SAP System Decommissioning: Retire SAP
and Keep Full Access to Your Data with AvenDATA.
From SAP R/3 and ECC 6.0 to SAP S/4HANA, we decommission SAP systems of every generation and in every industry, including specialized industry solutions such as Bank Analyzer and IS-U. Our proven approach streamlines your IT modernization while keeping your data fully ready for CRA reviews, external audits, and legal requests. Running SAP HCM? Learn more about SAP HCM archiving.
The Challenge
Many organizations face a significant financial burden: legacy SAP systems continue to generate substantial costs long after they have lost their operational value. The reason is simple: you must retain this data to meet strict regulatory requirements and remain ready for audits at all times.
This creates ongoing risks and costs for your organization:
- Outdated infrastructure: constant, expensive maintenance or full hardware replacement
- Rising service contracts: external vendor fees that cut into your bottom line
- Tied-up IT resources: staff maintaining old systems instead of moving the business forward
- Security vulnerabilities: unsupported, end of life software
- High complexity: an aging system landscape that cannot scale
The result: Year after year, organizations, including many TSX-listed companies, pay high fees for systems that deliver no operational return on investment (ROI). What remains is significant and entirely unnecessary overhead.
Industry-Standard Platform
Backed by Over 17 Years of Experience
For over 17 years, AvenDATA has specialized in decommissioning SAP legacy systems. Across thousands of successful projects, we have continuously refined our methodology to make every project faster, safer, and more predictable.
Our approach helps you respond confidently to complex technical audits, CRA and regulatory inquiries, and legal discovery requests. We have a long track record of providing fully traceable and reliable answers for organizations that face close scrutiny from auditors, regulators, and the courts.
ViewBox has become an industry-standard platform for secure access to archived data. It performs reliably both for everyday audit work and for enterprise-wide data access, regardless of how much data you archive.
Today, more than 50 percent of TSX-listed companies rely on ViewBox: a definitive testament to our stability, flexibility, and elite performance.
From North America to Europe and Asia, enterprises rely on ViewBox for its stability, flexibility, and performance, and use it to modernize their IT landscapes with confidence.
Your SAP Analytics Live On as Interactive Reports
within ViewBox
Your critical reports remain fully functional even after SAP system decommissioning. We do more than migrate your data: we make sure you can actively use and trace every record in ViewBox, our industry-standard platform.
Our core capabilities at a glance:
- SAP standard reports: replication of essential standard reports and business analytics
- Custom reporting: including client-specific Z reports
- Supporting documents: invoices, purchase orders, and accounting vouchers are archived, so every report remains traceable
Before the project kick-off, we work with you to identify exactly which reports you will need in the future, whether for CRA and regulatory compliance, internal financial analysis, or legal requirements. Our deep cross industry SAP expertise ensures that your records are secured and remain usable.
Years later, ViewBox still gives you fast search and in-depth analysis capabilities. You get this with no additional SAP licensing costs and complete independence from the original legacy software.
Whether you face a CRA audit, an internal investigation, or litigation, ViewBox keeps you in full control with clearly structured, filterable, and compliant reports. Publicly listed companies and global enterprises rely on ViewBox to protect their historical data.
Rapid Execution and Measurable ROI
Even for Enterprise Scale SAP Systems
SAP system decommissioning typically takes one to six months, depending on technical complexity and data volume. Our highly structured, standardized methodology allows us to archive even the largest system landscapes efficiently and securely.
We have successfully migrated SAP environments of more than 30 TB into ViewBox, including all standard reports, custom Z reports, and complete audit documentation.
With our approach, you see significant savings right away. Licensing fees for SAP, ECM systems, databases, and operating systems are eliminated, while maintenance, infrastructure, and internal workload are reduced at the same time. See how this compares with SAP’s own approach in our overview of alternatives to SAP ILM.
In most of our projects, clients achieve full ROI in under one year. This fast payback is driven by measurable savings in licensing, infrastructure, and internal personnel costs, which is why TSX-listed companies and global enterprises choose our fast deployment to accelerate their IT modernization.
SAP
System Analysis
The first step in every SAP system decommissioning project is a thorough analysis of your existing environment. This analysis provides the baseline for a precise assessment of project timelines and costs and forms the foundation of your archiving roadmap. If you are moving to SAP S/4HANA, read more about archiving after an SAP HANA migration.
We carefully evaluate both the technical architecture and your business requirements, with a focus on:
- Access methods: how your existing SAP landscape can be accessed
- Database architecture: type, structure, and size of your data
- Reporting scope: relevance of your existing SAP reports
- System customizations: custom Z reports and specialized interfaces
We consolidate these findings into a binding fixed-price proposal. This gives you full budget certainty and a clear basis for decision-making on your IT modernization, and it helps you plan for long-term CRA and regulatory compliance and audit readiness.
SAP
Project Execution
After the initial system analysis, we start decommissioning your SAP system. We follow a highly structured, efficient, and proven process with clearly defined project milestones.
In a kick-off meeting, we agree on all organizational and technical requirements with your team. From that point on, our experts take full ownership of execution. This lets your team stay focused on day to day operations and significantly reduces the strain on your internal resources while we handle:
- Establishing secure access to your existing SAP landscape
- Extracting and migrating all relevant data
- Replicating essential reports, including your custom Z reports
- Documenting every project phase to ensure audit readiness and CRA and regulatory compliance
Our senior project managers lead the entire project from start to finish. They ensure a smooth workflow that reduces your operational overhead and keeps the effort required from your internal teams to a minimum.
Before closing the project, we guide you through thorough testing and acceptance phases. This allows you to verify that all data has been archived completely, correctly, and traceably, reducing litigation risks and bringing your SAP system decommissioning to a secure conclusion.
SAP
Final Outcomes of Legacy System Retirement
When the project is complete, all relevant tables, legal documents, and reports from your SAP system are available in ViewBox, our industry-standard platform.
ViewBox is a powerful web-based data access platform. You and your authorized users can run fast, highly secure, and fully traceable searches, even decades after SAP system decommissioning.
The key benefit: we accurately reconstruct all essential standard and custom reports, including your Z reports. This lets you run complex operational, tax, and legal compliance evaluations at any time, without any additional SAP licensing costs.
Once ViewBox is live and you have given your final acceptance, you can confidently shut down the original SAP system. This allows you to cut maintenance costs significantly and eliminate unnecessary infrastructure overhead.
At project close, we deliver complete procedural documentation to ensure long-term audit readiness. This audit trail clearly describes:
- The methodology used for the data migration
- The structure of your archived content
- The test protocols and results from all testing and acceptance phases
We also log every phase of the project in our secure Jira ticketing system, from the initial data export to final acceptance and the deletion of the source system. This complete record lets you demonstrate compliance to any external auditor, including the CRA, at any time. Learn more about our certifications.
Seamless Integration of ADK Archive Files
and DART Data Extracts
Beyond decommissioning your SAP system, we make sure you keep full control over your specialized historical data formats, so your IT modernization leaves no gaps in your data landscape:
- ADK Archive Files: We import your previously archived ADK data into ViewBox, giving you permanent access to these records, including for litigation.
- DART Data Extracts: ViewBox processes your DART extracts natively. You can run financial evaluations and meet CRA requirements long after your SAP system has been shut down.
ViewBox Enterprise
Use archived data from legacy systems securely and quickly
With ViewBox Enterprise, AvenDATA offers a powerful platform for secure access to data from decommissioned ERP systems and other legacy systems. The solution combines modern search and analysis functions with high performance, comprehensive security mechanisms, and intelligent AI-powered features.
ViewBox Enterprise ensures that your archived data:
- remains understandable and usable many years after a system has been shut down
- can be searched, filtered and analyzed quickly and precisely
- is available in an audit-proof, traceable form for both internal and external audits
- is protected against unauthorized access through role-based permissions
- can be analyzed more efficiently with the help of intelligent features
- remains available independently of the original application
One standout feature is automated, rule-based data deletion. Based on statutory, contractual, or internal company retention periods, data can be deleted in a controlled, traceable, and documented manner once the applicable period has expired. In this way, ViewBox Enterprise helps organizations meet their privacy and compliance requirements.
That way, historical company data stays available for the long term!
Ready to Take
Your Next Step?
During a free 60 minute executive consultation, we will review your SAP environment, whether you run SAP ECC, SAP S/4HANA, or SAP R/3. We will show you live how to streamline your SAP system decommissioning while keeping your data permanently usable and significantly reducing your maintenance costs.
During this executive briefing, you will receive:
- Strategic Alignment on data architecture, migration protocols, and reporting requirements
- A Live Demonstration of ViewBox, our industry-standard platform
- A Clear Breakdown of how we flawlessly replicate your critical SAP reports (including FI, CO, MM, and SD modules)
- A Definitive Assessment of project scope, timelines, and a binding fixed price proposal
Full transparency from day one:
Our project proposals are based on clearly defined fixed prices, with no renegotiation. We focus on quality, reliability, and an excellent ROI for listed companies and global enterprises. See what this looks like in practice for our clients.
Book your free executive consultation today to accelerate your IT modernization.
Instant Answers to Your Questions
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