Industrial vehicle manufacturer
Global vehicle manufacturer archives data to boost developer productivity and service innovation with OpenText™ Core Archive for SAP® Solutions
About the company
Summary
Challenges
- Rising SAP data storage costs and reporting delays.
- Needed to reduce production database size to develop new services faster.
- Week-long test environment lead times slowed development.
Solution
- Archived aging data from SAP production databases cost-effectively and securely with a cloud archiving solution.
- Leveraged a FasTrak approach to achieve a rapid deployment with a lean IT team.
Results
Reduced costs by archiving SAP data in the cloud
Shrunk delivery/deployment cycles by up to 70%
Accelerated business reporting
Laid a foundation for innovation
Challenges
- SAP production database was growing steadily, driving up storage costs
- Large volumes of aging data increased time to produce business reports, reducing efficiency
- Week-long lead times to refresh test environments slowed the development of new digital services
Operating globally, this company is a leading manufacturer of industrial machinery. By combining its products with a comprehensive range of maintenance, parts, and financing services, the company empowers customers to maximize the value of their assets.
A spokesperson for the industrial vehicle manufacturer said, “Our services portfolio is driving our long-term growth strategy. As a result, we aim to support the business with the digital capabilities they need to bring innovative, value-added offerings to market.”
Many of the organization’s employees rely on SAP solutions to carry out their day-to-day responsibilities. SAP business systems are integral to the smooth-running of the company’s operations, and also the foundation for planned new digital services.
After years of steady data growth, the manufacturer found that its SAP systems presented digital transformation challenges. Key reports took longer and longer to generate, reducing the efficiency of core activities such as financial controlling. Storage costs were rising as data volumes grew, and the company’s developers were constrained by the long lead time required to refresh test environments using SAP production data.
“We clone our production databases every time we refresh our test environments, and it used to take around a week to complete the process—lengthening our development cycles significantly,” explained the spokesperson. “By archiving some of this data, we knew we could reduce our storage costs, accelerate our continuous integration and continuous delivery [CI/CD] pipelines, and improve our ability to deliver new digital capabilities for the business.”
We’re looking forward to building on our success with OpenText Core Archive—the solution is helping us to keep our SAP systems lean and ready for digital transformation.
Solution
The manufacturer worked with OpenText Professional Services to archive and move legacy production data to OpenText™ Core Archive for SAP® Solutions.
Products deployed
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OpenText™ Core Archive for SAP® Solutions
Secure, cost-effective archiving for both SAP and non-SAP data, hosted in the OpenText Cloud
Services provided
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OpenText™ Managed Services
Migrate, update, optimize, or manage in cloud, on-premises, or hybrid applications to free IT while maintaining compliance, security, and availability
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OpenText™ Professional Services
Leverage a team of certified OpenText consultants with more than 25 years of experience in high level Information Management services
Selecting a future-ready solution for archiving SAP data in the cloud
With OpenText Core Archive for SAP Solutions, the company archived and backed up legacy production data from its SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA solutions with 99.9 percent target service availability and robust disaster recovery capabilities.
The spokesperson said, “We knew that a cloud approach would offer big advantages over an on-premises archiving solution. With OpenText Core Archive, there’s no need for us to provision, deploy, and manage our own infrastructure, which significantly reduces both capital and operational costs. The OpenText solution is also extremely convenient from the user experience perspective. Our business users can search for and access data in the same way as before—the change is completely transparent to most users in the organization.”
The spokesperson added, “Another key reason we selected OpenText Core Archive is the close strategic partnership between OpenText and SAP. OpenText has worked closely with SAP to develop an archiving solution that is tightly compatible with SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA, as well as cloud-native solutions such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Business Technology Platform. As a result, we have full confidence that OpenText Core Archive will continue to support our needs if we adopt a cloud-first strategy.”
Leveraging proven methodology for rapid deployment
To accelerate the implementation process, the company engaged OpenText Professional Services. Using the Core Archive Migration to the Cloud FasTrak approach, the team helped the manufacturer complete the deployment rapidly and smoothly.
The spokesperson commented, “Throughout the project, we were delighted that we could rely on an expert partner with a proven methodology. OpenText Professional Services guided us through the deployment process step by step and were always on hand to advise us and share best practices whenever we had questions.”
Working closely with OpenText, the manufacturer is now gradually moving data out of its production databases and into OpenText Core Archive, beginning with finance, logistics and sales, and distribution data.
The spokesperson said, “Thanks to the FasTrak approach, we completed our cloud migration in just six weeks. One of the biggest benefits of working with OpenText Professional Services is that you can set your watch by them—practically all the key project milestones were completed on time. We are a lean IT team in the middle of a major digital transformation, so it was really valuable to be able to utilize our time and resources so efficiently.”
OpenText Professional Services guided us through the deployment process step by step and were always on hand to advise us and share best practices whenever we had questions.
Results
With OpenText Core Archive, the manufacturer can securely store aging data from the SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA solutions that support its global business—improving operational cost-efficiency and laying the foundation for faster digital transformation.
Reduced costs by archiving SAP data in the cloud
Today, the company stores approximately 20 TB of production data across all its global SAP instances. Through its work with OpenText Professional Services, the company is steadily moving legacy data to the cloud—helping it to keep its business systems lean and performant.
“Our near-term target is to archive around 5 TB of data, and then keep our SAP production databases at that reduced size by continually moving data to OpenText Core Archive as it ages,” said the spokesperson. “We’re currently working with the business to define the appropriate data retention policies, but we’re confident that the OpenText solution will help us to significantly reduce our storage spend.”
Shrunk CI/CD cycles by up to 70%
Crucially, reducing the size of the production environment will allow the manufacturer to clone data faster, contributing to shorter CI/CD cycles and faster delivery of digital products to the business.
“At the moment, it takes around a week to refresh our test environments, but after we hit our archiving target, we predict that we’ll be able to complete the process in just two days—over 70% faster,” the spokesperson stated. “This will give us the opportunity to complete more development cycles in the same period. We will also be able to refresh our data more often, as we’ll be able to complete the process over a weekend.”
Accelerated business reporting
As it begins to move data to the cloud, the manufacturer is already experiencing the benefits. The company has accelerated key operational reports in SAP by pruning old records, delivering faster insights to business users.
“In the past, some of our financial reports were delayed because of the large number of historical orders in our SAP solutions, but today these reports complete significantly faster,” said the spokesperson. “Thanks to OpenText Core Archive for SAP Solutions, we’re improving the efficiency of our production planning and controlling processes. Reducing the size of our production databases will also be a big advantage if we upgrade our SAP ECC instances to SAP S/4HANA, since less data to migrate means less downtime for the business.”
Laid a foundation for innovation
Based on its success with OpenText Core Archive, the company is exploring the possibility of deploying OpenText™ Extended ECM for SAP® Solutions—creating a single point of control to store, share, and collaborate on documents.
“If we decide to move forward with OpenText Extended ECM, we’d be very interested in using the FasTrak approach to accelerate the deployment,” concluded the spokesperson. “Whatever the future holds, we’re looking forward to building on our success with OpenText Core Archive—the solution is helping us to keep our SAP systems lean and ready for digital transformation.”
