Why even consider SAP Migration? What’s in it for me?

There is of course the old adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and whilst your SAP installation may be doing everything you want it to at the moment (is it, by the way – could you be making productivity gains and cost savings?) there’s another apt saying “prevention is better than cure”.

SAP Hana is coming

SAP have announced that they require all their customers to be on SAP Hana if they want to have a support contract. The deadline date is a while off yet, but rather than focus on that, let’s consider why a company would make such a bold requirement, given that right now SAP runs on a selection of well known third party databases.

SAP Hana is an in memory database. SAP have looked at the needs of companies over the next decade and beyond and determined that this is the best architecture to meet those needs. Let’s face it, they have a pretty good track record so far in meeting needs – SAP is by far and away the market leader worldwide.

So, if you want to continue to trust SAP, it makes good business sense to migrate to HANA. And if you accept that, then why not place HANA where it’s going to run fastest and at its most flexible – and that’s on AWS.

OK, but it’s a big risk migrating SAP, what can I do to minimise this?

A good point. There are some horror stories. You’ve probably read some. This 5 step guide from SAP is a good starting point, and I can summarise it all down to these key points:

  1. Use a partner who is experienced in managing SAP Migrations.They say you can’t buy experience, but in this case you absolutely can, and it will be the best investment you can make. Yes, we’re bound to say that aren’t we (!) but it’s true. We know, we’ve done this a lot.
  2. Mimimise your financial expenditure to under $1000 and your time to a few days.AWS have a program that allows you to migrate a part of your infrastructure and data and see whether the migration plan works for you. This is incredibly useful – your setup is not the same as anybody else’s, so here’s the chance to test not on some theoretical model, but on your actual business.
  3. Have a way back.Some migrations are one way doors. Once you start down the path there is no turning back. That’s a huge decision to make. Not so this time. In under 36 hours or so (it could be much less, it just depends on your situation) we can have you right back to where you are now if you decide that you don’t want to proceed. That turns the migration decision from a massive what-if into a near no-brainer. OK, it’s still harder work than doing nothing at all – but our business landscape is littered with the casualties of the head in the sand approach.However, I don’t want to leave you with the gloom merchant approach of you having to do something to survive – this is a real opportunity to get ahead of the crowd – the early bird catches the worm and all that – and done properly it really can be minimal risk for big reward, and it’s not often we can say that.

Read what AWS have to say about SAP HANA migration

AWS have an in-depth look at the principle of a two way door – migration is not a one way, can’t turn back road – which you can read on our Linked In page.

Find out more

Contact us for a no obligation chat about what’s involved and how to arrange your low risk high reward migration.