The migration to BW/4HANA cannot be compared to the previous upgrades of the business warehouse versions - from NetWeaver 1.0 Business Intelligence to NetWeaver 7.5 Business Warehouse. Because with this latest data warehouse solution for on-premise, SAP makes a big cut and offers an innovative solution.
The advantages of BW/4HANA
- Better performance: The entire toolset has been modernised and the old tress have been cut off. Everything that slows down the system has been thrown out.
- Highly innovative: BW/4HANA presents itself as SAP's solution of the future.
- Only on this system can you install further developments such as BCS/4HANA (Business Consolidation) or BPC4/HANA (Business Planning and Consolidation).
- Simplified data orchestration, improved reporting: With the BCS/4HANA add-on, you calculate consolidated data dynamically on-the-fly (without temporary or permanent storage).
- Powerful toolset for data administration: You can access certain points in time in the process chain and thus monitor the data orchestration.
- Flexible data modelling: BW/4HANA provides extensive out-of-the-box functions; you can, for example, bring two source data together or apply filters directly to the database. In addition, BW/4HANA provides direct access to sources via software-defined access (SDA), so you can also perform data modelling directly on the database.
- User-friendly framework: Fiori provides a simplified and personalisable application. For example, you can store content of your choice on tiles and easily find your way around thanks to uniform menu navigation.
- Mobile compatibility: They are free to choose which device they work on.
- Analyses in self-service: They create reports and do it themselves and are no longer dependent on IT support. This speeds up reporting.
- Pervasive data connectivity: If required, stakeholders can have direct insight into the respective data source. In addition, BW(4HANA enables reporting based on text information
Four conversion scenarios for a successful changeover
There are four conversion scenarios for migration. Which conversion path is suitable for you depends on your requirements (existing hardware and software) and your objectives. We will advise you individually and provide you with full support during the migration process, which can be quite time-consuming.
- Greenfield conversion: Here we introduce BW/4HANA as data warehousing from scratch. All data must be reloaded from the existing source system and a completely new system line set up.
- Shell Conversion / Accelerated Greenfield: In this scenario, we set up BW/4HANA as a parallel system line. Delimited data models and selected data flows are transferred specifically, but the data is only taken from the source system and not transferred.
- Remote conversion: Here, too, we set up BW/4HANA in parallel and select specific data flows for the migration. However, the data and entire sub-areas of the BW predecessor version are transferred through SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT).
- In-place conversion: This conversion avoids the parallel operation of two systems and represents a complete system conversion. We migrate the complete existing BW system. The existing BW installation including all objects, data and add-ons is converted to BW/4HANA, all objects and add-ons that are not required are deleted in advance.