SAP Archiving! Stop the Costly SAP Trap for Good!
By Emanuel Böminghaus, Legacy Systems Expert and Managing Director, AvenDATA
By Emanuel Böminghaus
Legacy Systems Expert and
Managing Director, AvenDATA
Managing Director, AvenDATA
1. S/4HANA and the Cost Trap
Migrating to SAP S/4HANA is one of the biggest IT challenges companies face. Yet many make a critical mistake before the project even begins: they plan to transfer all of their historical data to the new system landscape. This can drive up migration costs unnecessarily, delay projects, and significantly increase the complexity of the new system. There is, however, a cost-effective alternative: SAP archiving with AvenDATA’s ViewBox. Instead of painstakingly migrating data that has accumulated over decades, companies can decommission their legacy SAP systems while keeping the relevant historical information accessible.
2. SAP Archiving Instead of Migration
Legacy SAP systems often generate substantial costs. Licenses, maintenance, infrastructure, security measures, and administrative effort strain IT budgets, even though the systems are no longer needed for day-to-day operations. Nevertheless, they often remain in operation for years because tax retention requirements, financial audits, and legal obligations demand access to historical data. SAP archiving with AvenDATA and ViewBox breaks this costly cycle. Historical SAP data is transferred to a standalone archiving environment, where it can be searched and analyzed. The original SAP system can then be decommissioned as soon as all business and legal requirements have been met.
3. ViewBox: Legacy Data Available at Any Time
AvenDATA’s ViewBox gives companies access to archived data from SAP and numerous other ERP systems. Users can research historical business processes, accounting data, source documents, and other relevant information without having to keep the original production system running. This creates a decisive advantage, especially during an SAP S/4HANA migration: the new SAP system is not unnecessarily burdened with historical data, while archived information remains available to authorized users. AvenDATA draws on experience from more than 1,100 archiving projects and supports companies in the structured decommissioning of complex legacy system landscapes. This turns a technical legacy problem into an economically sound archiving strategy.
4. Reduce SAP Costs for the Long Term
An SAP S/4HANA migration should not be viewed solely as a technical modernization project. It is also an opportunity to systematically clear out the IT baggage that has built up over decades. Companies that integrate SAP archiving into their migration strategy early on can reduce the scope of data migration, decommission legacy systems faster, and lower operating costs over the long term. The combination of SAP S/4HANA and AvenDATA’s ViewBox lays the foundation: a modern ERP system for the future and an independent archive for the past. So why invest millions in migrating historical data when much of it may not even be needed in the new SAP system?
Smart archiving today avoids unnecessary costs tomorrow.
For more information, visit www.avendata.com