S/4 and Hana Migration - What to do with Legacy Systems?

For example, how can legal retention periods be complied with when changing systems? The SAP S/4 Hana migration is not the only time ERP processes need to be redefined and data that has accumulated over the last few decades needs to be tidied up.

An intelligent, selective migration approach makes it possible to retain relevant data and processes while archiving old or cold data. However, this does not automatically simplify the entire system landscape - whether in the cloud or on-premise.

This is because existing SAP systems usually have to be retained for several years due to legal requirements (keyword: legal hold) or for accounting purposes.

Taming the "zoo" of legacy systems

Existing SAP customers must migrate to S/4 by 2025. At the same time, they may have to keep their old SAP systems running for years after the changeover in order to access data.

This can be time-consuming, as the old operating system and database must continue to be operated and patches and sometimes even life cycle upgrades are necessary.

This can lead to a "zoo" of legacy systems that cannot be tamed. Intelligent software for decommissioning SAP systems, such as DataFridge from Datavard, helps to tame it.

The solution manages legacy data in a central location, thus reducing TCO and supporting compliance with legal requirements. When preparing the migration, the data in this system is first inventoried (into active, cold and old data) in order to then transfer the old application data to DataFridge.

The software extracts these and classifies them according to legal entity, creation date, authorization group and other properties for future data determination and access.

Data from any number of SAP and even non-SAP systems can be recorded. The technology uses a worm memory (write-once-read-many).

Such storage enables initial data storage and grants read access until the data may be destroyed. DataFridge is also based on SAP NetWeaver.