If you rely on the SAP R3 ERP suite to run your business, it’s important to know that in several years SAP will be phasing out support for older versions of the SAP system in favor of supporting SAP S/4HANA ERP. While SAP S/4HANA ERP won’t be necessary to upgrade your system to until 2027, that doesn’t mean that you should wait until the last minute to upgrade. After all, data migration can be a time-consuming process and poses a risk for your data management if done hastily. As such, if you have the database migration option to migrate to 4HANA sooner than later, it can make sense to start your migration process earlier.
Once you’ve decided that you want to begin your SAP migration, you’ll need to come up with a plan in order to get your data from the source system onto the cloud. There are a variety of best practices to follow when handling any data migration, and switching to SAP HANA is one such migration project that needs to be handled in the proper way. Read on to learn more about what to know about SAP migration as you consider switching your source system from SAP R3 ERP to SAP HANA.
What are the benefits of upgrading to SAP HANA early?
With 2021 right around the corner, you may feel like you have a lot of time to wait before you upgrade to SAP HANA. That being said, when you consider that the SAP migration and onboarding process to a new SAP instance can take upwards of a year depending on the size of your company, it’s clear to see why getting started sooner than later could be advantageous to your business. Especially if you’re the software update manager in your company’s IT services department, you may need to get the conversation started with higher-ups in the C suite even earlier in order to get the ball rolling and complete your SAP advanced data migration in time.
Of course, aside from timing considerations, there are benefits to upgrading to a newer instance of HANA early, too. After all, if you want to use the latest and most up-to-date SAP applications and features, you’ll want to consider the SAP database migration option that gets you started sooner than later. There are a lot of ways that your business’ efficiency and productivity can be boosted by switching to HANA now, so if you’re the software update manager it may be worth bringing these up to your superiors as you begin to broach the subject about considering an early database migration option.
What should you know about the migration process?
Preparing for database migration (also known as DB migration) requires a lot of careful planning. DB migration often requires backups of existing data, which can take time to gather, catalogue, and complete. Cataloguing your metadata is especially important if you want it to stay organized during migration, and the best way to do this is by ensuring that you’re correctly governing your master data as well. Both of these steps ensure that your current data will make its way safe and sound to the new SAP landscape and be able to be utilized without any extra issues.
While jumping through the extra ahoops necessary to migrate your data and update your SAP system is certainly a challenge, it’s definitely worth the journey for the benefits you’re able to reap on the other side. Being able to instantaneously update your SAP applications and use your data in real-time can be incredibly beneficial for businesses of all sizes, and especially enterprises that deal with vast amounts of data each and every day. Keep the above lessons in mind and you’ll be well on your way to harnessing all that SAP HANA has to offer.
