Everybody has them: historical reporting or reference systems that are kept to fulfil FDA compliance, financial reporting or other legal requirements. They are a great (first) SAP on AWS Use Case: Application Archiving to the Cloud with potential cost savings of over 90%.
You probably know the story: old SAP systems have been replaced by newer versions, local or regional implementations have been replaced by global SAP systems and acquisitions of companies using SAP and have been integrated into the acquirer’s corporate SAP system.
However, the data in those old systems are not migrated across and needs to be kept accessible to the business users. Mostly for legal reporting requirements be it FDA Compliance, Statutory Financial Reporting or others.
This results in a large number of legacy SAP systems which must be retained and are expensive to maintain in a traditional way: sitting in high cost ‘always on’ data centres, under expensive managed service agreements, with expensive software and database maintenance agreements – but are accessed very infrequently. And they form an IT headache as if something goes wrong, they are usually poorly known so it all takes so long to get right again.
Lemongrass Application Archiving Automation offering takes advantage of automation and the AWS consumption-based, on-demand pricing to retain a full copy of the legacy SAP (or even non-SAP) application so that it only incurs compute cost when needed. We engage with companies such as Rimini Street to provide a low-cost maintenance option for even out-of-support systems. We give users the full power to start the applications when needed. And when they need help, we are just a button click away.
A Case Study
- The customer is in the process of consolidating 20 separate SAP environments into a single global platform.
- The customer is operating under FDA regulations and has a legal requirement to keep access to historic data for a period of 10 years.
- The strategy is not to migrate the historic data of 20 systems into a new environment and to maintain the 20 systems as stand-alone environments.
- Maintaining the systems in the existing data centre will cost €2,500 per system per month or 20 x 12 x €8,500 = €2,040,000
- Running the systems in the Lemongrass Application Archiving Solution will cost on average €750 per system per month or 20 x 12 x €750 = €180,000, providing a 91% Operational Cost Saving.
All configuration, transaction, master and audit data are retained meaning you don’t need to replicate the complex business into another business reporting system or application. This is provided as a fully managed service with a self-service dashboard to start and stop the system when required (or even automatically shut-down if you forget!). Specifically, the offering includes:
- Simplified version of SAP on AWS. This removes existing, costly architecture such as clustering & DR.
- We create this installation on a low-cost Operating System and Database (Licensing & Infrastructure).
- All data is extracted from your source SAP system and imported to the new AWS architected system
- After reconciliation testing, the system is released to the end-users who are equipped with our MiCloud App. This allows them to start the system only when they need to access it.
- End-users can either stop the system using MiCloud or the system will idle self-stop after a pre-determined period of activity.
- You only incur significant “compute” charges whilst the system is being accessed
- the whole process can be completed in as little as a week
Our Application Archiving technology also unlocks additional cost-saving optimisations:
- Optimize your licensing: Application Archived systems typically only require a handful of licenses, and as there are no further application changes, maintenance license costs can be avoided.
- No need to maintain technical skills: This Lemongrass managed service avoids the requirement to maintain legacy support skills within the organization further optimizing RUN efficiencies.
- Downsize the footprint: As only a very few users are typically active systems can be run on very small & cost optimised EC2 instances from AWS, we can also optimise the EC2 instance used as newer, more cost optimised versions are released to further reduce costs.
- Visible costing: Our FinOps mobile application allows for daily visibility of costs and access to AWS price reductions, it’s not uncommon for us to see +80% operational cost benefits realised.
Costing: This depends upon your specific SAP scope but, a single application archive costs between $15,000 and $35,000 for the migration and incurs solution, AWS and support costs between $600 and $1,200 per month. AWS costs are charged as incurred.
If you’d like to find out more please do get in touch and also check out the AWS Solution Space package for a funded PoC to validate how Application Archiving could help streamline your SAP estate costs.
For more information email info@lemongrassconsulting.com or call on +44 (0) 844 357 786
