Our clients running SAP ECC are increasingly pressed to migrate to SAP S/4HANA®, the new ERP from SAP, as then 2027 deadline approaches. SAP intends to discontinue support for ECC and R/3 at that date, although support extensions will be readily available through 2030 and possibly later.
Moving to SAP S/4HANA is not trivial and is typicaly planned in multiple phases than can span more than 3 years. Such a migration, which is really a business transformation, can create significantly risk and costs to the business. This is why IBM is proactively making available leading software solutions and services that can significantly accelerate the transformation while mitigating costs and risks.
In January 2025 we announced the IBM Transformation Suite for SAP Applications. It is a comprehensive offering designed to simplify and accelerate the migration to SAP S/4HANA® and RISE with SAP. By combining software and services from IBM and recognized industry providers, it automates essential migration tasks, including technical assessments, data and code migration, code analysis and automated testing.
In this blog today I want to focus on the first component of the Suite, provided by our partner SNP. SNP Kyano is a major rebranding and repackaging of SNP's mature software and expertise, which you may have used under the name CrystalBridge. The new Kyano platform consolidates decades of expertise into a user-friendly interface accessible not only to consultants but also directly to customers.
We decided to partner with SNP because they are an uncontested leader in SAP transformation. In fact, they have performed more than 15,000 projects and have 77% market share in SAP S/4HANA selective data migration projects! Much of the added value and distinctiveness of SNP comes from their pioneering of the Bluefield™ approach.
So what is Bluefield exactly?
One standout feature of the SNP Kyano platform is its ability to support selective data migration using the Bluefield methodology, allowing companies to harmonize or carve out parts of their SAP landscape as needed. This flexibility is especially valuable in complex scenarios such as mergers, acquisitions, or divestitures.
Unlike traditional SAP migration approaches, Bluefield brings flexibility while maintaining SAP system consistency throughout the migration.
Think of Bluefield as a comprehensive, end-to-end, software-driven data migration methodology for SAP workloads. It covers the entire spectrum from the far left (Greenfield) to the far right (Brownfield).
With Bluefield you can address many scenarios not covered by the traditional SAP brownfield. For instance you can help clients who want to perform a technical upgrade even if they have not yet implemented the new GL. Or clients who want to leave data behind. Or clients who want to upgrade but at the same time need to do a carve-out for a specific business unit.
Bluefield can also benefit the other side of the spectrum. For instance, SNP encountered a client in the process of doing a Greenfield implementation yet ran into issues because they have very long maintenance cycles (> 10 years) and they needed to keep their complete history and document flow. The solution? Introduce Bluefield on top of the Greenfield implementation, to migrate just the required data, while keeping the whole system consistent.
No less than seven Global System Integrators are using Bluefield as part of their migration Portfolio, including Rapid Move from IBM Consulting®!
Deploying SNP Kyano Foundation
If you look at the contents of the Suite, you'll notice we have two orderable offerings in there: Kyano Foundation and Kyano Move. And we have optional components Kyano Foundation Assessment and Kyano Move Downtime Optimization.
Kyano Foundation is installed first, prior to the actual migration, and performs analysis of the existing SAP environment. This is an important step that a client can execute before they procure a Private Cloud or Public Cloud or RISE with SAP contract for their target environment.
Kyano Foundation offers comprehensive analysis capabilities that give organizations a 360-degree view of their existing SAP environment. This automated solution collects statistical metadata through a simple SAP transport installation, generating detailed dashboards and KPIs across five critical categories—data quality, technical complexity, archiving potential, system integrations, and geographical scope. These insights enable businesses to assess their readiness for migration, identify risks, and prioritize actions well before the actual project begins.
Here are key items to know about Kyano Foundation:
- It is installed on the existing SAP environment using an SAP transport. In most cases the SAP team can install it themselves without requiring external consultancy.
- Measurements are fully automated and uploaded to SNP. No action is required from the client.
- Kyano Foundation measures the SAP system continuously and assesses migration readiness.
- No confidential information leaves the site. All data collected during analysis remains within the customer’s system, ensuring privacy and security.
I urge any SAP client today, whether they are running ECC on IBM Power or on a non-IBM environment, to order Kyano Foundation from any authorized IBM Power seller or reseller. Again I want to highlight that it can be done before any decision is made on the target environment, and even before selecting a system integrator for the future migration.
Kyano Foundation is sold as a one-year subscription based on the number of systems to be analyzed.
Kyano Foundation Assessment
The client can elect to purchase Kyano Foundation Assessment, a packaged services offering sourced from SNP and their network of certified partners. This allows any client to obtain a migration assessment and practical advice before choosing the target environment (which could be RISE with SAP) and before selecting a system integrator to perform the migration and transformation.
It includes in particular:
- Kick-off preparation
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SNP software-based Analysis, including key areas:
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Used / Unused org. units
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SAP ECC module/comp. usage
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Org. structure and core process deviations
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Customizing Explorer (major topics)
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Custom development usage statistics
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Relevant SAP S/4HANA simpl-items list
- Consolidation and preparation of results in a presentation document.
- Workshop to present the final results and presentation.
Kyano Foundation Assessment is sold as a one-time-charge, one-year subscription, based on the number of systems analyzed.
Kyano Move
Kyano Move is designed to minimize risks & business disruption through an automated, streamlined process. It can perform carve-out and merging of SAP data, moving SAP data across data center, and of course moving to RISE with SAP with SAP S/4HANA.
There are "mandatory topics" when preparing a migration to RISE. A traditional SAP migration project without Kyano Move is typically split into multiple waves over several years. For instance, a first wave that includes EHP upgrades and New GL implementation, then a second wave in year 2 with master data harmonization and SAP S/4HANA conversion, then a third wave on year 3 with consolidation, document split, then moving to RISE in a final wave.
With Kyano Move and Kyano Manage, you combine these waves into a single project over less than two years, which considerably reduces migration costs!
Kyano Move executes the data migration itself at the database level, bypassing slower standard tools and enabling faster, more efficient transitions from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA. The migration process follows a structured approach starting with preparation and analysis, moving through workshops to define scope and strategy, followed by iterative test migrations and validations, culminating in a carefully planned go-live simulation designed to minimize downtime and business disruption.
Downtime Optimization
Ever heard the expression "cost of downtime"? It is a harsh reality that downtime (even if planned) is money lost, and large amounts at that. Think about a company like Pfizer, whose SAP environments is used by 130 countries and 37 manufacturing plants that operate 24x7. It is very disruptive to impose downtime on manufacturing as they are forced to switch to their business continuity solution.
Yet downtime is inevitable in a SAP migration. So SNP provides a Downtime Optimization option in their Kyano Move line-up available in the IBM Transformation Suite. Using this software technology and careful planning, SNP can reduced downtime from weeks to a few days, sometimes even less than a day.
One of the most spectacular recent example was at Adobe, where SNP managed to migrate more than 155 TB of source data with less than 21 hours of technical downtime. As for Prizer, 55 TB of source data were selectively migrated to 5.5 TB of SAP HANA data on Power10 in just 42½ hours (see our case study)
Link to resources
Please check out the announcement blog by Ramy Buechler .
If you are an IBM business partner, you can also type in "Transformation Suite" at ibm.seismic.com to access our comprehensive resource kit.