SAP Experts: Consulting | Integration | Virtualization - DataXstream
SAP Certified Consultants
This session will provide you with a synopsis of the strategic advantages of virtualizing your SAP landscape, as well as an outline of the critical factors that one must consider and decide on to ensure successful execution of the virtualization process.
DataXstream’s consulting teams have been committed to our customer’s success with SAP for over 15 years. Our focus on SAP technologies allows us to have a positive impact on our customer’s SAP projects and businesses. Our team members have a broad cross section of industry experience, working on both large and small teams, allowing them to quickly adapt to the needs of any SAP project. DataXstream’s investment over the last 10 years in SAP development capabilities gives our consulting teams an advantage by providing a solid foundation for advancing their SAP skills. This investment has given DataXstream the ability to build and maintain tools and project accelerators; allowing our consultants to set the right direction for your project, accelerate your timeline, reduce delivery risk, control cost, and ultimately, provide your business with meaningful SAP solutions.
DataXstream offers senior level consultants covering many types of SAP consulting services. Our deep domain expertise, particularly in technical activities, enable customers to tackle complex, challenging projects where time is of the essence. Averaging over 10 years of SAP experience per consultant, we can fill most roles from analyst to project lead, to solution manager. When hiring DataXstream, you gain the commitment to success that is reflected in our 100% project success rating.
Infrastructure Assessment and Systems Architecture
Whether you are looking to implement SAP for the first time, perform an upgrade, merge several legacy systems together, or virtualize your landscape (SAP or otherwise), it is critical that you take the proper steps in preparation for your work. DataXstream can work with you to design a system landscape that is able to meet your business goals and adapt to business growth in the short, medium, and long- term. We will review your existing hardware, software, systems architecture solutions (SAP and non-SAP) and make recommendations regarding the design of your system and the applications you need. We will determine the sizing requirements for your new landscape (including the amount of hardware, storage, servers, etc. that is needed), identify gaps in hardware and software between your present system and the one proposed, and obtain all required licenses. At this stage, we will also make recommendations as to whether to engage in a virtualization process or not. If you decide it is in your company’s business interests, we will use our technical expertise to virtualize your landscape.
Once you have architected the optimized and efficient IT infrastructure needed to support your SAP system, DataXstream can assist you in the management of your SAP projects. We work collaboratively with customers to develop and deliver strategies and engagement plans for projects in all phases of the SAP lifecycle; including implementations, development, integration, upgrades, data management, and support. We provide realistic project forecasts, deliverable timelines, estimated costs, and resource needs. Whether it is during the stage of pre-implementation, execution, or post-implementation of your project, DataXstream remains highly involved in the process and can work with you on strategy, tactics, and execution.
Once you have your infrastructure and the specifics of your envisioned SAP solution in place, DataXstream’s SAP experts can do the nitty-gritty work to make your plan into a reality. Our team of senior developers dive into the programming world of ABAP, BAPI, RFC, XI, PI, IDOCS, ALE, .Net, Java Connectors, as well as a number of middleware integration platforms, working to meet all the functional and technical specifications of your SAP system. Our consultants have the necessary mix of project leadership, thorough understanding of business processes and goals, and SAP technical expertise to deliver solutions that are both technically-sound and business-process optimized. This work involves configuring all critical components of the SAP system, developing custom applications to enhance the capabilities of standard SAP solutions to meet your unique needs, and testing each of the SAP components to ensure your system performs as desired. We integrate all critical process, data sources, and third party software with SAP; cleanse and migrate data as necessary into your SAP system; leverage SolMan’s rich tool set to better manage and support your system throughout the application lifecyle; and provide the Basis administration to KTLO and support your SAP system’s day-to-day activities.
As you are engaging in your SAP project, DataXstream can assist with every phase of an SAP lifecycle. Our consultants have been through countless SAP lifecycles and have experienced the details of every stage. We know when certain support activities need to be done and can plan pro-actively to resolve them to eliminate unnecessary issues. DataXstream also understands the need for process discipline, along with clear communication during an SAP lifecycle, and can assist you with putting such critical processes in place. When it comes to your support needs, DataXstream can assist in planning and vision, full post-production support, and adaptation of the support model as you respond to internal and external changes.
At some point in time, it may become necessary to upgrade your SAP landscape. When that day comes, DataXstream can assist you. DataXstream has been helping companies with SAP upgrades since 1998. Consequently, we understand upgrades and the need to execute upgrades quickly and effectively to minimize disruption and ensure business continuity. Our upgrade process involves understanding your technical and business environment in order to establish an approach that meets your business goals; assessing your existing infrastructure and doing a gaps analysis between what exists now and what is needed for the upgrade; and executing on the upgrade plan. If it is in your company’s best interest, DataXstream can also virtualize your landscape before executing the SAP upgrade.
Read the Case Study:
DataXstream has embraced virtualization technology for nearly a decade, beginning with our first use of desktop virtualization in 2002 to better manage our multiple clients and then continuing with our conversion of our SAP datacenter in 2004. Even before virtualization became officially endorsed by SAP in 2007, DataXstream leveraged virtualization’s flexibility and cost saving features to better meet the needs of our SAP customers. Over the years, virtualization technology has given us a competitive advantage in the marketplace, allowing us to rapidly adapt to the changing needs and requirements of the SAP world and clients. Through years of experience, we have been able to streamline a proprietary model to forecast the right hardware and software configuration for SAP, as well as the tuning parameters necessary to insure optimal performance.
We are now on our 4th generation of Dell Virtualization Servers, leveraging Dell’s latest 710 series, which just recently replaced our Dell R900’s. Migration to the new servers was completed in a matter of days and was accomplished with no outage to our internal systems. With our recent upgrade to VMware’s vSphere 4 Enterprise, we are now able to run our entire virtual infrastructure in High Availability (HA).
Over the past 7 years, DataXstream has worked with most storage technologies available, utilizing internal storage, NAS (Network Access Storage), DAS (Direct Attached Storage), SAN (Storage Area Networks), and Virtual SAN products. We develop techniques to successfully architech our SAP virtual storage infrastructure that are now considered SAP best practices in virtualization.
So you are ready to virtualize. Whether you already have SAP on a physical landscape or you are implementing SAP for the first time, DataXstream can help you. DataXstream is a certified Professional Solutions Provider of VMware virtualization software. Our consultants have completed VmWare education training and are certified by VmWare to install, implement, and optimize their software for any ERP infrastructure. As a certified partner, we also have access to the latest virtualization software technology as well as studies, best practice methodology, and training.
So you are ready to virtualize, but you are a small business. This means you have less time and money to implement a virtual solution. You ask: is virtualization even an option for you? Well, you are in good hands. DataXstream has a prepackaged, cost-effective, yet flexible All-In-One (AIO) virtual infrastructure that can be deployed in just two weeks. So you may be small, but you need not miss out on the benefits that virtualization can bring to your business.
Unexpected IT outages and loss of data due to natural or human-initiated disasters can unleash a procession of direct and indirect consequences, with both short-term and far-reaching consequences. At DataXstream, we deliver innovative, reliable and cost-effective disaster recovery solutions that tap into our deep understanding of virtual infrastructure and take advantage of the inherent disaster recovery capabilities of VMware.
Optimizing your SAP Landscape with VMware Virtualization
Conventional wisdom says you don’t go-live with SAP financials in the middle of the month (strictly speaking I should say the middle of the accounting period, but I’ll say month as a generic term for the posting period). I recently went through a mid-month SAP financials and logistics go-live and so far it has been a success.
Initially the project team had the expected you-can’t-do-that reaction when the idea of a mid-month go-live was suggested. We took three main steps to determine whether or not we were crazy or had a viable go-live option:
Armed with the conviction that there was no reason we couldn’t go-live mid-month we set about defining the details of how we would pull it off.
Sustainability is one of many topics being discussed at SAPTechEd 2010 in Las Vegas. In addition green being ‘the right thing to do’ it also makes good business sense, so much so that Timo Stezler, VP Green-IT SAP, frequently said, “We have found carbon is an indicator of inefficiency.”
One area in which businesses can make improvements to reduce waste is in Virtualization. Eddie White, Sr. VP with Sentilla, noted that data centers account for 2% of the power usage in the United States. In addition to actual hardware costs, the cost of power to the data center, power drawn by the servers and power used in cooling, can be reduced by 25% through efficient use of hardware and through virtualization.
In addition, virtualization allows a business to “sweat the assets it already has instead of adding new ones.” Through smart virtualization a CIO can delay the need for a new data center, which can cost in the area of 10 million dollars. White noted that IBM’s data center accounts for 6% of the company but utilizes 30% of the company’s power usage.
Stezler stated it simply. “Virtualization has a huge impact.” SAP was 60% virtualized servers in 2009 and the goal for 2010 is 80% virtualization. In more detail Stezler notes that Energy Management is a new challenge for IT. In recent studies 50% of clients and investors state energy efficiency and carbon footprint are among deciding factors when making consumer or investor decisions. The data center is typically 30% to 40% of energy cost associated with any business.
With this in mind DataXstream offers virtualization services as part of our SAP integration focus. DataXstream is a certified partner with Dell and has also partnered with VMware the global leader in Business Infrastructure Virtualization. These partnerships allow DataXstream to streamline the virtualization process as well as allow excellent pricing options.
In each session Timo Stezler advocated, “Become a strategic Sustainability advisor to your business.” Work to streamline efforts within your business.
For more information on Virtualization:
SAP Virtualization Solutions: http://www.dataxstream.com/sap-virtualization-solutions
SAP AIO Virtual Infrastructure: http://www.dataxstream.com/sap-aio-virtual-infrastructure/
One of the inevitable aspects of data migration is dealing with fallout from automated data loads. Typically, this process includes identifying the data that will not load, analyzing the error messages to determine the root cause, formatting a readable report that can be used as a tool in the cleanup process, and fixing the root cause of the problem so that it does not happen again.
There is a litany of reasons why some data records will load correctly while others will not. Here is a list of some common root causes:
If you are responsible for the success of data migration, you will want to build a detailed plan that will walk you through all of the three phases of data migration: pre-data migration preparation, the data migration itself, and post-data migration cleanup. I like my data migration plan to contain detailed steps that ensure that I don’t forget anything. Each step lists a specific named responsible person along with their area of responsibility and contact information. Unless I am responsible for executing the task myself, I prefer the named person to be a client employee (i.e. the business owner of the process) rather than a project consultant. This is where the responsibility should be, and it requires that the business process owners actually participate in the activity rather than sit on the sidelines and watch.
It is data migration time on your SAP business project. Whether your project is implementation, acquisition, or merger, the goal is pretty much the same: the seamless inbound acquisition of master and transactional data from one or more external data sources while ensuring that this activity has minimal impact on the rest of the business. This is where we attempt to move years of neglected master and transactional data from a loosely structured, anything-goes legacy system into a very tightly integrated and highly structured SAP system. You must consider the likelihood that the concept of master data management had not been invented yet when the legacy or source system providing your data was implemented.
How much data to move? How much data to leave behind? What to automate, and what to execute manually? How to gracefully orchestrate and execute a data migration cutover from one system to another? Where and how to fit the data migration plan into the overall business implementation plan? How to continue to run the business during the data migration phase of the business project implementation? These questions are all part of the planning fun!
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