SoftwareOne case study

Altadia Group boosts SAP performance with Google Cloud

Becoming a business giant after a merger, Altadia Group gained new levels of flexibility and security by migrating its entire on-premises SAP system to Google Cloud.

Based in Spain, the Altadia Group manufactures glazes, colours, inks and other materials for the ceramic tile industry worldwide. Following a merger, the company knew it needed to modernise its IT systems and began exploring alternatives to its on-premises SAP system. It asked SoftwareOne and Google for help, who proposed a proof of concept, and within less than a week Altadia had a test environment within which to run metrics and benchmark performance. Test results showed that Google’s Cloud offered better SAP performance compared to Altadia’s incumbent system. SoftwareOne then set up the required infrastructure in the cloud to help the group to proceed with the migration as smoothly as possible.

< 1 week
to benchmark on-premises performance to Google Cloud
SAP on Google Cloud
provides improved SAP performance after a big merger that formed the Altadia Group
Potential
unlocked for further innovation and growth thanks to increased flexibility and security

Client: Altadia Group
Industry: Manufacturing
Platform: Google Cloud
Services: SAP Services; Proof of Concept for SAP on Google Cloud migration, set up test environment, Landing Zone on Google Cloud
Country: Spain

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A post-merger need for IT modernisation

The Altadia Group is now the world’s largest manufacturer of frits, glazes, colours and inks for the ceramic tile industry. The company was formed following the merger of Esmalglass-itaca and Ferro Tile Coatings. An increased global presence and the pooling of the two businesses’ expertise enables the group to provide its customers with highly innovative solutions that are tailored to their needs and local requirements. Digital manufacturing processes that are environmentally friendly, flexible and cost-efficient have never been so important and this requires investment in the latest and most innovative technologies. Having audited its existing systems, the Altadia Group realised that alongside investment, it needed to look for support from third-party specialists.

Before the merger, a single centralised SAP system connected all related companies. The system worked with other IT services, including SAP Process Integration (PI) for e-invoicing and a data warehouse that ran on local servers in its main data centre, with a second data centre providing replication for backup. Following the formation of the Altadia Group, the company faced the challenges of almost doubling its number of employees in addition to the number of systems, each of which needed to be integrated into one, single SAP system.

With the complexity of the integration having become clear to the team at Altadia, it began considering a move to the cloud. The main priorities of the SAP systems modernisation project were to ensure it was more scalable and flexible while improving reliability and security. Considering its options, the company turned to SoftwareOne and Google; two companies with which it had collaborated on other IT projects over the course of the last 10 years.

A bathroom with pink walls and a bathtub.

Proof of concept makes the case for migration

Less than one week after SoftwareOne and Google proposed a proof of concept, Altadia had a test environment set up that enabled it to verify the technical feasibility of the cloud migration project while obtaining metrics and making performance comparisons.

The test environment enabled the team to carry out in-depth tests, measuring the latency, as well as the performance of the application front ends and databases on Google and compare this to the incumbent on-premises system. The team was also able to run tests on different system types, and models based on different scenarios.

We were surprised when the results showed that SAP on Google could not only match the performance of our existing SAP environment, but even improve on it.

The ability to grow and scale in a flexible way was key to our decision, as well as the peace of mind and confidence in the process, thanks to the SoftwareOne team and Google Cloud.

– Ernesto Plaza, CIO, Altadia Group

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SoftwareOne then created a migration roadmap of the entire infrastructure to enable a smooth and effective transition of all SAP environments including SAP HANA to Google Cloud. This included building the landing zone on Google Cloud alongside setting up code deployments for different SAP environments. This was completed at the same time as installing virtual machines (VMs) and establishing security features and permissions that provided a means of interlinking systems within the different environments.

After Altadia's SAP integration team performed the actual migration of the SAP environment and upgrade, SoftwareOne pulled the logs, moved them to a SIEM and further supported the team by migrating other environments to Google Cloud, including newly hosted SAP machines that still needed to be upgraded to the new version.

Google Cloud move brings new capabilities

Altadia has seen a wide range of benefits since migrating its SAP system to Google Cloud. The entire project was carried out without end users noticing anything other than improved system performance. The flexibility provided by Google Cloud is critical as the group continues to focus on innovation and growth, and internal technology demands become more complex as a result. Using the incentives provided by the SAP Cloud Acceleration Program (CAP), Altadia has substantially reduced project costs.

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What else benefits the Altadia Group:

Flexibility

Using Google Cloud, Altadia has customised virtual machines and machines for SAP NetWeaver. These are economically competitive, deliver improved performance and can be scaled up or down depending on Altadia’s needs. The company’s commitment to using these is based solely on CPU and RAM usage, so there is no need for upfront payments or lock-ins to certain technologies.

Availability

The risks of IT disaster are almost non-existent, thanks to fully synchronous replication and local backups. And additional replication in other geographical areas provides a further layer of security.

Security

Google has its own worldwide network and provides encryption by default, which ensures better end-to-end SAP performance for Altadia.

Zero downtime for VM maintenance

When Altadia needs to maintain its virtual machines, Google’s Live migration technology ensures zero downtime. This has proved to be a great advantage for the group.

Systems optimisation

Google allows SAP environments to be downloaded with data warehousing as a service. It also enables Altadia to use Google Analytics tools to understand and exploit data, apply machine learning (ML) to SAP business processes and utilise SAP functionality within its APIs. This helps the company to strengthen its systems – for example by improving its monitoring systems and analysing the data , generated by these systems.

Google Cloud gives us the assurance that we have absolutely reliable replication. And especially given the growth of the group, it is business-critical for us that Google Cloud guarantees complete scalability of the environment. In particular, changes in machine size, machine performance and other adjustments are much easier to achieve than in an on-premises environment.

– Ernesto Plaza, CIO, Altadia Group