“This project is definitely one of the highlights I have been part of in recent years, especially given the complexity and magnitude of the work performed. Lemongrass exceeded our expectations with their professionalism, advanced knowledge and experience migrating SAP systems to AWS.”
Walter Gruener, CIO, Covestro
In 2019, Covestro made the strategic decision to move its entire IT workload from central data centers to a single hyperscale Cloud platform by end of 2022. This decision was made to support the ambitious sustainability goals Covestro set to achieve by 2025, enhance the stability and performance of their systems, and to benefit from state-of-the-art technology for digital initiatives. As part of this comprehensive program, Covestro plans to reduce its specific emissions significantly, introduce products and processes to foster a circular economy, and plans to only work with suppliers that are compliant with the Covestro sustainability requirements.
Following an intensely competitive sales process, Amazon Web Services (AWS) was chosen as the hyperscaler, and Lemongrass was selected to migrate and operate Covestro’s SAP systems as well as to operate Covestro’s non-SAP applications. Lemongrass is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, an AWS accredited Managed Service Provider, and a recognized leader in helping enterprises migrate and run their SAP systems on AWS. Lemongrass was selected to deliver this engagement due to its proven track record of more than 15,000 successful SAP on AWS migrations, its strong partnership with AWS, the automation capabilities of the Lemongrass Cloud Platform (LCP), and the strength and expertise the Lemongrass team put forward to deliver the work. AWS was selected for the strength of its solution including its extensive selection of SAP-certified infrastructure and tooling designed specifically to reliably reduce SAP cost. In addition, AWS’s commitment to running their business in the most environmentally friendly way possible and achieving 100% renewable energy usage for their global infrastructure supported Covestro’s sustainability goals.
Covestro decided to migrate the SAP estate first, utilizing the well-proven project procedures and automation patterns Lemongrass is known for. Lemongrass migrated 65% of their SAP systems in just 5 months, including several business-critical applications with a required availability of 99.95%. The rest of their systems will be migrated by the end of August – on time and within budget. Since migrating their systems to AWS, Covestro has benefited from improved operational stability, optimized costs, and the ability to provide their teams with increased infrastructure capacity in a more rapid and timely manner.
The complex engagement includes the operation of a three-digit number of non-SAP applications currently operated in central data centers, making this project the largest non-SAP estate under Lemongrass management. The team was also charged with developing a non-SAP service catalog for IaaS and PaaS as a way for the business to improve reliability, uptime, and recovery commitments in a controlled, repeatable process.
The project delivered measurable benefits to the business including significant savings in IT operation cost within the first year. In addition, by utilizing Lemongrass’s experience and methods, the Covestro team gained valuable knowledge from migrating and operating a very complex IT estate in a hyperscale public Cloud environment including critical skills to help them stay abreast of best practices and industry trends. The trust established between Covestro and Lemongrass has also led to an additional collaboration that resulted in new offerings that will benefit the Covestro business and support their focus on sustainability and innovation.
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Please note the recording is in German.
