A feat of skill: Moving SAP workloads to the cloud

Moving SAP workloads to the cloud promises to be transformational, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Goals for an ERP modernization initiative often range from lowering costs through infrastructure savings to adding cloud-based capabilities to ERP tasks with minimal disruption to day-to-day business. Achieving these objectives takes perceptive analysis, meticulous planning, and skillful execution.  

“There are many factors to consider, including application complexity, legacy application requirements, data location, and compliance,” says Dilip Mishra, SAP delivery leader for the Cloud Migration and Modernization practice at Kyndryl. Teams must determine which workloads move to the cloud and which will remain on-premises. What’s more, adds Mishra, many organizations are likely to encounter a “long-tail” of interdependencies between applications and infrastructure that requires special expertise to unravel.  

Perhaps most important, the undertaking will not succeed without cooperation between IT and business leaders. “To overcome the perception that from a business perspective, the migration might look like a lot of effort for a little return, IT leaders must communicate the business case for moving each workload,” Mishra says. CIOs and their teams should also consider providing a systematic framework for delivering and measuring the value to the business now and in the future, covering technology, operations, and financials.  

In short, IT leaders can expect curves in the road that only seasoned experts can navigate without mishap. To that end, Kyndryl and AWS have established a partnership with an extensive track record in rehosting and re-platforming SAP workloads on AWS cloud services.  

Schneider Electric’s story  

Schneider Electric’s journey to the cloud began by moving its SAP applications from an outsourcer to a Kyndryl data center. After stabilizing the environment and integrating the operations of numerous acquired companies, Kyndryl optimized the applications and infrastructure while planning the transition to AWS. With the goal of maintaining continuous business operations, Kyndryl mapped out a migration to AWS that accorded the Kyndryl data center an important role in a hybrid cloud architecture.    

“A hybrid environment provides the flexibility of workload placement based on business requirements and provides a smoother transition to cloud because the customer has time to plan and re-engineer without going through a big-bang cutover,” says Naresh Nayar, Kyndryl distinguished engineer.   

Schneider’s internal team designed and built the AWS “landing zone,” a secure environment with strict rules about firewalls, connectivity, and security groups. Kyndryl architected the new operating environment using its framework for cloud operations and provided specifications that AWS and Schneider technical teams used to provision the new infrastructure in the landing zone.  

Schneider Electric’s move shows that a non-disruptive cloud transition is possible with careful planning and a deep portfolio of skills. For such enterprise migrations, experience matters: Currently, more than 5,000 SAP customers run on AWS. The AWS portfolio includes AWS migration Hub, AWS Application Discovery Service, AWS Application Migration Service, AWS Service Catalogue, and AWS Database Migration Service. For its part, Kyndryl brings to bear more than three decades and 90,000 skilled practitioners providing IT services at the highest level.  

Learn more about how Kyndryl and AWS are innovating to achieve transformational business outcomes for customers.