- SAP Managed Tags:
This is the beginning of a multi-part blog post series and right now, I can neither tell you, how many episodes it will eventually have, how much time will elapse between the episodes and for how long the series will run all told. Your guess is basically as good as mine!
Part 1 will mostly set the stage and briefly explain our migration project to move from a NetWeaver 7.50 EHP8 system landscape to S/4HANA 2309 (hosted in the cloud but "on premise") with the plan to be completely done in 2027 before NW7.50 goes out of maintenance.
Our current system landscape
We have two main ERP landscapes, one for worldwide (WW) systems which cater to the needs of our subsidiaries around the globe and another one for the headquarter (HQ). Both landscapes are basically 3-tier with Dev - Test - Prod. However, the WW landscape has 4 test and 4 prod systems roughly aligned by different timezones (Europe, Americas, Pacific and Middle East) but they share the same code base.
In addition, we have one central development system which is mostly used to implement OSS-notes which then feed into both landscapes to keep them in sync. This system is also used for the maintenance of dictionary objects in our Z-namespace.
We have been on a HANA database for several years already and have a central ATC-system available which has already been set up as an S/4HANA system, so we can run all the needed S/4HANA readiness checks from there.
The conversion to Business Partner hasn't happened yet but is getting underway right now.
Our rough plan for the migration
A few weeks ago we had the official kick-off for our transform project which will be a joint project done by IT and user departments and split into several teams. Given that I'm part of the developers team, this series will focus on topics related to - guess what? - ABAP development activites!
This is how we plan to do the project:
We will do the migration and conversion for the (large) worldwide landscape first, but in steps from small to large systems and not with a big bang at the end. As a first step, the central (#1 in the image above) and WW development (#2) systems will be copied to new dev systems which will then go through all the necessary conversion steps to get them to S/4HANA, leveraging information provided by @OlgaDolinskaja (and others) in presentations like this one about the Custom Code Migration App. We already know that this will be quite a big task given the thousands of findings the S/4HANA readiness checks found. We do have some hope, though, that a good chunk of them will be possible to get under control with the help of quick fixes.
On the other hand, we have pretty good usage data collected for almost 5 years which we can import into the development systems in order to eliminate no longer used custom code with the help of the Custom Code Migration app before we even look at the readiness check findings in detail. If we are lucky, this will take about 1/3 (if not more) of the objects out of the equation as we'll move them to a deletion transport and get rid of them for good.
In parallel, the smallest prod system will be copied (Middle East, #3) and converted via the transports from the new development system so that testing can start as soon as possible in a "test project system". This step will also include the switch to business partner and will therefore make cleaning up of the master data necessary
Once this first system is "up and running" properly, it'll be rinse and repeat for the next WW system and the first system will lay dormant for quite some time as we move to the next one. If everything goes according to plan, about a year later, the four WW-systems will be ready for the switch to S/4HANA sometime in 2026 with the go-lives staged a few weeks apart after a most likely lengthy and in-depth testing phase.
Afterwards, we'll go through the excercise again for the headquarter systems which we want to have the go-live for in 2027.
Some other considerations
Not too surprisingly, we'll also have to deal with many add-ons, some of which have been implemented in the Z-namespace. There are also large country specific developments like the ones for Nota Fiscal in Brazil or the tax handling in the USA which will require involvement from developers tackling these objects locally in some cases with the help of external consultants. And, there will be surprises lurking for us as we move along!
And before I forget: There’ll obviously be concurrent changes in the “legacy” ERP NW7.50 landscape for which we’ll set up some kind of retrofit to incorporate changes made in the code base adapted for S/4HANA. We just hope that these changes will not come up with too many S/4HANA Readiness Check findings! One can always hope for the best, right?
So, that's the admittedly very rough sketch of what we'll be busy with for the next 2 1/2 years. I'd be very interested in any thoughts and feedback any of you might have - especially if you have gone through a comparable project already and know where some large and small stumbling blocks might be we should be aware of.
Thanks for reading and hope you'll join me for this journey!
Cheers
Bärbel
Continued in part 2 published April 10, 2025 - A journey from Netweaver 7.50 to S/4HANA - Part 2: What's Cooking?
1 Comment
| User | Count |
|---|---|
| 11 | |
| 8 | |
| 5 | |
| 5 | |
| 4 | |
| 4 | |
| 3 | |
| 3 | |
| 3 | |
| 2 |
