Landis+Gyr
Managed Service: SAP Systems in Google Cloud

Leading provider of integrated energy management solutions

Landis+Gyr, with group headquarters in Cham, Switzerland, is a leading global provider of integrated energy management solutions for the power industry. With one of the broadest offerings in the industry, the company delivers innovative solutions that help utilities meet the complex challenges of smart metering, grid edge intelligence and smart infrastructure. Its comprehensive portfolio of solutions, including software, services and smart sensor technology, is making a significant contribution to the decarbonisation of energy grids. Landis+Gyr achieved sales of around USD 1.5 billion in the 2021 financial year and employs around 6,500 people on five continents.

The challenge

In 2020, Landis+Gyr entered into a strategic partnership with Google to provide digital services for the energy market and to further drive the company's transformation into a service and software provider for energy suppliers. As part of the cooperation, several cloud computing projects were initiated in the IT area. The first involved moving the SAP systems used in the Group to the Google Cloud. 70 percent of Landis+Gyr's SAP systems were previously outsourced to a European hosting partner, while 30 percent ran on-premise at company locations in the USA, Brazil and South Africa. "Parallel to the move to the Google Cloud, we aimed to consolidate and optimise SAP Basis Support," emphasises Uwe Schubkegel, Head ERP Global Applications at Landis+Gyr.

The solution

Several partners were involved in the project: The previous SAP hoster, a business and strategy consulting firm as migration partner, the internal SAP infrastructure team of Landis+Gyr, Google and itesys as future managed service and SAP Basis partner. After an analysis of the current situation and the sizing of the cloud resources, the design of the landing zone, the actual migration took place. After the transfer of the systems to the Google Cloud platform, itesys gradually transferred the systems to the managed service. "The majority of our SAP systems are still based on older ECC technology. Except for changes to the database technology, the systems were migrated 1:1 to the Google Cloud," explains Uwe Schubkegel. In the first four weeks after the migration, another partner was still responsible for operations. During this period, the itesys specialists carried out an extensive 'due diligence' to ensure the flawless quality of the SAP systems to be taken over and to uncover any weaknesses.

The client is raving about...

Thanks to the profound knowledge of itesys, tricky detail problems could be solved. Uwe Schubkegel: "A database was defective and could not be converted into the new DB format. itesys was immediately on hand with specialist knowledge and solved the problem." According to the SAP manager at Landis+Gyr, the most striking improvements result from the consolidation of SAP Basis Support at itesys. "We now have only one contact person and benefit from excellent 24/7 support from the itesys teams in Switzerland, Romania and New Zealand. itesys won us over in the tender process with their clear commitment to the core competence of SAP Basis, open communication and fair, comprehensible pricing. Numerous proactive suggestions for improvement made a decisive contribution to the successful cloud migration and the takeover of the systems from a business and strategy consulting company went absolutely smoothly," Uwe Schubkegel sums up. In a follow-up project, Landis+Gyr and itesys are currently jointly analysing how the cloud resources can be adapted even more precisely to requirements and costs optimised.