About ZEISS
It all began in 1846 when Carl Zeiss founded a workshop for optical and precision instruments in Jena, Germany. Today, ZEISS is one of the world's leading technology companies in the optical and optoelectronic industries. ZEISS optical products are used in the manufacture of microchips, in research into infectious diseases and in the production of award-winning films. As a manufacturer of medical products in risk class I, ZEISS is obliged to operate a quality management system and ensure the reproducibility of all processes.
This also applies to its IT infrastructure and SAP landscape.
The Challenge
More than 20 years ago, ZEISS had completely outsourced the data center operations for its global and business-critical SAP environments to an external service provider that operated the environments exclusively as an on-premise solution. With the decision to bring SAP operations back in-house, ZEISS not only needed to build an internal, globally available team, but also to select the right cloud partner to enable rapid deployment and unlimited scalability of such environments, as well as the right automation partner to enable the most time-efficient operations possible. Ultimately, it had to be a solution that could optimally support the global, highly dynamic and rapidly growing business success of ZEISS as a multi-industry company and react as flexibly and quickly as possible to the diverse requirements.
ZEISS maps all processes and financial flows in SAP environments. The approximately 80 systems are hosted on-premises by a contractual partner, have grown very monolithically, and are closely interlinked.
The landscape was outdated and therefore inflexible and difficult to operate and modernize. The result was lengthy and cumbersome IT processes, and it seemed almost impossible to automate recurring processes.
In 2019, the decision was made to adopt a cloud-first strategy - including for mission-critical SAP applications - together with PCG as an experienced go-to cloud partner. The focus was on moving away from dedicated, on-premises hosts, improving in-house operational performance, and increasing automation.
The Solution
ALPACA as a Project Accelerator
To ensure a smooth migration of the extended business-critical applications, the environment to be migrated was first cleaned up. The target landscape was then designed during the concept phase. Special attention was given to security, sizing, IP address management, high availability across two availability zones, backup procedures, adaptive design, and Azure NetApp files for snapshots. Finally, in the proof of concept, the target design was tested with ALPACA to verify its feasibility. "We were looking for a suitable target landscape, but above all for a new technological approach to deployment," says Joachim Riegel, Head of SAP Platform and Data Center at ZEISS.
ALPACA provides SAP systems fully automatically according to the Infrastructure as Code principle and was the missing piece of the puzzle. PCG has succeeded in closing the gap between SAP Basis and the new cloud world.
ALPACA is an operating platform and orchestrates the management of SAP systems in the cloud. New project instances can be rolled out at the push of a button, making it a massive accelerator. This has already been demonstrated in the POC.
Agile Methods For Continuous Delivery From Lab To Prod
After a successful proof of concept, nothing stood in the way of an agile implementation. PCG is responsible for developing best practices with ZEISS. DESIGN, BUILD & TEST & APPROVE, RUN is used as an iterative process throughout the project. All setups and developments are tested and optimized in a laboratory environment. ALPACA as a ready-made operating concept facilitates and accelerates the work through best practice solutions, but as an open framework it also offers the possibility of being adapted to specific ZEISS requirements. This is followed by automatic adaptation in the production environment. Agile project methods enable continuous deployments from the reference environment (LAB) to the production (PROD) environment. In this way, the development and deployment processes go hand in hand. Step by step, SAP systems are successfully migrated to the cloud.
Results and Benefits
Advantages of Next-Level SAP Operation with ALPACA
- Increased internal performance in SAP application operation, use of self-service functions for operational routines
- Implementation of own policies and architecture requirements
- Increased operational reliability through a high degree of automation across the SAP lifecycle
- Meet stringent regulatory requirements for GxP quality assurance through complete standardization
Benefits of SAP on Azure
LEVERAGE THE FLEXIBILITY OF THE CLOUD
- SAP systems can always be kept up to date with the latest technology
- Respond to load changes at any time (FY/Q/M close)
RAPID PROVISIONING OF SAP SYSTEMS
- Previously: 12 weeks including hardware procurement
- Today: 5 hours, including full integration with current operating environment
HIGH AVAILABILITY ACROSS ZONES WITH AUTO FAILOVER
Quality Management, Automation and Security In One Solution
As ZEISS also manufactures medical products, these are subject to strict quality management and documentation requirements. Thanks to ALPACA, ZEISS no longer had to perform manual inspections, but was able to automate the process and significantly reduce costs and time. The same applies to compliance with documentation requirements. ALPACA offers ZEISS the option of using process automation for the installation processes. This means that once a process has been qualified, it can be automatically applied to any number of systems and at the same time documented in a traceable and audit-proof manner. The ALPACA automation solution also provides ZEISS with increased operational reliability, as all systems are rolled out according to a defined process.
All systems are rolled out according to a defined scheme, thus eliminating sources of error caused by manual activities.
Working together
From the very beginning, the cooperation was characterized by a very cooperative partnership, and despite the large, interdisciplinary project team, the focus of everyone involved was always on the goal. PCG not only supported ZEISS in migrating the SAP system landscape to Azure, but also equipped the SAP team with the necessary cloud expertise for the future operation of SAP on Azure. With ALPACA's support, ZEISS is now in a position to assume full operational responsibility itself without having to take over the previous outsourcing service provider.
As an ALPACA initiator, sparring partner and cloud service provider, PCG acts as a trusted advisor.
Further projects are already in the pipeline: In the area of business continuity, on-premises off-site data replication is planned. In addition, the SAP cloud landscape will be further automated to provide ZEISS with even more flexibility, scalability and security.
Based on the successful partnership between ZEISS and PCG, ZEISS is also planning to implement the large SAP2Azure project for ZEISS in China via 21Vianet.
About PCG
Public Cloud Group (PCG) supports companies in their digital transformation through the use of public cloud solutions.
With a product portfolio designed to accompany organisations of all sizes in their cloud journey and competence that is a synonym for highly qualified staff that clients and partners like to work with, PCG is positioned as a reliable and trustworthy partner for the hyperscalers, relevant and with repeatedly validated competence and credibility.
We have the highest partnership status with the three relevant hyperscalers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, and Microsoft. As experienced providers, we advise our customers independently with cloud implementation, application development, and managed services.