Reichle & De-Massari AG
SAP Outsourcing

The challenge

Reichle & De-Massari AG (R&M) is growing. A global switch to fibreglass technology has seen the Swiss network and cabling specialist’s order book fill up and its production sites reach full capacity. Its business success is also impacting its IT operations. Jeffrey Archer (Corporate Business Systems Manager at R&M) commented: ‘Our large, on-prem SAP system landscapes had reached their limits in terms of performance and complexity. Our hardware had reached the end of its life cycle, and at the same time S/4HANA was becoming a more pressing issue for us.’ R&M weighed up the two scenarios: should it keep things in-house with new hardware, or outsource it completely? ‘For an on-prem version, we would have had to build up a team that had knowledge of both Linux and HANA. We didn’t want to do that, so we started looking for a partner who could host our SAP systems and move them to a future-proof platform.’ In future, itesys will ensure optimum cost efficiency and high availability for R&M and its many subsidiaries by running all the SAP systems as a host and monitoring them around the clock.

Our solution

Know-how and 24/7 support sealed the deal

SAP outsourcing in itesys data centers. ‘In our extensive and intensive selection process, it was itesys that won us over with what was by far the most technologically impressive and attractively priced service,’ said Mr Archer. ‘We were impressed by its wealth of knowledge, flexibility in sourcing solutions and, above all else, the 24/7 support concept with sites in Switzerland, Romania and New Zealand,’ he continued.

Cost-efficient operation with the outsourcing model

The project’s major challenges were the tight seven month schedule, dependencies on several parallel IT projects and operational constraints due to sites being spread across the globe.

Project methodology with several sprints

The 1:1 migration of seven system landscapes and the new installation of three system landscapes were planned in detail, and the project was split into several sprints in line with itesys’ project methodology. Each stage of the migration process was run through on development and test systems without any issues beforehand. This meant that minor problems could be identified and eliminated before the productive systems were migrated.

The client is raving about…

All the project goals were achieved on time and within budget

A total of 34 SAP systems were relocated to the itesys data centre in four sprints. itesys ported the BW & ECC database to HANA – thereby completing the first step on the HANA roadmap.

High-performance and load-resistant outsourced SAP systems

Jeffrey Archer (Corporate Business Systems Manager) has nothing but praise for the project team: ‘Thanks to good planning and the utmost professionalism in project management, we achieved all our goals on time, within budget and without impacting our day-to-day business. The communication was outstanding, and the extensive expertise that itesys offered was palpable at every stage.’

The first step towards introducing S/4HANA

According to the Corporate Business Systems Manager, outsourcing and the switch to the HANA database has had a positive impact on performance: ‘Our systems are more responsive and load-resistant. Instead of five minutes for some reports, we now only need ten seconds.’ itesys monitors R&M’s SAP landscape around the clock based on the ‘follow the sun’ principle and consults with the in-house SAP Service Delivery Manager regularly on operational issues.