Every success comes with a new set of challenges. In fact, the bigger the success, the bigger the challenge that follows. This truth was experienced firsthand by one of our clients. The client is a global medical device company driven by a mission to help surgeons provide better care for patients.

In 2015, this U.S based medical company has experienced unprecedented growth. By ‘unprecedented’ we are talking about a 500-600% increase in sales! After this unprecedented growth, a number of glaring problems rose up.

Since the company ran its business on SAP, all of their challenges centered around their SAP landscape. These challenges included unplanned downtime for their 24x7 SAP landscape, longer new server provisioning time of 2 weeks, a lack of high availability/disaster recovery solution, and a high cost of running their SAP infrastructure. With an increased demand for their products worldwide, these challenges had to be addressed.

To reduce the cost of running their SAP landscape and overcome other challenges, the client considered a migration to cloud . For them Cloud Computing was a viable alternative to investing in data centers, server farms, and infrastructure technicians.

The Client ultimately decided to conduct an ERP Technical Transformation Program and chose Wharfedale to oversee their SAP Cloud Migration along with 24x7 managed services. They also wanted Wharfedale to move their SAP ECC and BW systems to HANA database as part of this transformation program.

Considering their business case, the client decided to host their SAP landscape on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. Azure offered the client a secure and robust cloud platform with the most scale and performance optimization for SAP HANA. With the Azure cloud platform and a service partnership with Wharfedale Technologies, the client had a strong cloud infrastructure and the expertise to help manage it.

After auditing the client’s SAP infrastructure, Wharfedale’s cloud architects presented a complete solution using their unique 74 factor SAP Transformation methodology. With the application of their unique 74 factor SAP Transformation methodology, Wharfdale’s cloud architects were able to seamlessly migrate the client’s 250+ SAP systems to cloud with minimal business disruption. Some additional solutions implemented for the client include:

• SAP High Availability through Enqueue Replication which protects the client against SPOF (Single Point of Failure) and provides 99.9%
• SAP Cloud dashboard to provide insights and visibility to the client with real time costs, KPI’s landscape replication and cost optimization.
• Wharfedale’s SCIF (SAP Cloud Image Factory) to help the client get new servers provisions quickly, reducing process from weeks to hours.
• A Disaster Recovery solution using Azure Site Recovery Services and HANA replication services to support business critical  RTO requirements with automated failover and failback capabilities
• Migration to HANA

After implementing these solutions, the client experienced the following benefits:

• SAP system performance improvement of 52.89%
• Uptime improved to 99%
• 30% cost reduction
• Faster server provisioning (hours vs days)
• Faster system refreshes (hours vs weeks)
• High Availability for Critical SAP Landscapes
• Disaster Recovery for SAP Production Environment
• Reduced TOC (Total Cost of Ownership)
• Dashboard to monitor current costs and expected future costs with cost breakdown
• World Class 24x7 Managed Services.

Not only did the client receive all these benefits, these benefits came with no upfront cost thanks to Wharfedale’s Zero Dollar Down Subscription Model. Under this subscription model, if a client signs a 36-month managed services contract with Wharfedale, we migrate their SAP Landscape to Azure, perform a HANA technical migration as part of the managed services without any additional charge for migration.

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