SAP Information Management, Intelligent Technologies & Consulting Services

Your Path to BW/4HANA

Updated on 08.2019

Basically there are two main approaches: a greenfield implamentation and a system upgrade.

As in every question regarding SAP, the answer about which appproach will work better for you is: it depends on your specific situation and culture.

My rather technical opinion: in general, I believe most companies -even the ones with a long history investements- will choose a greenfield implementation. Why? Because in BW/4 you can build your data warehouse in a quite different (simpler and faster) way and if you transform the system you may still need to move your achitecture from LSA to LSA++

I currently know 4 clients and the result is: Greenfields 3 - Transformation 1

Remember, at this moment (Q3.2019): The support maintenance on BW 7.5 will end on 31.12.2024

System Upgrade

If you want to know all the required steps to , you can follow the excellent Blog from Dónal Geraghty. Yes, I know he is my co-ompetition.

A couple of key points:

Convertion is only possible from 7.5 SP7
A bunch of notes will be required, starting with OSS note 2383530, one of these famous Note Analyzers.
Run the Convertion Pre-check: RSB4HCONV.
You may have some add-ons installed (like DSiM for example). Check Note 2189708 for compatibility.
Security: There might not be a tool to convert your roles by the time of your convertion project. Check OSS note 2468657
If you still have 3.x Objects, it is time for you to use transaction RSMIGRATE and migrate them.
Run the RSB4HTRF convertion tool. Non compatible objects can be automatedly transformed to BW/4 compatible objects. The tool provides notes to investigate further any issue.
So far, so good. Well no: there are many objects that will need to be manually redesigned: Infosets, InfoPackages, Multiproviders, Process Chains, User Exits, BW-IP... the list sounds actually terrifying, but it is usually based on exceptional cases. Depending on the number of exceptions, you unconsious mind will remind you of the greenfield approach.

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