Forge — Your SAP BW Exit, Done Right

The decision every SAP BW customer faces

Three options. One deadline. The differences are significant.

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

Path A · Higher cost

Upgrade to BW/4HANA or Datasphere

SAP's preferred route. Partially reuses BW objects but requires new HANA infrastructure or BTP licensing. Doesn't eliminate SAP dependency — it deepens it.

HANA infrastructure or ongoing BTP licensing required
Custom ABAP logic still has to 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.

Path B · Deferred risk

Extend maintenance and defer

Buy SAP Extended Maintenance beyond 2027. Buys time but worsens the underlying problem every year it's deferred.

Extended-maintenance premium: 20–30% above current rates
No new features, no AI capability, no cloud-native integration
ABAP developer pool shrinks every year of delay
Board and audit scrutiny of unsupported software is rising

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

Jarvis recommended

Path C · Recommended

Migrate to Snowflake with Forge

Decommission SAP BW entirely. Replace with a modern, cloud-native analytics platform. Sever the SAP licensing dependency on the analytics layer completely.

40–60% TCO reduction over five years — on real numbers
Native AI, ML and real-time analytics — not add-ons
Snowpipe enables near-real-time ingestion from any source
Eliminates ABAP specialist dependency post-migration
Automated reconciliation → CFO sign-off confidence
Forge cuts migration timelines by 30–50% vs bespoke

Suits organisations ready to decouple analytics from SAP licensing and move to native AI + real-time capability.

How Forge works

The barriers to BW migration have been solved. Forge removes them.

Undocumented ABAP logic, hundreds of BEx queries, and the challenge of validating that Snowflake output matches BW to the CFO's satisfaction — these are the things that have stalled BW migrations for years. Forge ships pre-built tooling for all three.

Step 01 · 2 weeks · Fixed fee

Discovery & Landscape Assessment

Forge connects over native SAP RFC — read-only, no agents or add-ons — and auto-detects your landscape (BW on ECC, BW on S/4HANA or BW/4HANA). Automated object inventory of InfoProviders, DSOs and InfoCubes in under three minutes, with usage analysis, data-volume profiling and complexity scoring. Output: a phased migration roadmap with risk-adjusted timeline.

Migration roadmap delivered

Step 02

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-platformed from BW process chains to Snowflake native pipelines, rebuilt as a clean FACT / DIM / V_ star schema with auto-generated dbt models.

Pre-built templates for Finance, Sales & Supply Chain

Step 03

Data Migration & Validation

Historical data migration with full reconciliation. Automated validation compares row counts SAP vs Snowflake for every object, producing a signed-off summary report each. Parallel run with side-by-side sign-off for finance and audit — and delta (incremental) loads ready immediately to keep Snowflake live.

Automated reconciliation · CFO sign-off evidence

Step 04

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

Why Snowflake, not BW/4HANA or Datasphere

Six structural reasons. Not marketing claims.

Real numbers, real architecture differences. For organisations that have run the five-year TCO comparison on their own infrastructure, BTP licensing, ABAP contractor spend and Basis overhead — Snowflake consistently lands 40–60% cheaper, with capability the SAP stack can't match.

£

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.

⚡

Performance

Multi-cluster shared data architecture. Workloads that take minutes in BW run in seconds on Snowflake — without tuning or index maintenance.

AI

AI & Analytics

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

⏱

Real-time Data

Snowpipe enables near-real-time ingestion from any source. BW's batch architecture is structurally unsuited to real-time — it cannot be refactored to compete.

⇄

Data Sharing

Native, zero-copy data sharing across business units, partners and regulators — without creating copies. BW has no equivalent. New commercial and compliance capability.

👥

Talent

SQL-proficient data engineers can work directly with Snowflake. The dependency on scarce, expensive ABAP specialists is eliminated post-migration.

What happens when you talk to Forge

A real conversation. A real assessment. No 30-field form.

Most BW migration sites ask you to fill in eight questions and wait for a salesperson. Forge replaces that with a short, focused conversation. You answer what's relevant to your environment. We send back the same outputs — sharper, in less time.

1

Your complexity tier

Foundational, Intermediate or Enterprise-Complex — based on landscape (BW 7.x on ECC, BW/4HANA, embedded in S/4HANA), object volume, and reconciliation depth. Realistic resourcing implications for each tier.

2

Top migration risk factors

The specific risks most likely to affect your programme — semantic model exposure, reconciliation requirements, talent gaps, process-chain volume. Not generic. Specific to what you tell us.

3

Indicative timeline range

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

4

Recommended next step

A technical discovery workshop, a proof-of-concept, or a phased roadmap session — a clear recommendation for your situation, not a generic pitch.

Forge

SAP BW → Snowflake migration specialist · online

Hi — I'm Forge. What brought you here today?

We're running BW on ECC and we have to be off it before 2027. Looking at options.

Got it. Quick one — is BW your primary platform for Finance reporting, or is that on something else?

Finance and Supply Chain both. Reconciliation is the bit that worries me.

That's the right thing to worry about. Forge ships an automated reconciliation framework — row and aggregate level — that produces CFO sign-off evidence during the parallel run. Want me to sketch what your complexity tier and timeline look like for that landscape?

Example conversation. Outcomes get written to your CRM the moment the conversation ends.

Your SAP BW exit is 2027.
Forge gets you to Snowflake — 30–50% faster.