Data Conversion

The current release change, dubbed Conversion by SAP for the time being, will slowly but powerfully leave its mark on the global IT scene. What starts this year will reach its peak in 2025. The new Conversion will be sustainable because all ERP data will be affected - so this "Data Conversion" goes far beyond the boundaries of the SAP community. SAP will not master this milestone alone.

Data Lakes are failed attempts from the past. Similar to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse, there will be a new meta-space for data. Gartner analysts have already led the way with the terms Data Fabric and Composability. Data Migration International, DMI, from Switzerland is well on its way to becoming the singular tool for this data conversion with JiVS.

"The success of digital companies depends largely on the modernization of their IT"This is what DMI founder and CEO Thomas Failer postulates right at the beginning of his interview with E-3 Magazine. "In particular, it is important that the various layers in the technology stack are cleanly separated, starting at the hardware level and working all the way up to the experience layer. Only if the layers are cleanly separated can they be managed and operated independently of each other. This brings far greater flexibility. Silos dissolve, while the individual parts of the different layers can be better combined and reused. From my personal point of view, this separation is an essential prerequisite for what Gartner calls a Composable Business Architecture. It enables a company to flexibly adapt and recombine its resources to changing conditions at any time."

SAP recognized the need for a digital transformation many years ago. However, due to its R/3 past, the ERP world market leader was too focused on algorithms - business processes programmed in Abap. SAP recognized very well that a new ERP also needed an innovative data platform: The in-memory computing database Hana was created. SAP placed a major focus on streamlining the system itself: New algorithms were programmed and numerous Abap tables were eliminated. Too little attention was paid to composability, and Gartner's Data Fabric concept was poorly customized with SAP's Data Hub. A sensible separation, orchestration and harmonization of layers in the technology stack were counteracted by an unfortunate junction of S/4 and Hana.

Only limited importance was attached to the ERP data itself: The Data Hub project was poorly set up and failed. Frustrated, numerous experts left the ERP group. With Hana, SAP has created a very interesting data platform for the operational management of ERP data, but this concept falls short. The SAP universe lacks a holistic view of enterprise data in a B2B2C environment. Here, SAP partner DMI has the larger horizon, a very broad view into the future, and thus the much better concept for the upcoming data conversion.

"The opportunities outweigh the risks"Thomas Failer comments on the upcoming transformation at SAP's existing customers. "The transformation to SAP S/4 Hana represents a unique opportunity to fundamentally modernize the company's own IT, i.e., to introduce the aforementioned layer model that cleanly separates the individual layers. The model here is the cloud, from infrastructure all the way up to the operation and management of cloudnative applications and services that handle rather specific tasks and can be combined and reused again and again. It is this new way of delivering, operating and using IT that sets the cloud apart. This should be considered independently of the question of where this modern type of IT is implemented and operated. This place can just as well be in the company's own data center. In this respect, SAP with its new generation of software is indeed a cloud company, regardless of whether investors and investors have already internalized this."

Data sovereignty decides

The added value of any IT system - ERP, SCM, HCM, CRM - lies in the data, so data conversion is also at the center of all further considerations. So what is DMI planning in the coming months to support companies even better in this transformation?

Thomas Failer: "Simplification, automation, integration - these are the key points on our roadmap. We have some announcements to make soon about exciting innovations based on our JiVS IMP product, which we will present in detail in an upcoming issue of E-3 Magazine. To make it even easier and faster for existing SAP customers to arrive in the new SAP world and accelerate and optimize their digital transformation."

Modernization is accompanied by a unique opportunity to take inventory and tidy up. The current SAP systems have been running for 20 years and more, and have been repeatedly adapted, migrated and further developed. "Imagine how many company codes, plants, business objects and data will no longer need to be edited and changed in a future S/4"DMI CEO Failer points out. "We assume, and our experience with customers shows, that we are generally talking about 90 percent of the data and 50 percent of the business objects that can be managed differently than before, i.e. outside SAP. Even Heracles could not clean out the Augean stables any better! However, it is essential to distinguish between processing and needing. Because historical information, together with its business context, will of course continue to be needed."

Holistic data view

Data no longer needs to be changed, and in some cases it should not be. Nevertheless, they are still useful, and this is more than ever in view of the analysis possibilities in a thoroughly digitalized company. "Only by clearly separating the layers I've been talking about can SAP's existing customers fully benefit from their information and the insights they gain from analyzing it", explains Thomas Failer and adds: "Everyone knows about the value of data. But show me a Big Data or analytics project that has succeeded in getting all data, including and especially historical data, out of silos and archives and unlocking its value creation potential. There's a lot more talk about this than there is actual planning and action by those responsible in this direction, consistently and with vigor."

A survey conducted by IG SAP in Switzerland seems particularly revealing: According to the study, CIOs know that data is important, but only five percent actually care about it. For study leader Peter Hartmann of IG SAP Switzerland, the fact is that the approach of a holistic view of business processes, data and technologies contained in Rise with SAP is already established in many IT/SAP areas in companies. That's where integrated interaction with SAP can seem positive.

But DMI CEO Failer observes that many Big Data projects, perhaps even most, have petered out if one disregards individual use cases such as predictive maintenance, but these largely take place -outside- the ERP landscape. "They usually resulted in projects where so-called data lakes were set up", Failer analyzes and specifies: "But because a central data repository alone provides little or no benefit from a business perspective, little has followed the full-bodied announcements."

From a DMI perspective, it's perfectly clear: data, whether structured or unstructured, needs a context in order to have meaning. Only then can it be decided whether this meaning is business-relevant or not. Thomas Failer comments: "Because of the scale of importance, the success of any kind of Big Data or analytics project depends on data stewards being on board from the start. This includes data scientists as well as business users who generate and process this data. And, of course, CIOs must be sponsors of these projects and bear overall responsibility. In other words, at the organizational level, these projects must be viewed, planned and implemented holistically. That's even more important because project teams and data managers tend to think in silos."

Global data transformation

Green-, Brown- or Bluefield-style transformation projects have stalled. The following picture emerges: SAP legacy customers are looking for human and technical resources that are lacking in the market. They are looking for solutions to scale back legacy systems as much as possible, rather than decommissioning them. They are looking for methods to transform at least a large part of the historical data and migrate it to the new system world, although they only need to ensure unhindered access to it, including its business context. "And they limit projects to SAP data alone, rather than considering historical information from non-SAP systems from the outset."warns DMI founder Thomas Failer.

As long as SAP legacy customers assume that the context of data is firmly fused with the application layer, there is no danger. "A separate data layer for historical information should resemble a data fabric. By this I mean a kind of artfully woven fabric that fits perfectly to the body of its wearer. What's more, the various threads of the fabric can be untied and re-tied if the figure should change. Accuracy of fit combined with adaptability is the strength of a separate data layer, and thus the opposite of a Gordian knot. In other words, a separate data layer, which is like a fabric, lives not only from the data itself, but equally from its context"This is how Thomas Failer defines the Gartner term Data Fabric for the SAP community.

"Integration is indeed an important aspect, but not the only one," Failer describes the current situation. "That's because in order to make data accessible across the enterprise for analysis and broad user communities, the systems that house it must be connected. And the number of connections increases exponentially in relation to the number of systems to be connected. Therefore, in terms of effort, it definitely matters how many systems need to be integrated with each other. In other words, yes, integration capability is important, but it's at least as critical to reduce the number of systems that need to be integrated."

For legal reasons, ERP users cannot and must not change the data for defined periods of time. Precisely because business context matters, most existing SAP customers keep their legacy systems. Neither tax officials nor auditors recognize data without business context as conclusive. And to retain its usefulness in the new environment, historical information must be transformed, whether it is SAP or non-SAP data. Thomas Failer emphasizes: "Compliance and business value from historical data - after all, this is exactly where the time-consuming, cost-driving and innovation-delaying transformation projects come from, unless they are approached in a fundamentally different way than before and IT as a whole is modernized." 

"Neither Data Lakes nor integrations alone solve the fundamental problem," Failer sums up. "I think this is one of the reasons why SAP managers and CIOs are only now recognizing the business case for an S/4 transformation." A separate data layer is indeed the solution, if it is designed to sever the rigid connection of historical information with legacy applications and systems. "We talked about the Gordian knot earlier. With a data layer like this, it can be cut, just like Alexander the Great did, who knew it couldn't be untangled at all. That's why he took a completely new approach., explains Thomas Failer. The S/4 transformation could be the ideal pilot project for entering an application-independent but context-aware data layer.

Context information

Thomas Failer: "Context information is the basis of a separate data layer. The databases of ERP systems contain a large part of a company's treasures. However, it is the context that turns the blanks into jewels in the first place and is located at the application level. At the same time, from the point of view of many planners of transformation projects, this treasure is ballast rather than fuel and a cost driver when moving to S/4, which, to make matters worse, also drags out the project."

At DMI, we are convinced that the benefits will only materialize when we remove the historical information together with its business context from the legacy systems. Thomas Failer: "Because by offloading to the context-aware data layer, not only does the historical data, and by that I mean all structured and unstructured information, remain accessible. Rather, this also applies to its context. This does not remain behind in the original systems, as a passive asset, so to speak, but can be activated for use. The opportunities and benefits that arise from this are immense."

The transformation to SAP S/4 is just one scenario that JiVS IMP supports as the core of this context-aware data layer. "Just think of the many other use cases where data needs to be exchanged quickly and correctly between systems and applications"Failer points to the many possible applications of JiVS IMP. These include, in particular, big data, analytics and IoT, but also acquisitions and sales of companies and parts of companies, the consolidation and harmonization of data centers, and application and system landscapes.

"In all of these topics, historical information outside of its source systems plays a crucial role. That is also my central message to the business departments and the CFO.", Thomas Failer emphasizes and concludes: "Business departments, CIOs and CFOs are initially critical of the separation between operational and historical information. They say they want the entire information inventory in the new system as well, with all the negative consequences we have already discussed. This is where the cat bites the tail. In order to be agile, to be able to make changes and optimize processes quickly and at the same time without a lot of effort, the historical information has to be stored and managed just outside the old as well as the new SAP landscape. Nevertheless, I am absolutely convinced that once the users have understood that they can access all the information in the backend in the same or even higher quality despite this separation, then nothing will stand in the way of an SAP-S/4 transformation based on our approach and with the help of JiVS IMP."