Forge — SAP BW Decommission Accelerator

Replace SAP BW with Snowflake.
30–50% Faster. Lower Risk.

SAP BW reaches end-of-mainstream maintenance in 2027. Every organisation running BW as its primary analytics layer faces the same decision — and the differences in cost, risk, and long-term capability are significant. Forge is Jarvis's structured migration accelerator that makes Snowflake the fastest, lowest-risk path.

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Used by SAP programme managers across EMEA, ANZ & North America

Forge Programme Overview

40–60%

TCO Reduction over five years vs SAP analytics stack

30–50%

Timeline Saving vs bespoke migration build

12–16 wks

Typical Go-live from assessment completion

First workload in Snowflake production within 12–16 weeks of assessment completion

The Decision Every SAP BW Customer Faces

Three Options. One Deadline.
The Differences Are Significant.

With SAP BW end-of-mainstream maintenance arriving in 2027, every organisation running BW as its primary analytics layer faces the same choice. In our experience, it comes down to three credible paths — and the cost, risk, and long-term capability differences are material.

Higher Cost Path

Upgrade to SAP BW/4HANA or Datasphere

SAP's preferred route. Partially re-uses existing BW objects but requires new investment in SAP HANA infrastructure or SAP BTP licensing. Does not eliminate SAP dependency — it deepens it.

BW/4HANA requires significant HANA infrastructure investment
Datasphere creates ongoing SAP BTP licensing dependency
Complex custom ABAP logic must still be addressed
AI and real-time analytics remain structurally limited
Five-year TCO consistently 40–60% higher than Snowflake

Suits: organisations with strategic commitment to the full SAP ecosystem

Deferred Risk

Extend Maintenance and Defer

Purchase SAP Extended Maintenance beyond 2027. Buys time but worsens the underlying problem every year it is deferred.

Extended maintenance premium: 20–30% above current rates
SAP's commitment to extended timelines has historically changed
No new features, no AI capability, no cloud-native integration
ABAP developer pool continues to shrink each year of delay
Board and audit scrutiny of unsupported enterprise software increasing

Suits: organisations that cannot resource migration now and have a concrete plan for when they will. Not a permanent strategy.

Recommended Path

Migrate to Snowflake with Forge

Decommission SAP BW entirely and replace with a modern, cloud-native analytics platform built on Snowflake. Severs the SAP licensing dependency completely. Full platform independence.

40–60% TCO reduction over five years — consistently achieved
Query performance: workloads that take minutes in BW run in seconds
Native AI, ML, and real-time analytics — not add-ons
Snowpipe enables near-real-time ingestion from any source system
Eliminates ABAP specialist dependency post-migration

Forge makes this path 30–50% faster and materially lower-risk than a bespoke build.

Why Forge Makes Snowflake the Right Path Now

The Barriers to BW Migration Have Been Solved.
Forge Removes Them.

Migrating from SAP BW to Snowflake has historically been perceived as high-risk — undocumented ABAP logic, hundreds of BEx queries, and the challenge of validating Snowflake output matches BW to the CFO's satisfaction. Forge removes those barriers.

Discovery & Landscape Assessment

Automated BW object inventory identifying active, redundant, and obsolete InfoProviders, DSOs, and InfoCubes. Usage analysis, data volume profiling, and complexity scoring. Output: a migration roadmap with phased sequencing and risk-adjusted timeline.

Migration roadmap · 2 weeks · Fixed fee

Migration Design

Snowflake data model design mapping InfoCube and BEx Query logic to native Snowflake equivalents. ABAP-to-SQL conversion for custom transformation logic. ETL re-platforming from BW process chains to Snowflake native pipelines.

Pre-built templates for Finance, Sales & Supply Chain

Data Migration & Validation

Historical data migration with full reconciliation. Automated validation framework comparing BW report outputs against Snowflake equivalents at row and aggregate level. Parallel run period with side-by-side sign-off for finance and audit teams.

Automated reconciliation · CFO sign-off evidence

BI Layer Migration & Go-Live

Migration of SAP BusinessObjects or Lumira reporting to Power BI or Tableau. Business user training and change management. Post-go-live support and Snowflake platform handover. Managed service options available.

BAU reporting live throughout · No big-bang cutover

The Snowflake Advantage

Why Not SAP Datasphere or BW/4HANA

Six structural reasons Snowflake wins — on cost, performance, capability and talent. Not marketing claims. Real numbers, real architecture differences.

Cost

Snowflake separates storage and compute — pay only for what you use. No HANA infrastructure, no BTP fees, no SAP per-user licensing on the analytics layer. 40–60% TCO reduction over five years, on real numbers.

Performance

Multi-cluster shared data architecture delivers query performance BW cannot match. Workloads that take minutes in BW run in seconds on Snowflake — without tuning or index maintenance.

AI & Analytics

Snowpark allows Python, Java, and Scala to run directly inside the platform — next to the data. ML, forecasting, and AI-driven analytics are native. BW has no equivalent path to this capability.

Real-Time Data

Snowpipe enables event-driven, near-real-time data ingestion from any source. BW's batch-oriented architecture is structurally unsuited to real-time use cases — it cannot be refactored to compete.

Data Sharing

Native data sharing allows governed, zero-copy data access across business units, partners, and regulators — without creating data copies. BW has no equivalent. This alone opens new commercial and compliance capabilities.

Talent

SQL-proficient data engineers can work directly with Snowflake. The dependency on scarce, expensive ABAP specialists is eliminated post-migration. Forge handles the ABAP complexity during migration so you don't have to.

What You Get

What a Forge Conversation
Gives You

Start with the Forge AI assistant, or a short conversation with a Jarvis SAP specialist. Either way you walk away with a personalised, plain-language read on your migration — not a generic pitch.

Complexity Tier Rating

Your environment categorised as Foundational, Intermediate, or Enterprise-Complex — with realistic timeline and resourcing implications for each tier.

Top Migration Risk Factors

The specific risks most likely to affect your programme — semantic model exposure, reconciliation requirements, talent gaps, or process chain volume.

Indicative Timeline Range

A realistic delivery window for your complexity tier — so your business case has credible numbers from the outset, not industry averages that don't reflect your environment.

Recommended Next Step

Whether that's a technical discovery workshop, a proof-of-concept, or a phased roadmap session — a clear recommendation based on your actual situation.

Talk to Forge

Have a Question? Just Ask.

If you have any questions, want to get in touch, or want to run a quick readiness check on your SAP BW environment — try our AI assistant. It answers in plain language, any time, and can hand you over to a Jarvis SAP specialist whenever you're ready.

Forge AI Assistant

Ask anything about migrating SAP BW to Snowflake

No forms to fill in. Ask a quick question, get a feel for what the 2027 deadline means for you, or walk through what a Forge programme looks like for an environment like yours.

“How long would a BW migration take for us?” “What does the 2027 deadline mean for our team?” “What’s included in a Forge programme?”

Prefer a human? Get in touch and a migration specialist will pick it up.

What the assistant can help with

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Quick answers on moving from SAP BW to Snowflake with Forge

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A simple read on how complex your BW environment is likely to be

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What the 2027 SAP BW maintenance deadline means for your timeline

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A clear next step — and a warm handover to a Jarvis SAP specialist whenever you want one

SAP BW End of Mainstream Maintenance

2027

Planning, procurement, migration, and validation take time. The enterprises that transition smoothly are making decisions now.

Replace SAP BW with Snowflake.30–50% Faster. Lower Risk.

Three Options. One Deadline.The Differences Are Significant.