Case Study: Grenzebach achieves faster operations, a 50% smaller database and 80% maintenance cost savings with SAP HANA

Building a Foundation for Future Innovations with SAP HANA

Grenzebach, a German high‑tech mechanical engineering and plant‑construction firm with over 50 years of experience, provides bespoke automation and production solutions. To support Big Data projects and future SAP systems while cutting database license and maintenance costs, the company needed a modern in‑memory platform to replace its Oracle backend and boost core process and analytics performance.

Grenzebach migrated its SAP Business Warehouse and SAP ERP (plus SAP BusinessObjects Analysis and SAP Crystal Reports) to SAP HANA, consolidated into a compact global instance, enabled VMware virtualization, and completed the project in six months using only in‑house resources. The switch delivered a 50% smaller database, more than 3× faster monthly closes (from 30 minutes to 5–10 minutes), roughly 80% savings on maintenance, and a lower‑cost, future‑proof platform for moves to SAP S/4HANA and IoT.

Grenzebach

Markus Braun

CIO