Every success comes with a new set of challenges. In fact, the bigger the success, the bigger the challenge that follows. A client of Wharfedale Technologies experienced this reality firsthand. The client in question is a U.S. based global medical device company driven by a mission to help surgeons provide better patient care.

In 2015, the client experienced unprecedented growth. By ‘unprecedented’ we are talking about a 400% increase in sales! After such growth, in came several glaring problems and challenges.

Since the client ran its business on SAP, all of its challenges and problems centered on their SAP landscape. These challenges included unplanned downtime for the client’s 24x7 SAP landscape, longer new server provisioning time, no high availability/disaster recovery solution, and an overall high cost of running its SAP infrastructure.

In addition to these challenges, the client’s previous vendor lacked flexibility in deploying and managing the client’s SAP infrastructure. The previous vendor also failed to provide any transparency regarding the client’s SAP infrastructure.

Finding the Solution

With an increased demand for the client’s products worldwide, the challenges they were facing with their SAP landscape needed to be addressed.

The client wanted a more cost-effective, dynamically scalable, and reliable way to run their production SAP landscapes and other applications 24x7x365 with 99.9 availability. They also wanted an agile way to deliver IT by outsourcing SAP Basis and cloud infrastructure.

The client ultimately conducted an ERP Technical Transformation Program and chose Wharfedale to oversee their SAP Cloud Migration along with 24x7 managed services. Moving the client’s SAP ECC and BW systems to HANA database was also part of this transformation program.

A Proven SAP Transformation Methodology

The client’s SAP landscape comprises ECC, BW, CRM, TREX, Portal, PI, GRC, Vertex, Paymetric, GTS, Adobe, ATS, Fiori, QIM, Biller Direct, TDMS, SLD and Solution Manager running on a Windows/SQL platform in Europe (Outsourced Data centers).

Our Project Scope Included:

• Seamless Migration from Current Hosting to Microsoft Azure Cloud
• SAP High Availability and Disaster Recovery Setup
• EHP Technical Upgrade
• HANA Migration (DMO migration to HANA)
• Migrate 220+ SAP systems to Microsoft Azure

Wharfedale presented an end-to-end solution to the client which included an evaluation of their existing SAP landscapes running on their outsourced provider in Europe and a feasibility study to evaluate the potential success of a minimal downtime SAP to Azure migration.  From there we used our 74 factor SAP methodology to help the client land their SAP landscape into Microsoft’s Azure Cloud European region. Keeping their data in Europe allowed the client to comply with Safe Harbor (EU-US Privacy Shield) policy.

With our experience and unique 74 factor, methodologies Wharfedale helped the client migrate their SAP landscape to Azure without incurring additional licensing costs. We also helped the client save considerable licensing costs using Hybrid Use Benefit (EA / HUB Licensing).  

For the migration of the client’s SAP ECC and BW systems to HANA database, we sized HANA servers according to SAP HANA TDI (Tailored Data Center Integration) standards within Azure and used DMO (Database Migration Option) process to execute the migration to HANA. We followed SAP best practices as we performed Mock Runs, Impact Analysis, Code Remediation, ABAP Changes and migration to HANA.

Another critical component of this project was the implementation of the client’s SAP High Availability and Disaster Recovery. With our expertise in cloud design with High Availability (HA) we maintained synchronous replication within the storage devices between primary and secondary nodes to provide 99.9% availability within Azure for the client’s SAP Production and critical systems.

We also created a Disaster Recovery solution for the client between West Europe and North Europe using both Azure Site Recovery Services and HANA Replication Services to support 2-hour RTO and 5-minute RTO requirements with fully automated fail-over and failback capability.

Real-Time Benefits on Azure

Wharfedale migrated the client’s 220+ SAP systems to Azure with very little business disruption. With a successful migration to Azure and Wharfedale’s business continuity solutions, the client realized these 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.

Increased Cloud Adoption

The solution Wharfedale implemented for this client is one we believe meets the needs of many organizations looking to migrate their SAP landscapes to a cloud-based environment. Considering the ‘new normal’ of doing business as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, we expect to see more companies adopting cloud-based solutions to keep their business as agile and flexible as possible to respond to whatever the future throws at them. As they do, we’ll provide them with comprehensive and cost-effective solutions to ensure their SAP cloud transformation is seamless.

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