SAP HANA migration requires careful deliberation and strong adherence to best practices. SAP HANA is more than a traditional data base. It is an in-memory data platform that can be deployed on premise or in the cloud. It delivers many benefits to a business, including accelerating processes, helping extract real-time business intelligence and simplifies the IT environment. However, migration to SAP HANA involves costs, time and other resources, and therefore it is essential to do it the right way by implementing SAP HANA best practices.
Before beginning the migration process, it is important to assess and determine the level of migration knowledge in your company. This will help you identify the resources and external support you would need in your SAP HANA migration project. Once you’ve decided to go on with the SAP HANA migration, then start with a migration plan. To ensure a successful migration, you need to create a best practice-based migration process and follow it successfully.
6 Best Practices for Successful SAP HANA Migration
- Build a business case- SAP HANA migration involves significant costs and efforts. It would require buy-in from the top leadership. Building a strong business case for migrating to SAP HANA will help you build consensus in the company and help everyone involved. Identify the business outcomes of the migration project while building a business case. According to SAP —
- 10-20% of the value of your HANA investments will come from reductions in TCO
- 30-40% of the value comes from higher productivity of data intelligence and application development
- 50-60% of the value comes from optimized business processes
- Right size the SAP database- Sizing helps you determine the hardware requirements. The size of the database is dependent on the main memory and is a key cost factor for your migration project. SAP HANA is an in-memory database, and its costs and performance depends on the amount of data it needs to store in production. Rightsizing the SAP HANA database will help you keep the TCO low. There are many SAP tools like Quick Sizer that can help you in appropriate memory sizing.
- Pick your deployment method- SAP HANA may be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. Each has its own pros and cons. You need to choose the best deployment method for your project depending on your business requirements and objectives. On-premise works best for bigger companies with established business processes whereas the cloud deployment methods fits well for small and mid-sized businesses looking for flexibility and quick time-to-value.
- Develop a migration strategy- Build a migration strategy once you’ve chosen the deployment method. A robust migration strategy will help you reduce downtime during the actual migration and minimize risks. You have several options in migration method like conventional migration, Database migration of SUM (Software Update Manager) etc.
- Conduct a PoC- A Proof of Concept will help you in determining the efficacy of the migration implementation process and estimate the process time, identify risks etc. A PoC run in a sandbox environment will help you validate the SAP HANA migration process in a safe environment so that you can make modifications and corrections if required.
- Post migration efforts- Your SAP HANA system, on successful migration, needs to run at a steady state. It is a good idea to keep the legacy systems running for some time as a backup to eliminate the risk of data loss. Also, regular monitoring, testing, and validation needs to be done.
SAP HANA Migration has its share of challenges and there are high risks involved. A best practice-based migration process and implementation will help you navigate the process smoothly and get optimal value from your HANA investments. If you’re looking for a partner to support you in your SAP HANA migration or need technology assistance to solve your business problems, Gemini can help you. To know more about our SAP HANA implementation services, click here.
