Come Join Us In Orlando at the SAP Insider Tradeshow

When: March 23-26 Are you going to be there?  DataXstream will.  Come by and talk to the technical eXperts in SAP integration, virtualization, and upgrades and see what we can do to make your ERP system run better. Sign Up Now Fill out the form below and when you come by our booth you will receive a free DataXstream coffee mug and flash drive filled with only the information that matters to you.

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DataXstream Virtualizes Lumber Liquidators’ SAP Landscape

Virtualization Project Overview DataXstream LLC and Lumber Liquidators have announced a business relationship in which Lumber Liquidators has purchased a completely virtualized SAP platform from DataXstream built on VMware and Dell EqualLogic. Lumber Liquidators’ SAP Needs Lumber Liquidators acquired SAP to automate all their back-office processes.  Prior to implementation, they were instructed to deploy a hardware platform that would support not only the initial implementation, but incremental growth for the next 3 years.  As a new implementation, they were also concerned with minimizing total project cost, delivering high availability and consistent performance to an unknown number of users, and be easily maintainable by a streamlined IT staff. SAP Virtualization Solution Lumber Liquidators turned to DataXstream, an SAP professional services organization focused on technical consulting and integration, with particular skills in landscape design and implementation.  After reviewing the business requirements and technical constraints, DataXstream proposed, and then deployed a completely virtualized SAP environment, covering Development, Quality Assurance, and Production landscapes.  The resultant solution exceeded the needs requested by Lumber Liquidators: Reduced by 2/3 the amount of hardware (servers, storage, network, and peripherals) compared to a traditional, non-virtualized solution, thereby lowering Total Cost of Ownership As a reseller of both VMware and Dell, DataXstream’s proposal proved to be almost 40% lower than competitive offerings

Download: VMware Infrastructure & SAP Use Cases SAP Solutions on VMware Virtualized SAP Performance SAP VMware Technical Study To Learn More: SAP Virtualization Solutions Page Contact Us

• Leveraging DataXstream’s  longstanding expertise in SAP, the solution was tuned specifically to support current SAP needs, while remaining flexible enough to grow incrementally as new deployment phases started.
• Utilizing VMware features such as DRS, SRM, and HA, the solution insured consistent SAP response to users, even during scheduled maintenance, or fail-over conditions.

As a result of working with DataXstream, Lumber Liquidators met their implementation timelines, budgetary forecasts, and improved the chance of adoption by its user community.  Simultaneously the choice enabled  its IT team to easily support the landscape without having to add more resources.

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21 Things to Remember for Your Next SAP Upgrade

Is it time for your company to consider an SAP Upgrade?

The choice to upgrade your company’s SAP platform is a very important business decision.  Many criteria need to be considered when determining if an SAP upgrade is the right move and, if so, what type of upgrade needs to take place (ECC 6.0, Enhancement Packs, etc.).  A successful SAP upgrade requires the determination of your upgrade requirements, proper planning, and an assessment of technical and functional risk.  Below is a sample of our SAP Upgrade Checklist white paper:

Determine Your Upgrade Requirements

1. What are the business reasons for upgrading? Support from the business for an upgrade project is most important.  If there are no business reasons for upgrading, then you should probably not do it.  Included here are the business risks incurred by not upgrading.
2. What are the technical reasons for upgrading? Included here are the technical risks incurred by not upgrading.  (Posture increasing maintenance fees for old versions or complete support withdrawal as a business risk – not a technical risk.)

For the complete list, download the full white paper:

SAP Upgrade Checklist

Related Links:

1. SAP Upgrade Project Plan
2. SAP Upgrade Project Management Considerations
3. Contact Us

SAP Upgrade Project Management Considerations

This is the first in a series of posts that I will write regarding upgrading your SAP system.  2010 is anticipated as the year of the upgrade (you heard it here first – maybe not) as many SAP customers saw an upgrade as an easily avoidable expense in the midst of the economic carnage of the last 12-18 months.  Also, SAP is on a push to get customers off earlier releases and up to ECC 6.0 and various EHP (enhancement packs) to make upgrades a thing of the past.

Excuse a note of skepticism about the end-of-upgrades-as-we-know-them, I suspect the path and the mechanism to get new functionality will change.  The text book methodology and approach will change, but I suspect SAP customers will be hesitant to let go completely of previous approaches to upgrades.  Sounds like a topic for a future blog post.

In these posts I’ll address some of the upfront considerations before you embark on an upgrade, then progress on to ways to leverage some of your existing assets to make the process as successful as possible.  Along the way I’ll discuss the impact on your SAP landscape, non-SAP systems, and other ongoing projects you may have in motion.  As a wise man I once worked for said–and I’m paraphrasing–“we don’t want to rebuild the plane in midair.”  Trying to get it in the hangar without passengers onboard is a noble goal, but perhaps not completely realistic.

This discussion is pitched at a fairly high level although an in depth discussion is easily set up by clicking here to contact us.

For more on SAP Upgrades download the white papers:

SAP Upgrade Checklist

Customization Risk Analysis in an SAP Upgrade Project

As always, comments and feedback are welcome, but I ask you to be civil.  Your experiences are not the same as mine, I can learn from you and I hope you can learn a little from me.  Let’s begin.

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DataXstream Workflow Troubleshooting Guide

By: Thomas Nittmann

Description: This article focuses on practical techniques used to assist in the debugging and resolving workflow issues during the development and production support phases of SAP implementations. The SAP Workflow application incorporates the use of several components, i.e. graphical editing tool (workflow builder), some object orientated concepts (use of the Business Object Repository), ABAP, and a hook/trigger mechanism into one of the SAP application modules (FI, CO, MM, etc). As business requirements are mapped into a workflow process definition and prototyping starts, debugging becomes an essential tool to expedite the implementation of workflow process.

To read more about SAP Workflow Troubleshooting please download the whitepaper here or simply click on the “Learn More” tab to the right to request this and other DataXstream white papers.

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SAP Integration Optimization

In any SAP implementation, there are a multitude of tasks and specialties happening all at once in preparation for Go-Live. Priority tasks such as business blue-printing and SAP core module configuration (FI/CO, MM, SD, etc.) take precedence over integration technologies such as ALE, XI/PI, and IDocs, as these are widely viewed as the “plumbing” of the SAP landscape. This SAP “plumbing” is needed, but “hidden in the walls” of the ERP system, and is rarely architected and managed at an Enterprise level. In larger ERP implementations, it’s very common for different groups to integrate to various systems independently and without regard to what other teams are doing. Legacy technologies may be incorporated as quick fixes, with plans to decommission later. Some teams may use a custom point-to-point integration approach, other teams will utilize IDocs, others will send messages to XI/PI via BAPI’s, and others may customize standard interfaces or use flat files.

After the system goes live, there may be a time period of stabilization, with a frantic scramble to make the system operational. Additionally, over several years, different projects and technologies will be incorporated. In larger companies, this can mean thousands of interfaces using dozens of different technologies coexisting in the support infrastructure. This “Band-Aid” approach to integration is typically never thought of as inefficiency that can be addressed to save real money in the organization, but merely viewed as a black box, or something the organization has to “live with.“

Even though the integration may fundamentally work well enough to run the business, there is definite and achievable ROI in re-architecting and optimizing the integration processes, especially in larger companies that have thousands of interfaces and hundreds of ways to connect them!

The return on investment of any project in SAP can have varied measures of success. Integration projects are no exception. Unique problems associated with company specific architecture impact the overall return. Listed below are the top seven identifiable ROI areas in integration technologies:

1. Greatly increase cost savings in new development
2. Reduce or eliminate the maintenance cost of multiple middleware technologies
3. Provide better system performance during interface operation, speeding up the effective speed of the SAP system for end users
4. Reduce the workload of users responsible for resolving errors, freeing them up to be productive on essential business tasks
5. Reduce charge backs by retailers for improperly formed EDI
6. Reduced head count by middleware consolidation
7. Reduced hardware cost

To read more about these cost saving techniques please download the whitepaper here or simply click on the “Learn More” tab to the right to request this and other DataXstream white papers.

DataXstream Partners with Dell and VMware

DataXstream has announced a strategic partnership with Dell and VMware in the hardware and Virtualization realms of SAP and ERP business solutions.  With the partnership, DataXstream becomes a preferred SAP solution provider for Dell storage and server hardware.  DataXstream also gains certification in VMware solutions, thus furthering their Virtualization implementation expertise.  To learn more about these partnerships visit DataXstream’s Partners Page.

DataXstream Sponsored Organization: Team Summit

We have dedicated a portion of our website to the various groups and organizations that we sponsor.  The first highlighted group is Team Summit, a ski and snowboard club based out of Denver, Colorado.  To learn more about Team Summit check them out on our Sponsorships Page or select the Sponsorships link under the News & Events tab on our home page.

DataXstream Has Gone Mobile – Check Out Our New Site Theme For The iPhone

DataXstream Mobile Site Theme for the iPhone

DataXstream has implemented a iPhone friendly version of our Website. If you have an iPhone you should check it out. Just go to http://www.dataxstream.com in Safari on your iPhone. Enjoy!

DataXstream liveblogging from SAP TechEd 09

DataXstream will be liveblogging two key events from the SAP TECHED 09 conference in Phoenix, Arizona.

• Come join us when we live blog the following events at SAP TECHED 09:

  Tuesday, October 13 • 8:00 A.M. – 9:45 A.M. PDT: General Session Keynote Tuesday, October 13 • 8:00 P.M. – 9:15 P.M. PDT: SAP TECHED 09 DEMO JAM!

Click here to follow our live blog and if you are in Phoenix don’t forget to stop by booth 213 on October 13 – 16 to see how we can make your project a success.

For more information about the conference, please visit the SAP TECHED 09 Conference website.

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