SoftwareOne case study

Future-proofing infrastructure with SAP on Azure

A flexible future with SAP S/4HANA on Azure

SAP on Hyperscaler from SoftwareOne makes the complex simple for this global retailer. Substantial physical infrastructure replacement costs were avoided by moving to Azure. By transitioning its SAP solutions to S/4HANA on Azure, the business transformation meets current and future needs while accelerating processes, increasing security, and reducing costs.

Client: Global retailer
Industry: Retail
Platform: Azure Cloud
Services: SoftwareOne SAP on Hyperscaler Cloud

About the client

The company is a multi-billion-dollar global retailer with warehouse club operations across several countries. Its business revenues are in the tens of billions in sales annually, and the chain is the recognized leader in its field, dedicated to quality in every area of its business.

The challenge

The retailer confronted several challenges related to its aging infrastructure. Facing an extensive capital program to replace aging hardware prompted consideration for moving workloads to a public cloud. After work with Microsoft and SoftwareOne on an Architectural Design Workshop (ADS) and a pilot project, the customer decided to move the enterprise application stack to Azure. The initial consideration was to move the existing SAP landscape, but further analysis shifted the Azure transition decision to start the company’s journey to S/4HANA.

The solution

SoftwareOne planned and managed the build of the new SAP S/4HANA landscape. Working with Microsoft and the customer, the team built automation to perform the infrastructure build, hardening of servers, and a complete security configuration using Terraform and Ansible.

Delivery of complete landscapes, including hardware build, improved from one or two weeks to two days. Over two years, the SoftwareOne team created 40 landscapes with up to 10 instances per landscape. These included complete high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), and security configurations for database and application servers.

Once the project was completed, SoftwareOne delivered comprehensive Azure training for the SAP Basis team. Training for 18 individuals was provided over a 3-month schedule.

The result

SAP running on Azure delivers a flexible design, better suited to meet future needs
All customer security requirements are met or exceeded
Moving to the S/4HANA application stack delivers on digital business transformation