In the fast-paced world of logistics, timing is everything. When a leading North American courier faced a critical data-center shutdown, they needed a migration partner that could move with precision and speed. msg stepped in to execute a high-stakes migration of their entire Profitability Management (PMM) and Business Intelligence (BI) ecosystem to the AWS Cloud delivering a modernized, high-performance platform in record time.
About the Customer
The client is a leading integrated freight, package, and logistics provider based in North America. With a network that reaches remote regions across the territory, the leading logistic provider supports businesses of all sizes by providing customized shipping and supply-chain solutions.
The Challenge: A Race Against Time
The primary hurdle for this project was a hard deadline: the imminent decommissioning of the existing client’s data center. This required a full-scale migration that was not only rapid but also lean, utilizing a small team of specialized experts to minimize overhead while ensuring zero data loss. The Courier needed to transition away from legacy on-premises MS SQL Servers and QlikView logic without disrupting the vital financial insights that drive their daily operations.
The Solution: A Lean, High-Impact Cloud Migration
By deploying a streamlined team of senior data and BI experts, msg implemented a dual-purpose architecture that addressed both infrastructure and analytics simultaneously.
msg utilized a “lift-and-shift” strategy to move the PMM data warehouse to Amazon RDS for SQL Server, preserving complex data structures while gaining the scalability of the cloud.
A critical component was the seamless connection to SAP Profitability and Performance Management (PaPM) — a powerful msg + SAP solution — ensuring that the advanced financial modeling of the client remained uninterrupted and gained enhanced cloud connectivity.
To replace legacy Qlik logic, the msg experts implemented AWS Glue for ETL (extract, transform, load) processes, using AWS Step Functions to orchestrate workflows and AWS Glue Data Quality to ensure high-integrity reporting.
Transformed data was stored in Amazon S3 using optimized formats like Parquet and Apache Iceberg, then surfaced through Amazon QuickSight via Amazon Athena for lightning-fast, interactive dashboards.
The Advantages: Performance Without the Wait
The most significant advantage of this project was its extraordinary speed of delivery. Despite the complexity of the legacy systems the migration was completed in approximately 12 weeks, allowing the client to exit their data center before the shutdown deadline. The subsequent migration from Qlik to QuickSight was completed seamlessly after only an additional 12 weeks, without losing any operational momentum.
Beyond the timeline, the solution provided unmatched resource efficiency. By utilizing a lean team of senior experts — including a Senior Data Expert and a BI Expert - msg minimized the internal burden of the client’s staff while delivering a robust enterprise-grade architecture.
Furthermore, the transition to a serverless and managed infrastructure has fundamentally changed the operational agility. Using AWS Glue and Athena means the client no longer needs to manage physical servers for data processing, and the QuickSight SPICE in-memory engine provides lightning-fast dashboard performance that was previously unattainable. Finally, the new environment offers superior security and governance, managed through AWS IAM, VPC subnets, and Secrets Manager, ensuring that sensitive financial data is protected by the highest industry standards.
The msg Advantage: Expertly Fast
msg, as a global IT consultancy, specializes in making complex transformations look easy. By combining deep expertise in SAP PaPM with AWS cloud-native services the msg-experts enable their clients to turn a looming infrastructure crisis into a strategic digital leap forward.