S/4HANA Migration: Brownfield, Greenfield, or Bluefield?

With SAP’s end-of-support deadline for Organization Suite 7 software coming in 2027, a vast majority of businesses have a migration to SAP S/4HANA on their radar. Some are still planning, some in proof of concept, and some are in the process of implementation. But, wherever a business is on along this roadway, the basic changes in technology that come with S/4HANA imply any migration is going to be a major endeavor. Equally, it’s clear that each customer’s situation is unique, which indicates there is no one-size-fits-all migration path.

At Speed, we see three overall migration patterns among the companies we speak to, supports, and advise:

Brownfield

These customers are the most recent adopters of SAP (past 3-5 years), and they can maintain the structure they currently have in place and update it to run under S/4HANA. This is a more straightforward approach, with SAP offering tools such as DMO and AMOUNT. These give customers taking into consideration a Brownfield execution an updated platform that they can make use of as the foundation for their future business.

Greenfield

These businesses are either new to SAP (never carried out before) or have actually probably been running SAP for a long time. For them, S/4HANA stands for a fundamental change, both functional and technical, from whichever version of SAP that they implemented. A “fresh” S/4HANA installation offers these companies a possibility to reason their rambling software platforms into a coherent, new, whole, adopting new and proven business practices as they do so. This is a complex operation, however, it offers substantial improvements in business performance and adaptability in the future. At a recent ASUG Carolina event, for example, BMW discussed their strategies and current accomplishments using a Greenfield approach as they transfer to S/4HANA.

Bluefield

This is the most effective option for large corporations with extremely complicated frameworks. The movement needs some specialized tools (available from SAP and other tools vendors) to extract the current configuration– without the data– and move it over to S/4HANA, followed by selectively choose data to move forward with. This is clearly a huge endeavor, but one that provides the chance to re-evaluate data and customization that have actually been brought along for many years and even decades. It also offers companies the chance to restructure their system along the lines of S/4HANA shown, modern business practices.

This is a broad-brush analysis– each individual business needs to go via a cost-benefit-risk evaluation to select an exact specific cloud migration path. Part of the analysis might be to consider longer-term future benefits instead of simply searching for short-term repayment. These benefits could be in the form of being able to quickly carry out new business techniques or exploit new technologies, such as machine learning or the Internet Of things; or they might accumulate from archiving older data to rationalize the amount of storage space used and thereby save hardware or hosting prices.

There are some important things that any organization considering the movement to S/4HANA should remember:

• One of the most important areas to start with, particularly for levels of data around or over the 1TB mark, is data management– what to archive, what to retain, what to take along with the migration, and why? (For instance: GDPR, anyone?).

• Linked to data management is functionality. Identify, and when possible, eliminate anywhere data is being duplicated to multiple locations and consequently prejudicing a “single version of the truth.”.

• The following is future functionality. Is the business aiming to make a critical leap yet is being held back by its present systems? Be ready to factor this future capacity into TCO calculations.

• Ultimately, speed, both in terms of solution implementation and system performance, is most likely to be a crucial issue.

Conclusion

Whichever approach an organization requires to its migration, it must all times proceed with end in mind. It’s almost certain that working with a cloud migration services partner who can offer support will be a critical part of the migration at all stages phases– analysis, planning, and implementation.

Want to figure out more about SAP S/4HANA Migration, feel free to visit our website.

We at ZaranTech offer a self-paced online training program for SAP  S/4 HANA, where individuals get trained on various aspects of SAP HANA including the migration and more.

Happy Learning!