One Click Transformation With JiVS From Data Migration International: The Shortest Route to S/4

SAP customers know that the ideal transformation path would be as technically straightforward as the brownfield approach, but as flexible as the greenfield method, where companies can leave behind old habits, implement new business processes and models, and transfer only master data of the highest quality into the new system.

Radically simple

The prerequisite for this is that the transformation at application level takes place independently of the data level. For this purpose, all legacy information, along with its business context, must be extracted completely, unchanged and, above all, efficiently and quickly. Then it is transferred to a separate platform. The information from the legacy systems that is required in S/4 Hana must then be filtered out according to business criteria, cleansed, enriched with data from third-party systems, and optimized. While companies generally only have to transform and migrate 5 to 10 percent of the transactional data to SAP S/4 after optimization, the amount of master data is reduced to an estimated 20 percent, which they can then also transfer in optimum quality using standard tools such as SAP's Migration Cockpit. All of this must be largely automated.

While companies generally only have to transform and migrate 5 to 10 percent of the transaction data to SAP S/4 after optimization, the amount of master data is reduced to an estimated 20 percent, which they can then also transfer in optimum quality using standard tools such as SAP's Migration Cockpit. All of this must be largely automated.

At the same time, this platform must be able to display historical data in the S/4 world via SAP GUI or SAP Fiori as if it had been created in S/4. This on-the-fly transformation via technical structure mapping process must also take place automatically, without changing the original structure of the historical data on the platform itself, of course. This extensive automation from data extraction to displaying the data in the new environment is at the core of a One Click Transformation.

A clean and transparent database for competing in the digital economy is just one advantage of this approach. Further benefits include:

Once the historical information has been transferred to the platform, SAP customers can completely decommission their legacy systems and applications. This usually eliminates 80 percent of their operating costs. The time and costs involved for filtering, transforming, and migrating data are also halved. These are the key findings and experiences from more than 2,000 projects worldwide.

As the new data added to the SAP S/4 world, such as completed orders that are no longer needed in the process, can be continuously transferred to the platform, the new environment and the SAP Hana in-memory database in particular remain permanently lean, the Hana database particularly so. This also means that they continuously run with stable performance and are easier to manage. The potential savings that can be achieved through this continuous rightsizing is likely to be 25 percent or more over the entire lifecycle of the new environment.

And another crucial point: the One Click Transformation approach enables brownfield areas to be renatured into clean green fields, so to speak. This is because the conversion of business objects and their cleansing and adaptation work completely without data. As a rule, companies only need half of the previous business objects to get started with S/4 without any legacy issues.

Legal security cannot be neglected in all of this. All historical data and documents are stored on the platform in an audit-proof manner. DMI's JiVS Information Management Platform also offers the option of managing the stored information at the individual data record or document level throughout its entire lifecycle until its legally compliant deletion, after the applicable retention periods have expired. This enables the increased legal requirements to be satisfied, such as the specific deletion provisions of the European General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) and the new Swiss Data Protection Act.

Transformation-as-a-Service

The One Click Transformation unfolds a whole new dimension for companies when it comes to digital transformation in general, and the switch to S/4 Hana in particular. This approach is rounded off, completed, and refined by the expansion towards transformation as a service. To this end, Data Migration International has developed a software-as-a-service solution—the One Click Transformation Cockpit.

The idea behind this cloud-based service is that companies can simulate and prepare their planned transformation projects with just a few clicks. They do not have to disclose any real data from their systems to do this. Instead, the service works exclusively with metadata. The protection of master and transactional data, as well as the company's intellectual property, is thus ensured at all times.

In the first step, the service determines information about the source systems and legacy data. This includes, for example, information on the software release status (e.g. ECC 6.0 or R/3, Oracle EBS, or Oracle Financials etc.), the size and compression of the database(s), the size of the tables, number of documents, number and size of archives such as ADK, the type and number of business objects, and the age of the data etc.

In a second step, based on this information, the service calculates the data reduction potential in order to transform and transfer only the data that is truly needed when switching to SAP S/4 Hana, for example. Or, when selling a subsidiary or business unit, it identifies the exact data and business objects that need to become property of the acquiring company and, at the same time, ensures that no more data than necessary, or even sensitive data containing business secrets, inadvertently leaves the company. In addition to data and business objects, the service also analyzes tables and provides information on which of them the companies need for their planned business scenarios, and whether they are complete and populated and thus suitable for transformation and migration.

The service then suggests suitable filter rules for transforming and transferring the previously determined data. This completes the preparatory work, and the companies can decide whether they want to turn the scenarios that have been simulated and prepared in the Cockpit into concrete projects. At the click of a button, they can transfer the filter rules defined in the Cockpit to JiVS IMP and apply them there, both for the transformation to S/4 Hana and for a carve-out project.

The JiVS One Click Transformation Cockpit (JiVS OCC) is a classic software-as-a-service solution in the multi-tenant model. The main aim of the Cockpit is to provide companies with maximum synergy effects for their agile business scenarios. This is because the information determined in the Cockpit about their own system landscape or the defined filter rules can be saved and reused, to harmonize the system landscape and decommission legacy systems, or dissolve data center locations, for example. This allows companies to further simplify and accelerate their transformation projects and business scenarios.

Turboloader to S/4

Companies that have decided to convert to SAP S/4 Hana know that extracting data from legacy systems is a bottleneck in these projects.

DMI has developed a special turbo process for extracting data and its business context in order to fundamentally solve the problem of data extraction, even for large and very large volumes. This makes it possible to extract quantities of 10, 100, or more terabytes of information from legacy systems at the push of a button within a very short time frame and in a fully automated manner, and then transfer it to JiVS IMP and store it there in a way that is legally compliant, as certified by auditors, until it is deleted.

Thanks to support for more than 3,000 pre-configured business objects, DMI’s platform transfers all data and documents from the source systems of a wide range of manufacturers, from SAP to Baan, Infor, and JD Edwards to Navision etc., as well as from ADK archives, thereby enabling complete and legally compliant access to historical information in read mode, directly from SAP S/4.

The data-driven enterprise

With DMI's One Click Transformation, decision-makers can turn their companies into data-driven enterprises at the touch of a button. JiVS IMP, the Java-based platform for system- and application-independent information management separates the data level from the application level and thus represents the core element of a company-wide data fabric. This enables companies to manage their data independently of the original systems—whether on-premise or in the cloud—as well as to continuously optimize its quality, and to enrich, analyze, and use it for planning, decision-making, and control purposes.

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