Client background

Client: British energy services company

Industry type: Facilities management

Products or services: Facilities management, professional services, security, environmental services, energy consultancy, compliance, risk assessment

Areas of operations: Primarily in the UK, Ireland and Western Europe Number of customers: 3,000 major customers

Annual turnover: £2.2 billion

Challenges

The client wanted to upgrade its on premise SAP ECC landscape to the latest version and migrate to cloud for performance enhancement and operational efficiency. The challenges the client faced included:

• An urgent need to reduce operational costs
• Business risk posed by the existing version of Windows OS and MS SQL DB for SAP landscapes that were out of mainstream support 
• License cost associated with release management solution transport express 

• The client’s SAP landscape was migrated to Azure with minimum downtime 
• OS and DB could be upgraded to the latest version in-line with SAP recommendations 
• Homogeneous migration could be completed using database backup/restore
•  Cloud-native features of Azure AD connect could be utilized for configuration of Single Sign On (SSO) and Microsoft Direct Access 

In addition, Wipro completed an upgrade from SAP ECC 6.0 EhP5 to ECC 6.0 EhP8, adapted all interfaces to the changes coming from the DC migration and replaced Transport Express with SAP ChaRM (Change & Request Management) for release management.

Business impact

With the upgrade to the latest version of SAP ECC and all SAP workloads in Azure cloud, the client could:

• Reduce operational costs by making systems available only when needed
• Reduce operational cost of 9 servers by 50% (total server 14) 
• Reduce license costs by replacing Transport Express with SAP ChaRM for release management 
• Improve performance with the latest OS and DB upgrades and eliminate risk by ensuring support for SAP, OS and DB 
• Leverage new out-of-the box functionalities for improved performance 
• Improve user experience by introducing Single Sign On (SSO) and Microsoft Direct Access
  

Our goal has always been to unlock the full potential of SAP and maximize investments for clients. When combined with our Azure partnership that introduces a cloud-first focus, clients can expect to make a 2X impact with their SAP landscape.

- Srinivas Sai Nidadhavolu Vice President & Global Practice Head - SAP, Wipro Limited.