Car racing is a team task. Even the most experienced and clever driver relies on the skills, expertise and cooperation of his colleagues at the command post and in the pit lane. The procedure of a race weekend alone demonstrates this: The analysis of the race track, the preparation and execution of the race as well as the interaction between people and high-precision technology are to be understood as parts of a complex project which must be perfectly coordinated.

“From the team’s point of view, the race itself is only one part of our sport,” explains Timo Glock. “Racers fear nothing as much as accidents or downtime. That’s why we plan every little detail in advance as far as possible to rule out any unpredictability. Unlike sometimes in business life, improvisation is not a lucky coincidence for our teams, but an emergency solution.”

This meticulousness already starts at the planning stage. Every possible aspect is taken into account, from the challenges of the route, to tactics adapted to different weather and surface conditions, to how to achieve the optimum weight of the vehicle. Furthermore, the interaction between the vehicle’s technology and the driver’s skills, but also the engineers and mechanics, has a direct impact on race tactics.

“Migration projects such as the switch to SAP S/4HANA are also extremely complex. Often, however, not all aspects that could reduce effort and accelerate success are taken into account,” says Thomas Failer referring to more than 1,000 successful international projects. “One of these aspects in particular is the ‘weight problem’. Most companies carry around legacy data and systems for decades with them each time they make a change. This not only delays and increases the cost of the migration itself, but also burdens the IT budget in the long run. In addition, outdated technology harbours more security and legal risks than ever before. This means that financial resources and personnel resources that are urgently needed for the modernization and digitization of companies remain tied up. If existing SAP customers do not take a different approach, they will not start the SAP S/4HANA migration in pole position, nor will they reach one of the top finishes.”

The pole position: a question of architecture

Taking the best starting position when migrating to SAP S/4HANA is a question of the right architecture – and a modern, system-independent environment for data, documents and their business context, which are no longer required in the operative systems, is the means of choice. Such a cutting-edge environment allows you to manage the entire lifecycle of legacy data and documents seamlessly using retention management functionality. This explicitly includes the targeted deletion of data and documents. As a result, legacy applications can be switched off, resulting in operational savings of up to 80 percent compared to their continued operation.

But more importantly, when business data and documents are outsourced to this environment as soon as they are no longer needed, current applications and systems remain lean and agile over time. As a rule, operational data volumes can be reduced by 50 to 75 percent. Any unnecessary burdens can thus be avoided.

This fundamental change in the IT architecture – the separation of the application level from the data level – also represents the ideal prerequisite and preparation for the upcoming migration to SAP S/4HANA.

If the data and content no longer required from the operative applications are continuously transferred to a legally secure, system-independent platform, the company IT becomes significantly more agile, even independently of migration projects, and can support a wide variety of business scenarios with very little effort: acquisition and sale of companies and business units, which always mean the import and export of business data and documents; the consolidation of heterogeneous application landscapes into central systems such as SAP; the consolidation of globally distributed data centres at central locations; or the improvement of data quality, one of the essential prerequisites for digital business models.

SAP CONNECT 2018: Data Migration Services AG presents JiVS

The Java-based platform JiVS was developed exactly for such agile business and application scenarios. JiVS is characterised by the fact that data from shut-down legacy systems, as well as the associated documents in their business context, can be stored in a legally secure manner and managed over their entire life cycle. JiVS is thus a core element of an agile application landscape in companies.

JiVS was developed by Data Migration Services AG, founded in 1996 located in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland. The global provider’s customer base includes well-known companies such as ABB, ABInBev, ALSTOM, Lafarge Holcim, Mercedes, General Electric and, in Germany, Commerzbank and Deutsche Telekom.

Achieving the goal together: Data Migration Services AG is looking for partners

SAP consulting companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland will soon be faced with a flood of requests to support businesses in migrating to SAP S/4HANA. But resources are limited, and in the worst case, inquiries must be rejected.

To avoid this situation, Data Migration Services AG has launched a partner programme and invites SAP experts in German-speaking countries to be trained for the JiVS platform in order to implement it for their customers.

Interested visitors can obtain first-hand information from company founder Thomas Failer or Tobias Eberle, CEO of the JiVS provider, at booth number 14, Data Migration Services AG, at the SAP CONNECT 2018 on November 6 and 7 in Düsseldorf.

Autograph session with Timo Glock

On 6 November, racing driver Timo Glock will sign autographs for racing fans at the Data Migration Services AG booth from 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. and from 4:45 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Pictures of Timo Glock can be downloaded here.

Picture credits: „Copyright © Samir Zorlak“