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.

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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.

Advantages of a Virtualized SAP Landscape

Virtualization is a technology that logically groups hardware (servers and optionally storage) together to create a computing  pool which applications access as needed to respond to customer requests.  As needs grow, the application dynamically absorbs more computing power, thereby providing a consistent user experience.  Computing power can be added or removed from the pool at any time without disrupting the application’s performance.  This changes the paradigm from traditional hardware deployments where SAP applications were tied to specific servers, creating underutilization of that server during slack times, a bottle neck during peak times, and a failure point if the server went down.

VMware, the world’s largest dedicated virtualization provider, and a DataXstream partner, was deployed at Lumber Liquidators.  Dell, one of the world’s largest computing and peripherals providers, and a DataXstream partner, has created “VMware ready” systems which were also deployed.   Some of the key technology used included:

DRS (Distribution Resource Scheduler): distributes and harmonizes computing resources which allows you to align your SAP infrastructure with your business goals.

• Dynamically allocate resources to the highest priority applications
• Provide dedicated IT infrastructure to business units while still achieving higher hardware utilization through resource pooling
• Empower business units to build and manage virtual machines within their resource pool while giving central IT control over hardware resources
• Improve service levels for all applications and ensure that each virtual machine has access to appropriate resources at any point in time
• Easily deploy new capacity by redistributing virtual machines without system disruption
• Automated planned server maintenance
• Reduce energy consumption and cooling costs by up to 20% in the datacenter during low utilization time periods

SRM (Site Recovery Manager): automates and accelerates recovery.

• Eliminates the need to test and manage complex and time consuming recovery plans
• Reduces risk by eliminating manual recovery steps

HA (High Availability): is provided across the whole virtualized SAP ERP environment.

• Eliminates the cost and difficulty of traditional solutions
• No planned downtime for maintenance tasks
• Recover quickly from server failures with automatic restart of systems

To learn more about virtualizing your SAP landscape contact one of our technical experts

DataXstream has launched a strategic certified partnership with Dell in the realm of SAP and ERP based business solutions. About Dell: Dell is a multinational technology corporation that develops, manufactures, sells, and supports personal computers and other computer-related products. Dell is committed to helping businesses simplify IT. We want to reduce the headaches IT complexity creates for your customers so they can have more time and money to spend on innovation.

About VMware: VMware, the global leader in Business Infrastructure Virtualization, delivers proven virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud.

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

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.

SAP Upgrades: Start with the End in Mind

There are plenty of reasons why you want to upgrade your SAP system and those reasons will probably drive your approach, how you position the project and execute.  Influencing factors include, but are not limited to:

• The current release is old and is either on extended SAP maintenance or is about to go on to extended maintenance
• Recent changes in SAP licensing are an incentive to upgrade
• Other parts of your systems environment and infrastructure are changing and an SAP upgrade makes some of these changes easier or enables them
• New functionality is required to support acquisitions
• New functionality is required to decommission legacy systems
• New functionality is required to expand the SAP footprint in your organization
• Custom development is becoming too cumbersome to maintain and can be decommissioned by standard functionality in the new release

In short, there are likely to be several reasons why you want to upgrade and your organization has other considerations over and above those listed.  By identifying the drivers for your upgrade you should be able to work out who most wants it to happen as well as those who are not supporters.  On top of this you work out who has the most to gain from it in the short, medium and long term. All this is useful for putting together the pitch

SAP Technical Upgrade versus SAP Functional Upgrade

There is much discussion around the pros and cons of performing a technical upgrade versus performing a functional upgrade.  To some extent I view this as a false choice: a technical upgrade is always going to involve some functional upgrade work – it is a matter of degree.  (The only escape clause here might be if you have truly installed SAP with no custom code, but I have yet to find an installation with no custom code).

The big selling point of a technical upgrade is that it is the quickest option and the least intrusive.  All true, but nonetheless you still need to go through the upgrade process several times to ensure it works without problems and you need to test the upgraded system to ensure that you can still run your business processes.  Even an SAP system with limited amounts of custom code needs to report out on the custom code forcing you to do some work and make decisions about it.  Typically the work and decisions have one of several possible outcomes:

• The custom code is still needed because the new release does not support the required functionality, hence you have to keep the code and test it with the new release.
• The custom code is no longer needed because the new release delivers the required functionality.  Consequently, code is decommissioned and you have to test the standard process.
• The custom code has to be modified in some way to work with the new release.  Again this leads to some testing and business process verification

Each custom object should fall into one of three buckets outlined above and this starts to identify work plans and activities.

A note of caution on the identification of custom objects: development environments often contain half-finished and abandoned objects, work-in-progress, and objects that never moved.  These objects can unnecessarily inflate the list of objects that need to be reviewed, so getting a list from production or the QA system can produce a more accurate list.

So even in the context of a technical upgrade I’ve run into the need for some functional work.  If my overall upgrade project objectives include deployment of new functionality I have the same considerations as a technical upgrade but now I have to scope, design, develop, integrate, test and deploy the new functionality.  Clearly this means more work, more time and more expense before the upgrade goes live.

In short, I like to think about technical and functional upgrades as two overlapping circles in a Venn diagram: the size of the overlap is what I am trying to control when I label my project a technical upgrade or a functional upgrade.

Finding Your SAP Upgrade Path

Another factor when planning the SAP upgrade is where you are starting from and where you want to get to.  There may not be a direct migration path from your current SAP release to your target release, in which case you need to identify the interim stepping stones and the impact that has on overall elapsed times and complexity.  Based on the uniqueness of your environment there may be actions you need to take at the interim release before you can get to the end release.

Making the Pitch for an SAP Upgrade

In my experience there is rarely a single concise driver for making an upgrade and each SAP installation has different factors influencing the decision.  Finding the right pitch with a convincing cost justification is pretty tricky: a (mainly) technical upgrade is often pitched as a precursor to greater things (delayed gratification, if you like), whereas a functional upgrade delivers value more quickly.

Addressing the demands of your decision makers and your budgets is always challenging, but you should also remember that upgrades are part of the TCO with SAP.  At some juncture you need to upgrade and finding a time in the business and IT calendars to focus resources on the project is unavoidable.

Next Steps Preparing for an SAP Upgrade

In my next post on upgrades I’ll discuss how you can leverage and re-use some of the work done on prior projects that can accelerate your upgrade.

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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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 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 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 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.