4 HANA Migration Topics that you need to be well prepared before facing CIOs

[Former Member]

Each of us trying to convince customers to migrate HANA from anydb. Most probably this is one the most important job among the sales and presales people in SAP EcoSystem.

Year 2014 and 2015 I have visited, met and discussed with many executives (especially with CIOs, IT directors or managers) to help them to understand and digest the benefits of HANA. Thanks to SAP and SAP community we are now in a very good position with the help of great resources, documents and articles to bring customers the benefits of HANA.

Once the customers really get the idea of migrating to HANA, real challenges and questions came across. Here the topics that I have prepared:

Deployment Options

For me there are 3 main options: On-premise, Hybrid or Cloud Based. This depends on the customer DNA and regional constraints. In my region EMEA, most of the compaines really want to have their system stand by them. Also because of some the legal constraints (financial documents should be kept within the country) some information should be kept local. So I strongly recommend you to have accurate information of all deployment options and find the best option with customer. Please do not try to push the customer to one option. Here is very good document prepared by jan.teichmann will really help you Overview of SAP HANA Deployment Options

Sizing

This is one of the most important task that really impacts the TCO. You need to help customer to shrink the existing data. Use the advantage of HANA and find the best way to shrink data. If you somehow convince customer to reduce data, this will turn back to you with smaller HW requirement and less time for migration. Anyway you may not shrink or reduce the data, however you need to be very accurate regarding sizing. Please read applebyj's great document Licensing, Sizing and Architecting BW on HANA

HANA Administration

All of the customers who are convinced and ready to migrate HANA definetly raised this question: How my existing staff will transform and manage to admin HANA environment? Personally I am totally agree with them, this should be very well explained and no blur area should be left. Please be prepared before meet the customer. Great resources  SAP HANA SPS 09 Administration: What's New - by the SAP HANA Academy by denys.kempen, SAP HANA Backup/Recovery Overview by andrea.kristen and finally HANA System Replication – Backup by helmut.petritsch2 will really help you.

Transformation of Existing SAP People

Of course HANA will change the game and bring many features and new abilities after migration, but who will drive and lead this change within the customer organization. Please be prepared this topic as well. Existing abap and BW/BO resources will not be out-of-the game, they will be easily adopted and get the throphy brought by HANA. This reality should be very well explained to the customer. Here are some articles that I have shared earlier, may help you. Where is my place in HANA as an experienced ABAP developer? and Where is my place in HANA as an experienced BW/BO Consultant ?

Cheers,

@sarhanpolatates