“With Microsoft Azure, we just add capacity when we need it. Such flexibility and easy scalability are great for us, especially because we have a very short window of time for upgrading our SAP systems.”
Gavin Martin, Application Development Manager, Kordia
Kordia is a leading provider of telecommunications solutions and services in Australia and New Zealand. Because the company needed to quickly upgrade several of its mission-critical SAP systems, it piloted the use of Microsoft Azure to accelerate the development and testing process. Azure gives Kordia flexibility, scalability, and cost savings. The solution also gives the company impressive performance for its SAP dev/test systems and will help speed time-to-market for its solutions.
This case study is for informational purposes only.MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published October 2013
Business Needs
Kordia is a growing telecommunications and media company that provides network and technology solutions to customers in New Zealand and Australia. Founded more than 60 years ago in Auckland, New Zealand, Kordia is one of the country’s leading providers of television and radio facilities, and it has the third largest carrier network in the country.
The organization depends heavily on an extensive SAP infrastructure, based on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise software, for business success. The SAP environment includes SAP business intelligence (BI), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and portal system—all of which are used by Kordia employees to conduct daily business.
Kordia was behind on SAP upgrades and patching, something that had to be addressed quickly. “We only had a two-week window of time in which to complete patching. However, software patching is normally an intensive process and there’s risk involved,” says Gavin Martin, Application Development Manager, Kordia. “We needed a way to easily and quickly clone our production system, apply SAP patches, and hand over to business users for testing without affecting business, because our SAP environment is absolutely mission-critical.” Because it needed to complete its SAP upgrade quickly, Kordia was interested in exploring a new solution to aid in the project. “We also wanted it to be done cost-effectively,” adds Martin.
Solution
Kordia decided to conduct a proof of concept in which it migrated its SAP dev/test environment to Microsoft Azure. “We were interested in moving SAP to the cloud to see what the performance and costs were like, and we also thought it would be the right choice for our SAP upgrade process, in terms of the timeline we had,” says Martin.
Kordia worked closely with New Zealand technology partner Syd Consulting to migrate ECC 6.0, BI 7.0, and Enterprise Portal SAP systems to Azure, using Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines to provision virtual servers for installing and configuring the SAP environment. “During the migration, Kordia and Syd employed the standard SAP tools and procedures for moving SAP systems to the cloud,” says Grant McPherson, Founder of Syd Consulting.
The entire migration process was completed in less than three weeks. “Transferring backups and provisioning virtual machines was simple,” says Logan Gouws, Technical Analyst, Kordia. “We just followed the same migration process as when we moved to SQL Server 2012. The Azure setup was very straightforward and was completed in a day.”
Benefits
By hosting its SAP dev/test systems on Microsoft Azure, Kordia has more flexibility and scalability and will save money. Kordia was also impressed by the performance of the SAP systems running on Azure and plans to use Azure for additional future projects.
Offers Flexibility and Cost Savings
Microsoft Azure gives Kordia a flexible model in which provisioning virtual servers can be done quickly and easily, on an as-needed basis. “With Microsoft Azure, we just add capacity when we need it,” says Martin. “Such flexibility and easy scalability are great for us, especially because we have a very short window of time for upgrading our SAP systems. With Azure, it’s easy to set up a clone of our production environment in the cloud and use it for patching and support without affecting our actual production environment.”
The cloud-based model will also help Kordia save money, because it can switch virtual servers on or off using the Azure “pay as you go” structure. When Kordia needs more servers for short periods of time, such as during SAP upgrades, they can be brought online and then removed when the company is finished with the project. Azure also offers the opportunity to “park” unused virtual machines indefinitely, meaning a production clone can be shut down and resumed at any time without incurring costs.
“We get maximum value by moving our SAP dev/test environment on Azure,” says Gouws. “We only pay for what we use, and we also don’t have to spend money on infrastructure during setup. I saved significant time by not having to engage data center infrastructure people and pay them to install hardware and make sure that we had enough power or networking.”
Provides High Performance for SAP Systems
Kordia also saw impressive performance from its SAP systems after migration to Azure. “The Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines were lower-spec servers than our production servers, and they had equivalent performance,” says Gouws. “We were very impressed with this, and it gives us a lot of confidence that our SAP systems would perform very well in the cloud. The performance exceeded our expectations. Azure actually over-delivers on performance, in my view.”
Creates New Opportunities and Speeds Time-to-Market
The company believes it has the right technology for the future and plans to expand its Azure implementation beyond the initial proof of concept. “Our CIO said that Microsoft Azure has completely changed his perception of the cloud as a business model,” says Martin. “As a result, we’re interested in additional cloud deployments going forward. For new projects, we’re looking at the cloud instead of using old equipment or purchasing new servers. We love the flexibility.”
Kordia also anticipates that it will be able to bring products and services to customers faster. “With Azure, our speed-to-market could increase significantly,” says Martin. “If I want to put new systems in Azure to respond to business demands, I can do it immediately, instead of taking weeks to do it. It really opens up some strong possibilities for the business, and we’re excited to see where it can take us.”
This case study is for informational purposes only.MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published October 2013