TRANSFORMING SAP ECC SYSTEMS FROM LEGACY HARDWARE TO MODERN DATA CENTERS: OVERCOMING DATA INTEGRITY AND SECURITY CHALLENGES WHILE ENHANCING PERFORMANCE, SCALABILITY, AND OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE

Abstract Enterprise resource planning (ERP) Central Component (ECC) systems continue to play a core role in all types of enterprises; nevertheless, their dependence on old-fashioned hardware has led to severe performance, scalability, and security constraints. With the pace of digital transformation, businesses are under growing pressure to move the workloads of the outdated SAP ECC systems of the old, on-premise infrastructures to the new, high-performance data centers. This study will look into the transformation process, the strategies, and the challenges encountered in ensuring integrity, security, and continuity of operations during the migration process. The study intends to address three main questions: (1) How can SAP ECC systems be successfully migrated to the modern infrastructures without losing data reliability? (2) How can one create the most secure migration process, and (3) How is modernization the most effective way to promote performance, scalability, and resilience? The study will use a mixed-method design, combining quantitative performance measures with the qualitative data based on case studies of companies that have modernized SAP ECC. The results show that strategic migration systems with encryption, real-time replication, and virtualization systems significantly decrease latency, increase fault tolerance, and eliminate the dangers of data corruption. Additionally, implementing hybrid or cloud-based data center designs promotes scalability continually and enhances cybersecurity positioning. These findings highlight the need to combine performance optimization with data protection measures, and it is a systematic approach to the modernization of SAP ECC presented to enterprises that want to go green.