SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and Business Objects, an SAP company, today announced the availability of SAP(R) Data Migration services, enabling easier end-to-end data migration for customers by combining expert services from SAP with industry-leading information management software for data integration and data quality from Business Objects in a new turn-key offering. A product of joint innovation between SAP and Business Objects product and services teams, SAP Data Migration consists of a framework, templates, methodology, tools and expertise to analyze, extract and transform, cleanse, validate, upload and reconcile legacy data into an SAP(R) ERP environment. The solution also includes a proven information management infrastructure from Business Objects that enables customers requiring upgrades, transitions or replacements of legacy systems to an SAP ERP system to do so more quickly, securely and accurately. The announcement was made at the Managing Your SAP Data 2008 conference, being held Nov. 17-19 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Today, the process of migrating data from disparate enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications into one overall environment is frequently a challenge for organizations, but with the new SAP Data Migration services, this no longer needs to be the case. Data migration requires specialized knowledge of every data source and target that is touched, and SAP understands its own ERP solutions better than any other vendor in the market.
"Historically, data migration was a sticking point for our organization -- a burden that bled both time and resources that we didn't necessarily have to spare in the first place," said Gary McCune, SAP conversion team lead, Goodrich Corporation. "The best practices and applications from SAP and Business Objects helped us eliminate added costs we once incurred, like custom scripting. So far, we have migrated 15 ERP systems from five different business units with the help of data integration and data quality capabilities from Business Objects. This helped us deliver insight into our business data more quickly and consistently."
Data migration enables customers to gather and move data from heterogeneous systems into one unified environment, and, as supported by industry analyst reports(1) from Bloor Research, is important to achieving trusted data and making it readily available across the enterprise. This is a critical first step when organizations implement new enterprise applications, upgrade software, move data from one source to another or tap new data repositories. For example, as more and more financial institutions are being acquired or consolidated, the integration of the companies requires data migration to bring data from separate, typically heterogeneous human resources and finance systems into one common system. If the data is not moved with care, properly and securely, sensitive business information could be put at risk, altered or lost. Moreover, customers can experience business disruption post go-live due to poor-quality data being migrated, leading to costly manual cleanup efforts.
Data migration is required in any SAP(R) Business Suite implementation, and SAP Data Migration is the offering of choice for ensuring migration projects are completed with agility, control and trust throughout a six-stage process for handling data: analyzing, extracting and transforming, cleansing, validating, uploading, and reconciling. Because SAP understands data migration from both legacy-system and non-SAP-system standpoints -- including Oracle and IBM applications and databases -- in addition to offering the best upgrades to its own SAP ERP systems, SAP is the safest and most trusted choice for support with migration projects.
"More than 80 percent of data migration projects run over time and/or over budget, and our research shows that this is fueled by a widespread lack of understanding among organizations about how to handle data migration effectively," said Philip Howard, research director, Bloor Research. "Solutions like SAP Data Migration can help to ensure that data migration projects are completed within these parameters, providing single vendor support to customers throughout the process. This alleviates many of the burdens organizations typically associate with data migration, and it potentially makes projects less cumbersome and draining from a resources perspective. Apart from providing the tools and methodology that are necessary for best-practices data migration projects, SAP Data Migration also lends customers perhaps the most important element for success that is often the hardest to come by-expertise."
SAP Data Migration services includes market-leading Business Objects software for information management (see Sept. 23, 2008 announcement, titled "SAP and Business Objects Positioned in Leaders Quadrant for Data Integration Tools" and June 5, 2008 announcement, titled "Business Objects Positioned in Leaders Quadrant of Data Quality Tools Report"), for bringing data from any source to an SAP Business Suite application; data quality, for ensuring that all of the data is trusted information; data integration, for extracting, transforming, cleansing and loading data from legacy systems into an SAP ERP environment; metadata management, for providing visibility into data relationships with mappings, impact analyses and data lineage; and business intelligence (BI), for IT and business users to monitor and visualize data quality and project progress from inception to conclusion.
"Other data migration solutions available in the market throw complex technology at organizations, and users are left to cross their fingers and hope projects are successful," said Clive Bellmore, vice president, Information Management, Business Objects. "If problems arise along the way, they must troubleshoot on their own. SAP Data Migration is different. It's a powerful, end-to-end offering that brings our customers unparalleled guidance, methodology and tools, and it is one of the safest choices organizations can make. We support customers from the time migration projects start until long after they finish, when key initiatives like data governance best practices become imperative to analyzing and visualizing how corporate data is being used, and by whom. This news is yet another proof point and example of the value the acquisition of Business Objects brings to SAP customers."
(1) Bloor Research reports "Data Migration" (Philip Howard; Oct. 16, 2008) and "SAP Data Migration Using Business Objects Information Management Software" (Philip Howard; July 17, 2008).
Today, the process of migrating data from disparate enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications into one overall environment is frequently a challenge for organizations, but with the new SAP Data Migration services, this no longer needs to be the case. Data migration requires specialized knowledge of every data source and target that is touched, and SAP understands its own ERP solutions better than any other vendor in the market.
"Historically, data migration was a sticking point for our organization -- a burden that bled both time and resources that we didn't necessarily have to spare in the first place," said Gary McCune, SAP conversion team lead, Goodrich Corporation. "The best practices and applications from SAP and Business Objects helped us eliminate added costs we once incurred, like custom scripting. So far, we have migrated 15 ERP systems from five different business units with the help of data integration and data quality capabilities from Business Objects. This helped us deliver insight into our business data more quickly and consistently."
Data migration enables customers to gather and move data from heterogeneous systems into one unified environment, and, as supported by industry analyst reports(1) from Bloor Research, is important to achieving trusted data and making it readily available across the enterprise. This is a critical first step when organizations implement new enterprise applications, upgrade software, move data from one source to another or tap new data repositories. For example, as more and more financial institutions are being acquired or consolidated, the integration of the companies requires data migration to bring data from separate, typically heterogeneous human resources and finance systems into one common system. If the data is not moved with care, properly and securely, sensitive business information could be put at risk, altered or lost. Moreover, customers can experience business disruption post go-live due to poor-quality data being migrated, leading to costly manual cleanup efforts.
Data migration is required in any SAP(R) Business Suite implementation, and SAP Data Migration is the offering of choice for ensuring migration projects are completed with agility, control and trust throughout a six-stage process for handling data: analyzing, extracting and transforming, cleansing, validating, uploading, and reconciling. Because SAP understands data migration from both legacy-system and non-SAP-system standpoints -- including Oracle and IBM applications and databases -- in addition to offering the best upgrades to its own SAP ERP systems, SAP is the safest and most trusted choice for support with migration projects.
"More than 80 percent of data migration projects run over time and/or over budget, and our research shows that this is fueled by a widespread lack of understanding among organizations about how to handle data migration effectively," said Philip Howard, research director, Bloor Research. "Solutions like SAP Data Migration can help to ensure that data migration projects are completed within these parameters, providing single vendor support to customers throughout the process. This alleviates many of the burdens organizations typically associate with data migration, and it potentially makes projects less cumbersome and draining from a resources perspective. Apart from providing the tools and methodology that are necessary for best-practices data migration projects, SAP Data Migration also lends customers perhaps the most important element for success that is often the hardest to come by-expertise."
SAP Data Migration services includes market-leading Business Objects software for information management (see Sept. 23, 2008 announcement, titled "SAP and Business Objects Positioned in Leaders Quadrant for Data Integration Tools" and June 5, 2008 announcement, titled "Business Objects Positioned in Leaders Quadrant of Data Quality Tools Report"), for bringing data from any source to an SAP Business Suite application; data quality, for ensuring that all of the data is trusted information; data integration, for extracting, transforming, cleansing and loading data from legacy systems into an SAP ERP environment; metadata management, for providing visibility into data relationships with mappings, impact analyses and data lineage; and business intelligence (BI), for IT and business users to monitor and visualize data quality and project progress from inception to conclusion.
"Other data migration solutions available in the market throw complex technology at organizations, and users are left to cross their fingers and hope projects are successful," said Clive Bellmore, vice president, Information Management, Business Objects. "If problems arise along the way, they must troubleshoot on their own. SAP Data Migration is different. It's a powerful, end-to-end offering that brings our customers unparalleled guidance, methodology and tools, and it is one of the safest choices organizations can make. We support customers from the time migration projects start until long after they finish, when key initiatives like data governance best practices become imperative to analyzing and visualizing how corporate data is being used, and by whom. This news is yet another proof point and example of the value the acquisition of Business Objects brings to SAP customers."
(1) Bloor Research reports "Data Migration" (Philip Howard; Oct. 16, 2008) and "SAP Data Migration Using Business Objects Information Management Software" (Philip Howard; July 17, 2008).
