ERP applications such as SAP and Oracle EBS often form the foundation of an organization’s business process. These powerful applications consume enormous resources – time, cost, and headcount – while supporting modern business operations. In practice, these applications are not monolithic systems, but consist of multiple application modules, each requiring its own resources and expertise – and generating its own data.
ERP systems also serve as application platforms, and many firms build custom apps on top of their SAP or Oracle platforms. These apps make use of data and functionality within an ERP module, and allow each firm to extend off-the-shelf functionality to better support the firm’s own unique processes. Of course, each of the above modules in production, whether custom-built or purchased from the ERP vendor, requires multiple database copies for development, testing, troubleshooting, disaster recovery, etc. Modules also spawn data marts for reporting and analysis of information from multiple application modules.
As a result, ERP applications support many business operations but may do little to help speed up analysis of those operations. Real world customers may find that provisioning a database for a new module takes weeks, creating a database copy from that module (for downstream analysis) takes another week, and refreshing that copy takes yet another week, repeated every month. These processes require administrators in multiple groups (storage, DBA, servers, and application development) for support. In addition, upgrading the ERP system then requires a large investment in temporary databases, for development and testing, as well as certification, audit, and acceptance of the upgrade modules. The result is that it takes a great deal of time and money to gain value from ERP implementations. Delays and obstacles in the ERP development process can impact business success, limiting an organization’s ability to attack new opportunities.
Delphix transforms the ERP development equation for most organizations.
- By virtualizing the data in secondary copies of ERP databases, Delphix eliminates the time and cost of provisioning and maintaining physical databases
- By enabling self-service database and data mart creation, Delphix cuts the time required to deploy new application modules and reports from ERP data
- By eliminating the need to purchase and provision physical copies of temporary databases, Delphix significantly cuts the cost and time of an SAP or Oracle EBS upgrade
Case Study: F1000 Semiconductor Firm
A leading manufacturer in the semiconductor industry relies on its SAP landscapes to help plan and manage operations. As the business is fairly cyclical, the firm needs to scale up IT operations at certain points in time to handle demand without growing headcount to match peak levels. Historically, the firm was able to complete 2 SAP projects within a six-month period. By using Delphix to shrink delays in storage provisioning and data updates, the firm successfully completed 11 SAP projects during the same six-month period, with lower storage costs and no additional headcount. These projects included new ABAP development, new landscape module implementation, and upgrades to existing modules.
