Subscription-based models are quickly becoming the standard in many industries. For good reason: they offer more flexibility and are cost-efficient. And so manufacturing company Everlam decided to migrate their SAP S/4HANA to SAP’s cloud-based subscription RISE. Here’s how it went down.
Aligning Everlam’s IT infrastructure
Everlam is a producer of PVB, aka Polyvinyl Butyral interlayers. You know how, when a car window breaks, it doesn’t shatter into a million pieces? That’s what PVB does: it’s the layer inside the glass that makes it safer, more soundproof and offers UV-protection. Everlam produces this high impact resistant plastic material both for auto & architectural safety glass laminators.
While the production site is in Germany, Everlam’s HQ is located in Mechelen. Aligning the production center and HQ requires a performant IT infrastructure where multiple tools and systems interact in real time. Everlam was working with an older version (1511) of SAP S/4HANA and had a separate legacy system running on Oracle.
To stay futureproof, Everlam decided to migrate its existing SAP S/4HANA environment from an on-premise datacenter with a 2-tier landscape to a 3-tier landscape on the SAP RISE subscription model.
RISE with SAP: subscription-based cloud hosting
With RISE, SAP launched a new subscription model where it hosts the entire SAP landscape and SAP workflows in the cloud (offering a private and public cloud solution). For Everlam, the new hybrid SAP environment hosts a renewed S/4HANA-system on RISE private cloud, providing a futureproof infrastructure model.
Next to S/4HANA, they still have an Oracle based ECC legacy system which needed to be kept for auditing reasons. This has been migrated heterogeneously towards an ASE database on RHEL on a separate Microsoft Azure tenant.
Cost-efficient solution
“Cost was one of the main reasons to move to the cloud”, says Özcan Kaymaz, Purchasing and Business Improvement Director at Everlam. “Since our hosting contract came to an end, we wanted to find the most cost-efficient way of hosting the architecture. With the RISE model, you pay for what you actually use. Because the business constantly evolves, your future needs are never certain. So opting for a subscription-based cloud solution made sense.”
“We chose SAP’s RISE model over other cloud providers because of our portfolio. We use mostly SAP products, and RISE has the advantage of hosting the workflows between those systems within the cloud architecture."
"Not only was it a better deal due the economy of scale, but the integration between SAP products is much easier than with an external provider.”
Increased availability
“Another benefit of a cloud architecture is a higher availability”, Özcan continues. “In the chemical sector you need to keep your systems up and running 24/7. Every tool and program keeps sending data to our ERP, and any outage creates backlogs. By running SAP S4/HANA in the cloud, the system is always available which is more reliable and efficient.”
“When transplanting the heart of our IT architecture – SAP S/4HANA – from a physical location to the cloud, it’s crucial to make sure all connections still work as they should”, Özcan explains. “The biggest challenge in migrating to the cloud was testing and retesting all connected systems to assure that everything kept working the way it should.”
“Flexso played a crucial role in this migration”, Özcan continues. “Our on-premise S/4HANA was hosted by our previous hosting partner, and they did not allow access to the data to external people. Aligning all the stakeholders and managing access was a key challenge, which Flexso helped us with tremendously. Thanks to the clear communication, the right expectation and project management, we were able to successfully complete this migration.”
“We are now looking forward to more improvements in the future. The SAP dashboards already give us clever insights in the hosting management (usage, issues, security patches etc.). We are now looking to expand these dashboards to gain more business insights and improve reporting. The new architecture is truly futureproof”, Özcan concludes.
Ready to move your SAP infrastructure to the cloud, just like Everlam?
