SAP, Business Objects Offer Joint Data Migration ServicesSAP, Business Objects Offer Joint Data Migration Services

SAP and its Business Objects subsidiary have introduced joint data migration services to assist companies in moving legacy data into an SAP enterprise resource planning system.

The latest offering consists of a framework, templates, methodology, tools and expertise to analyze, extract and transform, cleanse, validate, upload and reconcile data from multiple computing environments. SAP acknowledged that data migration has been a problem area in ERP deployments, but offered customer testimony claiming the joint offering reduces the cost of the process.

"Historically, data migration was a sticking point for our organization -- a burden that bled both time and resources that we didn’t necessarily have to spare in the first place," Gary McCune, SAP conversion team lead for Goodrich Corp., said in a statement. “The best practices and applications from SAP and Business Objects helped us eliminate added costs we once incurred, like custom scripting."

Goodrich has migrated data from 15 ERP systems spread across five business units using Business Objects technology, McCune said.

In introducing the new services, SAP is claiming it can help keep data migration projects within expectations. Such projects typically run over budget and require more time than initially expected.

Information management software from Business Objects, which SAP acquired in January, handles data quality and integration, as well as metadata management. The latter provides visibility in data relationships with mappings, impact analyses and data lineage. Business Objects' business intelligence technology is used to monitor and visualize data quality and the migration process from inception to conclusion, according to SAP.

"We support customers from the time migration projects start until long after they finish, when key initiatives like data governance best practices become imperative to analyzing and visualizing how corporate data is being used, and by whom," Clive Bellmore, VP for information management at Business Objects, said.

The latest services have been available since mid-November. Pricing was not disclosed.