SAP BW/4HANA
With the introduction of SAP HANA in 2010, reporting speed has increased significantly due to the new in-memory technology. The latest update to SAP BW/4HANA is the only data warehouse solution available to date for real-time transactions and analytics. It takes full advantage of the SAP HANA in-memory RDBMS and enables companies to link live data with historical data for immediate analysis and rapid decision-making.
SAP BW/4HANA is the next generation of SAP Business Information Warehouse, replacing the current classic BW 7.5 on HANA. It is technically completely embedded in the HANA technology and can therefore take advantage of all the benefits of main memory processing.
Analytics and Big data
SAP BW/4HANA is designed to unite big data with operational SAP systems. In addition to classic database tables, HANA enables the creation of views on a semantic layer. This enables, through the new in-memory technology, real-time analysis of large amounts of data. This in-memory technology further enables complex analytical calculations through the associated performance increase by predefined functions, which are included in various data engines (such as predictive analytics or HANA Spatial). The data is then visualized using the SAP BusinessObjects BI Suite, which has been specially optimized for SAP BW/4HANA and SAP S/4HANA and replaces the familiar SAP Business Explorer (SAP BEx).
Administration and run
Both in the area of administration and in the area of modeling, the complexity has been greatly reduced compared to classic SAP BW by introducing new objects that replace the old objects (InfoCube, DSO, etc.). In contrast to SAP BW 7.5 on HANA, the implementation of the new objects is now only possible via the Eclipse-based HANA Studio, in which the familiar BEx Query Designer has also been integrated. In addition to the on-premise variant, a cloud solution has also been available since the beginning of 2017, which reduces the administrative effort many times over because SAP takes over the maintenance for this.
Migration Classic BW to BW/4HANA
In order to migrate the already existing system landscape to SAP BW/4HANA, a roadmap workshop is recommended to determine the individual best practice procedure for a migration. A distinction is made between greenfield and brownfield implementation
Greenfield
A so-called "greenfield" implementation is a new implementation of the already existing system landscape. This usually results in a migration of data from an already existing source system.
Brownfield or System Conversion
The alternative is to convert the old system landscape. Once a migration of the legacy data beacons has been performed to SAP HANA using the migration tool "SAP Database Migration Option" (SAP DMO) and the current BW is on version 7.5 SP4 (or higher), all legacy objects need to be converted to HANA optimized objects (ADSO`s and CompositeProviders). This is done with the migration tool "SAP BW/4HANA Starter Add-On" Ultimately, the conversion to SAP BW/4HANA takes place. The complexity corresponds to that of a release upgrade.
Recommendation
Your added value
Even if a migration to BW/4HANA is not yet planned, the administrative benefit can already be largely utilized under BW 7.5 on Hana by reducing the architecture of the data model to the new objects.
For real-time analyses and big data, there is no way around BW/4HANA in the medium term.
Summary
There is currently no requirement for a release upgrade from SAP BW 7.5 on HANA to SAP BW/4HANA. However, when implementing a new SAP system, SAP BW/4HANA should be used right away.
Our offer
If you are interested in BW/4HANA and would like to learn more about the possible applications as well as the differences and requirements, we will be happy to support you with professional and technical expertise.
As a first step, we recommend a goal-setting workshop in which the key points of a target scenario are developed.