SAP transformation to Microsoft Azure for leading financial services organization

The complexities of transforming to SAP HCM as a Service

This financial institution has been an EPI-USE Labs’ client for many years, and the two businesses have built a strong and trusting relationship. When the bank was faced with the complex task of future-proofing and modernising their SAP HCM business, they knew they could rely on advice from EPI-USE Labs. In light of the bank’s selected strategy to migrate to Microsoft Azure, challenges included:

• right-sizing the footprint accurately in Microsoft Azure
• understanding the detail of the bank’s infrastructure (the organisation has grown significantly, and has numerous teams)
• the bank’s high level of governance and security
• migrating to a hyperscaler with technology that was new and unfamiliar to the bank
• optimising costs and modernising the landscape
• maintaining data integrity and security.

An accelerated SAP migration

EPI-USE Labs provided our client with Software as a Service (SaaS). Subject matter experts in both SAP® migrations and Azure cloud architecture moved the bank’s SAP HCM landscape to Microsoft Azure (suite on HANA) successfully. They started with the ECC system, upgrading the bank from enhancement package 5 to 6, then 8, and performed a Unicode conversion, mainly in the HC space. The specialists used the accelerated SAP migration method, trimming down the landscape, refreshing it and completing the migration securely.

The team designed the landing zone in Azure from the ground up, which required a detailed knowledge of Azure, and integration and security to meet the bank’s requirements. This project took ten months and involved migrating 120 servers in total, reduced to 81 in Azure.

Excellent return on investment

This project went live in May 2021. Although it was a lengthy and challenging project to move to a large hyperscaler, EPI-USE Labs received positive feedback from the bank on its success. Systems in the landscape were migrated to newer operating systems and database versions, including the latest Microsoft Windows server, SUSE for SAP and SAP HANA applications.

EPI-USE Labs is also providing ongoing Managed Services for the whole landscape, from application layer support through to management on the OS/DB and infrastructure layer. The relationship of trust between the bank and EPI-USE Labs will remain crucial during this phase. Based on EPI-USE Labs’ involvement, the bank is now in a considerably better position to engage with third parties. The working relationship with Microsoft was also crucial to the success of this project.

About leading African banking and financial services organization

Our client is a major South African-headquartered Banking and Financial Services business. Operating across 20 countries in Africa with over 50,000 employees worldwide, the organization was founded almost 160 years ago.