BW/4 HANA confidently.
BW/4 HANA is in line with the infrastructure roadmap of being cloud-friendly. In line with the analytic roadmap, the best way to use the data faster and better.
Hence, migrating to SAP BW/4HANA would be the best choice for customers who need real-time/cloud data efficiency and a very high-performance data warehouse with the continuous support of future upgrades/innovations from SAP.
Learn more about Visual BI Solutions SAP BW Services offerings here. To read other blogs related to BW4HANA, click here.
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