SAP B1 -- improve performance using read-only replicated db?

Hi, we're using 2007 on SQL Server 2008 R2.

We got lots of locks and slow performance on both SAP B1 program and DIAPI (NOTE: we have our own intranet program that's both reading data using ADODB and writing data using DIAPI).

One suggestion we got to alleviate this was to replicate the database (company and SBO-COMMON) into a read-only database, and change the intranet program's read operations to use this replicated database.

Before we proceed, may I ask if:

- Will this work/help with the performance?

- Will replication work using the same SQL Server machine? (we still have plenty of disk space and CPU usage is relatively low).

- Any possible side effects? (we WILL NOT use SAP B1 program on this replicated db... only read operations will use this).

Please advise.

Thanks.