The first phase of the migration managed by Singapore-based cloud computing specialist Cloud Comrade involved the implementation of SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system SAP S/4HANA on AWS, as well as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications.

Ilaventhan Vijaya, Head of Finance at Baba’s Group of Companies, explained that the company considered moving to the cloud as a “strategic imperative” to support the enterprise’s future growth and customer-centricity objectives. He remarked:

“Not only did we recognise the enormous savings in IT infrastructure and manpower costs, but also the great impact of speed, scale and security on almost every aspect of our business that the cloud offered.”

Expounding on Baba Products’ decision to tap AWS Premier Consulting Partner Cloud Comrade to lead the selection, planning, and execution of the migration, Vijaya further shared:

“In Cloud Comrade, AWS and the foundation of SUSE Linux Enterprise, we found the right collaboration and platform to help us make this pivotal transition and transformation. The cutting-edge features, expertise and support during every step of this process contributed to the ROI (Return on Investment) immediately; well-positioning us to capitalise on new business opportunities.”

According to Baba Products, implementing SAP S/4HANA has helped them reduce processing time, ensure the business spends its resources on strategic growth efforts, and provide real-time decision support to end-users. Using Cloud Comrade’s Well Architected Framework solution, Baba Products was able to deploy this mission-critical application on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications.

Additionally, Baba Products also employs Amazon Elastic Block Storage (Amazon EBS) to keep up with the performance demands of modern SAP workloads.

Delivering Greater Efficiencies by Moving SAP to the Cloud

Cloud Comrade, which also goes to market as an SAP specialist, moved Baba Products’ SAP Direct Store Delivery mobile app from an on-premises SAP S/4HANA ERP installation to the cloud through AWS. Commenting on the project, Andy Waroma, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director at Cloud Comrade, said:

“Based on our experience in migration and managed services and a thorough understanding of Baba’s vision and business needs for the future, we were confident that the bespoke cloud-based framework we have developed was the right choice for the company.”

In operating as an AWS Partner Network specialist supported by SAP expertise, Cloud Comrade prioritises cloud migration at the enterprise level through technical and advanced workload capabilities. Waroma further shared:

“It is heartening and immensely fulfilling to make a significant positive impact on an already large and fast-growing organization like BABA’S within a short period of implementation. We will always be driven by and committed to enabling our clients to get the best ROI on their IT deployments.”

Additionally, Baba Products stated that adopting SAP S/4HANA on the AWS cloud has helped the business to reduce its order processing and delivery times by 50{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}, as well as shorten its order-to-cash cycles by more than 40{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22}.

Moreover, the Malaysian enterprise — with products found in North America, Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and most of Southeast Asia — also selected the end-to-end human capital management and payroll solutions offered by SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Payroll to further comply with local and regional HR regulations.

The automation capabilities of the organisation’s SAP SuccessFactors solution enabled Baba Products’ to ensure security and compliance while increasing operational efficiencies and, at the same time, saving HR staff costs and time.

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To date, AWS has maintained the number 1 position in the ongoing battle for cloud supremacy, having achieved US$17.5 billion in sales last year. Gartner researchers peg the total value of that market at $30 billion in 2017, rising to US$83.5 billion by 2021. Microsoft, currently the number 2 cloud services provider, had also competed for the Symantec business, according to the memo.

While SAP has increased spending with Microsoft and Google over the past 12 months, the AWS memo disclosed that “our SAP internal share of wallet stays pretty stable at 70 per cent.” The new contract is for the base layer of computing and storage services, as well as other tools for data management, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Symantec contract represents more than a seven-fold increase in the cybersecurity company’s spending with AWS. According to the memo, this means that AWS “has been able to capture more than 80 per cent” of Symantec’s cloud spending. Symantec will migrate its Managed Security Service, Network Protection and Website Security Service products to AWS within 18 to 24 months, according to the memo.

Although not insignificant at $200 million, the annual revenue from the SAP and Symantec deals represents less than 1 per cent of the AWS annualised revenue. AWS reported revenue of $11.5 billion for the six months ending June 30, according to a regulatory filing. Perhaps not surprisingly, the news resulted in little change to the share prices of all three companies. AWS declined to comment on the contents of the memo.

“SAP announced its multi-cloud strategy more than two years ago,” said a spokesman for SAP in a statement. SAP’s plan continues to be to maintain a presence on the world’s largest public clouds, such as AWS, Microsoft, Google, International Business Machines Corp. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The SAP statement reinforced that the company “believes in the power of collaboration”. SAP declined to comment on the AWS agreement outlined in the memo.

“We do not disclose details of the agreements underlying our relationships,” said Sheila Jordan, CIO, Symantec in a statement. “As our cloud business has evolved, we have continuously evaluated our business relationships with our cloud partners.” The statement went on to say that Symantec is committed to a multi-partner cloud strategy and works with multiple partners including AWS, Azure, Oracle and other global and regional suppliers.

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With this newly attained status, along with the company’s SAP Competency status, YASH will provide cloud solutions to their customers, including migrations of existing SAP solutions to the cloud and S/4HANA adoptions.

Hard Vyakarnam, vice president – global alliances, YASH Technologies, said, “We are excited to foster our relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The Advanced Consulting Partner status will empower YASH to design, build, migrate and manage workloads and applications on AWS for companies of all sizes while reducing their overall IT costs. Furthermore, it will add tremendous value to our Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution and enable enterprise applications that would be highly available, secure, and scalable.”

YASH AWS specialists recently worked together with Salus Finance and to deploy SAP Business solutions on the AWS platform.

”We were looking for flexible, scalable and reliable IT infrastructure that could supplement the rapid growth that we are experiencing while delivering the strong performance needed to run the SAP HANA and BI Analytics applications. After careful evaluation along with YASH we decided on adopting a cloud based strategy,” said Robert A. Bull, COO, AdminaHealth.

“Given the business critical nature of this initiative and the need for robustness and flexibility, we decided to partner with global leaders; Amazon Web Services, world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform and YASH, one of the leading AWS advanced consulting partners. AWS specialists from YASH with their domain and technology proficiency worked closely with our teams to deliver a solution in line with our vision.”

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Highlights included the benefits, including significant cost savings, that Cloud Kinetics customers gain by running SAP in the cloud using the opex model, starting with a small footprint and scaling up to keep pace with business growth.

Vidyashankar J, founder and CEO, Cloud Kinetics explained the strategic importance of his company’s partnership with AWS, providing details and examples from their years of successful experience in deploying and operating SAP on AWS across India, Singapore and Thailand.  Vidyashankar shared Cloud Kinetics’ implementation of S/4 HANA, Hybris and other SAP products on AWS with its SAP Partners.

Cloud Kinetics cited key benefits of SAP in the cloud including: increased speed of implementation by reducing wait times for hardware; faster decision making on hardware sizing; and rapid creation of QA environments to validate SAP upgrades.

PWC, Soltius and UXC Oxygen also presented their views on the importance of the cloud to SAP and Hybris customers.

Working alongside its SAP partner, Hitachi Consulting, Cloud Kinetics has successfully implemented multiple SAP workloads in the cloud, in manufacturing, financial services, ITES and media verticals.

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