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By Mark Short

Is your organization looking to divest a part of your enterprise with data contained in your SAP systems?

Here are some migration-related best practices to explain how that works.

You basically have two options for a divestiture:

·       Clone and Go

·       Carve Out

When time is scarce and resources few, sometimes a Clone and Go approach will suffice. With Clone and Go, the source database is copied in its entirety and given to the divested organization. Typically, a no-compete arrangement is agreed to by both parties on day one of the divestiture so that the data can basically be the same.  

For a more formal approach, a Carve Out option allows for just the data that belongs to the divested organization to be carved out of the source database and put into a separate database that the divested organization can use going forward.

Regardless of which option is taken for the divestiture, the new organization will most likely need to migrate its SAP database to a new hosting facility.

This migration can be either "like for like," meaning that the operating system and database are the same as the original (minor version upgrades are allowed), or not. If the migration is like for like, then a simple database backup and restore approach should be sufficient to move the SAP database to its new home. If the migration is not like for like, then a standard SAP Heterogeneous System Copy will need to be executed in order to migrate the database to its new home.

Regardless of whether the migration is like for like or not, the divested organization should not wait until the last minute to plan and execute the migration. A standard Heterogeneous System Copy project can take several months to perform. Therefore, in order to avoid paying double for hosting services in the original hosting facility and the target hosting facility, the migration project should start well before the planned "go-live" divestiture run so that the go-live migration can begin as soon as possible.

Of the two, the Carve Out option is much more labor intensive. Here is a good article by Courtney Bjorlin from America's SAP Users' Group (ASUG®): https://www.asug.com/news/sap-software-and-divestitures-4-hard-earned-lessons-learned.

The Carve Out option can flow like this:
 
First, create a one-off copy of the production database to work on in order to avoid disrupting business as usual productive work.

Next, a team of functional experts and technical experts for the SAP system is formed in order to find all the database records effected by the divestiture. This phase can use a variety of tools such as the SAP System Landscape Transformation Replication Server (SLT) tool and SNP's Transformation Backbone (T-Bone) tool. The SNP T-Bone tool provides the granularity to carve out lower level divestiture details.

Once the team has the process finalized and tested, a go-live run is scheduled to create a new SAP database for the divested information.

The new database for the divested business entity can now be migrated, using approved SAP migration approaches and tools, from the source hosting facility to the new hosting facility.