October 20, 2021

Why are IT system landscapes often heterogeneous?

AuthorFranz Diegruber

The amount and variety, as well as the management of information in the form of data is constantly growing. This presents companies with IT challenges. One example is the rapid exchange of information and secure collaboration across company boundaries. Many companies are struggling with their own historically grown IT application landscapes and IT infrastructures.

To simplify handling, many companies are therefore moving their IT systems to a homogeneous environment. The greatest advantage of this is simplified handling within the system. The processes into all systems as well as the handling can be kept simple. At the same time, it makes it possible to use tools e.g. for DB backup and restore across all systems.

Why are IT system landscapes often still heterogeneous?

On the one hand, this may be due to historical reasons. For example, it may be due to decisions made in the past that an OS and/or DBMS was selected, which is no longer used in the newly introduced systems.

In contrast to historical decisions, this can also be due to the fact that systems have already been migrated to a new landscape with a different OS and/or DBMS.

Another reason is a change of company namerebranding of the company, in which a heterogeneous IT system landscape had to be taken over. Often, what is available is used, even if it does not fit into the own landscape.

Last but not least: functionality. Not all OS are supported by all DBMS. For example, an MSSQL DB for SAP is currently only supported on the Windows OS. Or a HANA system is only executable on Linux.

Challenges when moving to a homogeneous system landscape

So why not just makepull everything "smooth" and move everything to a common OS with DBMS?
As explained in more detail in the section above, there are restrictions on which OS or even DBMS are supported for various applications.

Even if these functional limitations do not exist, there is often a lack of time, resources and money for such a migration. Therefore, many companies continue to use heterogeneous system environments with different workflows and tools in place.

What solution can still simplify handling?

In order to simplify handling despite this, tools should be used that support all OS with DBMS and also SAP UsageType combinations with the same range of functions as far as possible, as well as with largely identical handling.

Libelle IT Group can support you here as an expert with 27 years of experience. For us, one of the most important points is to make the handling of heterogeneous environments easier for you by providing these programs for as many combinations of OS, DBMS, SAP UsageTypes as possible with a consistently identical frontend and largely identical handling and process.


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