Despite cloud euphoria, it's the data that counts

After all, they are seen as the business foundation that will help companies become smarter. Three statements make people sit up and take notice in this context: the complete separation of the data layer from the compute layer, the preference for data access over data movement, and the retention of data even outside of Hana's in-memory storage.

But existing SAP customers continue to struggle with planning and preparing for migration to the new S/4 world. Before the switch, many SAP implementations need to be harmonized and consolidated. After all, it is far easier to migrate to S/4 from a central SAP environment.

However, this is immediately followed by two questions: What happens to the legacy systems and should all the data from the legacy systems really be migrated to the new world? These two questions are not only relevant from a technical and business perspective.

Rather, they have a very practical significance in light of the official end of support for SAP Business Suite 2025, because there are not enough consultants in the market to handle all migration projects.

Against this backdrop, the good news is that SAP is showing the way with the aforementioned architectural principles. For example, users should separate the data from the applications as much as possible even before the migration, separate the data necessary for operations from the rest even during the ongoing preparation and consolidation, and store it in a separate environment in a legally secure manner.

It is precisely because of the expected massive increase in information volumes that such a separate environment for legacy information will play an increasingly strategic role in the future. This is because, especially against the backdrop of Big Data and analytics scenarios, it makes neither technical nor business sense to keep all data in Hana's in-memory storage.

Separating the data from the applications and managing the lifecycle of legacy information using a dedicated platform allows the volume of data to be migrated to be reduced by up to 75 percent while maintaining full legal certainty. This saves operating costs by up to 80 percent. Most importantly, the migration effort is generally reduced by half.