Description
A significant amount is invested by organizations in a SAP upgrade project. However few really know that data archiving before embarking on SAP upgrade yields significant benefits not only from a cost standpoint but also due to reduction in complexity during an upgrade. This article not only describes why this is a best practice but also details what benefits accrue to organizations as a result of data archiving before SAP upgrade. Avaali is a specialist in the area of Enterprise Information Management. Our consultants come with significant global experience implementing projects for the worlds largest corporations.
Archiving before Upgrade
It is recommended to undertake archiving before upgrading your SAP system in order to reduce the volume of transaction data that is migrated to the new system. This results in shorter upgrade projects and therefore less upgrade effort and costs. More importantly production downtime and the risks associated with the upgrade will be significantly reduced. Storage cost is another important consideration: database size typically increases by 5% to 10% with each new SAP software release – and by as much as 30% if a Unicode conversion is required. Archiving reduces the overall database size, so typically no additional storage costs are incurred when upgrading.
It is also important to ensure that data in the SAP system is cleaned before your embark on an upgrade. Most organizations tend to accumulate messy and unwanted data such as old material codes, technical data and subsequent posting data. Cleaning your data beforehand smoothens the upgrade process, ensure you only have what you need in the new version and helps reduce project duration. Consider archiving or even purging if needed to achieve this. Make full use of the upgrade and enjoy a new, more powerful and leaner system with enhanced functionality that can take your business to the next level.
Archiving also yields Long-term Cost Savings
By implementing SAP Data Archiving before your upgrade project you will also put in place a long term Archiving Strategy and Policy that will help you generate on-going cost savings for your organization. In addition to moving data from the production SAP database to less costly storage devices, archived data is also compressed by a factor of five relative to the space it would take up in the production database. Compression dramatically reduces space consumption on the archive storage media and based on average customer experience, can reduce hardware requirements by as much as 80% or 90%. In addition, backup time, administration time and associated costs are cut in half. Storing data on less costly long-term storage media reduces total cost of ownership while providing users with full, transparent access to archived information.