The Isle of Wight Council: Smooth migration to the EPI-USE Labs cloud
Using Data Sync Manager suite, rapid migration of SAP environment to cost-effective cloud infrastructure, with ongoing hosting and Managed Services
Our SAP system was on-premise and all of the hardware was essentially end-of-life, so we either had to make a significant investment in new hardware, or look for an alternative route. We chose cloud hosting. We were also quite limited in terms of capacity to keep the systems up-to-date. Migrating to the cloud was a chance to get a better version of SAP in terms of up-to-date patches and enhancement packs.
Gavin Muncaster, Strategic Manager of ICT & Digital Services, Isle of Wight Council
The Choice: EPI-USE Labs Cloud and Managed Services
Following the public tender, the Isle of Wight Council selected EPI-USE Labs to host their SAP environment and also run it through Managed Services, leveraging the EPI-USE Labs iHost Private Cloud in London and Amsterdam. EPI-USE Labs ran kickoff and blueprinting sessions at the Council’s premises to introduce themselves and their approach to affected stakeholders.
An iterative migration process
The EPI-USE Labs methodology engages the customer on Day 1 to gather as much information as possible to blueprint the steps and establish the timeframe for the upcoming project. This process is based around a staged migration of the landscape: Development, QA, and finally production. At each stage the migrated systems are tested and observations fed back into the project; improving transition to the next stage and increasing the customer’s confidence in the solution. The team reacts to changing customer requirements throughout the engagement, remaining agile, further demonstrating EPI-USE Labs commitment to ensuring a smooth and successful delivery.
We knew there were some idiosyncrasies of our system that might cause EPI-USE Labs some issues. And actually, it didn’t. Everything was just dealt with. Every minor issue was just overcome, which was very reassuring.
Dean Finlayson, Corporate Application Development Lead, Isle of Wight Council
The testing throughout the process meant that by the time we got to production and went live, we were comfortable that most of the issues had been resolved. The switch-over took place over a weekend and ran surprisingly smoothly. Having dealt with a number of projects over the last few years, this is probably one of the smoothest we have ever had, with very few teething issues which was very pleasing.
Dean Finlayson, Corporate Application Development Lead, Isle of Wight Council
I would genuinely say there is a large percentage of the users that didn’t know it happened. So it was the ideal project, with an improvement of performance and little to no interruption to access because the migration was that smooth.
Gavin Muncaster, Strategic Manager of ICT & Digital Services, Isle of Wight Council
Successful migration to EPI-USE Labs iHOST Private Cloud
On-boarding of EPI-USE Labs’ Cloud and Basis Managed services for SAP landscapes
Re-platforming of customer systems to newer operating system and database version.
Future-proofing of SAP solution for future HRSPs
Refreshed landscape
Improved resilience – better backup tools, ability to recover from snapshots etc
We were faced with a £600 000 - £700 000 hardware investment that would have fixed our hardware challenge, but wouldn’t have solved any of our challenges around versioning and upgrade patches, limited resilience, knowledge base or capacity to develop. Moving to the cloud in this way opened up a lot of options. We now have all of the enhancement packs, better disaster recovery options and resilience of the systems - which is a huge bonus
Gavin Muncaster, Strategic Manager of ICT & Digital Services, Isle of Wight Council
Compared to a lot of bigger organisations, we have a small in-house support team. We really weren’t equipped to get the most out of the product as it was. There are huge benefits to having essentially a whole support team in EPI-USE Labs, which just didn’t make sense to have in-house.
Dean Finlayson, Corporate Application Development Lead, Isle of Wight Council
A lot of companies offer a partnership arrangement and promise to listen to your concerns. Unfortunately, often that is just ‘sales talk’. But with EPI-USE Labs, their communication has been very good and we have actually built a close rapport; we have been in regular contact both before and since go-live. That good relationship has continued.
Dean Finlayson, Corporate Application Development Lead, Isle of Wight Council