Solinest migrates its IT system to the cloud and outsources SAP HANA operations

Issues and challenges

Based near Mulhouse, Solinest develops and markets premium consumer brands in confectionery, snacks and drinks. To develop its activity and continue to differentiate from its competitors, the company stays up to date with consumer trends and needs, particularly around fine snacking. Since 2009, it has worked with brands like [N.A!], which has revolutionized snacking with its snacks inspired by nature.

As a user of SAP since 2009, Solinest was looking for an expert partner to support its migration to the SAP-HANA platform to host, manage and benefit from the innovations associated with this new environment.

"The know-how with regard to the implementation of SAP infrastructure cannot be improvised, and it is necessary to rely on a team that has real expertise," emphasizes Franck Prévost.

This structuring and complex project pushed the company to a more global view on the modernization of its information system, network dimensioning and security.

Objective

Enable its IT teams to focus on business needs and added-value tasks.

Solutions

End-to-end support
Orange Business set up a project management team to ensure that the various projects were synchronized: connectivity, cloud, security and application outsourcing, and that Solinest's challenges were taken into account. Solinest needed expert support for service ownership and implementation of its first virtual machines on cloud infrastructures. A multi-domain Customer Service Manager, who is the main point of contact, orchestrates a personalized governance system for operational monitoring and ensures service quality in a context of continuous improvement.

"Orange has demonstrated its ability to support our SME with its IT. This required responsiveness and proximity with our teams, especially for the creation and deployment of the solution," says Franck Prévost.

Cloud computing infrastructure with a managed service
Solinest needed:

• To be alleviated of the application exploitation of the SAP HANA platform: the solution supports the hosting of the platform and the operation of the SAP HANA ERP Flexible Computing Premium
• Better agility and autonomy in the management of the other components of its information system and the ability to consume computing and storage power on demand with pay-per-use pricing; about fifty virtual machines were deployed on a public cloud solution such as infrastructure-as-a-service Flexible Computing Advanced

Secure connectivity to cloud platforms
To ensure smooth, secure and available access to cloud platforms, virtual private network infrastructures were scaled up and secured using Business VPN and Business VPN Galerie.

Protection against online threats
The security of inbound and outbound Internet traffic and messaging is ensured by Flexible Security Platform, a strong authentication and access control service with URL filtering, anti-intrusion probes, IPSec tunnel, anti-malware and anti-spam, and sandbox to analyze suspicious emails.

Guaranteed high level of service availability
All of the solutions deployed have contractually guaranteed availability rates, and SAP critical applications have a disaster recovery plan with a recovery time of up to four hours (vs 24 hours previously) and a maximum data loss of one hour.

Benefits

IT teams working for the business
The IT department is relieved of low-value-added tasks, such as hardware management and database control. It can focus on business requirements.

Improved performance
With the implementation of the SAP HANA solution and in-memory databases, report generation is almost instantaneous compared to 5-6 minutes previously. The company maintains control over SAP licenses, guaranteeing autonomy in updating them and choosing the underlying cloud infrastructures. Hosting in Orange Datacenters in France guarantees data security and confidentiality.

On-demand support for business ambitions
"The involvement of the Orange teams has enabled us to successfully complete this major project and migrate our information system to the cloud. This new IT base will allow us to achieve our ambitions," concludes Franck Prévost.

Results

• Transparent user migration
• No impact on business