Flexible, Scalable, and Efficient
The SAP landscape of a globally leading manufacturer of children’s products was successfully migrated by msg from a msg data center to the AWS Cloud and has since been operated under a managed services model. The migration resulted in greater flexibility, scalability, and a modern, highly available architecture.
About the Customer
The customer is a globally leading manufacturer of durable products for children. With decades of experience in research, design, and in-house production, the company sets international standards in the industry. The brand is known as a fashionable lifestyle brand for modern parents.
Customer Challenge
The children’s products manufacturer faced the need to increase the flexibility, scalability, and availability of its SAP systems. To achieve this, the SAP landscape had to be technologically modernized, for example through system rightsizing or the replacement of existing tools. At the same time, monthly operating costs were to remain low.
Based on the positive experiences of other customers with AWS, the customer’s IT team, together with their IT consultant and integrator msg, decided to migrate to the AWS Cloud. Without this transformation, the manufacturer would have had to deal with limited scalability and increased complexity in maintenance and capacity planning, potentially impacting stability, time-to-market, and costs.
Approach
Since 2015, msg had been operating the customer’s SAP systems in its own in-house data center. These included SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW, SAP Solution Manager (dedicated), SAP Cloud Connector, and third-party components. Before the actual migration to the AWS Cloud, msg conducted a proof of concept in Q4/2022 to validate the architecture, performance, and migration approach. Based on the results, it was decided to migrate the existing SAP landscape from the data center to AWS. msg selected a lift-and-shift (rehosting) approach, maintaining the proven architecture while moving it to a modern infrastructure platform.
At the beginning of Q1/2023, the test systems were migrated first, followed by the successful go-live of the productive system at the end of Q1/2023. During the migration phase, the customer’s landscape operated almost without interruption as a hybrid cloud solution. “Despite the technical complexity, particularly around customer interfaces, the migration was successfully implemented within a short period of time. There were hardly any disruptions to the customer’s day-to-day business operations,” reports Christoph Höltl, Project Manager at msg.
In the AWS environment, the SAP architecture retained its familiar components: SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW, SAP Solution Manager, SAP Cloud Connector, and connected third-party systems. In addition, key AWS services were integrated:
- AWS Elastic Load Balancers replaced the previous SAP Web Dispatchers,
- AWS Elastic File System (EFS) provides highly available shared file systems,
- and the AWS Backint Agent enables backup integration for SAP HANA databases.
The productive HANA database is operated as a highly available system replication cluster across multiple availability zones within the EU (Frankfurt) region.
As a partner, msg provides a comprehensive service model, offering full SAP Basis services and operating all SAP systems, including technical administration, monitoring, regular updates, and security measures. In addition, msg is responsible for the security and ongoing operation of the AWS account hosting the SAP systems, ensuring end-to-end support from a single source.
Results and Benefits
With the new underlying technology stack, the children’s products manufacturer is well positioned for the future and technologically up to date, particularly in terms of security and system currency. Through rightsizing and the consistent use of native AWS services, ongoing costs were kept low in line with the original project objectives while achieving performance gains.
At the same time, the customer benefits from high flexibility, availability, and scalability of cloud resources: “Our ability to innovate has improved significantly, as systems can be scaled up via AWS in a very short time. This shortens lead times for system setup and installation and contributes to faster time-to-market,” emphasizes the customer’s Head of IT Service Delivery.
In addition, significant cost savings were achieved in the first year through AWS MAP funding and credits.
“The consultants at msg are highly experienced and reliable, and the cooperation was excellent, ensuring a smooth migration,” concludes the customer’s project manager. The successful migration and managed operation of the SAP landscape by msg have laid the foundation for the leading children’s products manufacturer to meet future growth and new requirements quickly and securely.