Fender’s CIO Talks Tuning Up SAP with a Migration to AWS
An increase in enterprise pushed worldwide guitar maker Fender to contemplate extra environment friendly methods to use its SAP sources.
Migration from company-controlled compute sources to the general public cloud might be problem. Though Fender already embraced the cloud for different features of its operations, there was some reluctance to make its SAP options a part of that equation. An uptick in demand for guitars within the midst of the pandemic led the corporate to rethink that strategy.
Michael Spandau, CIO of Fender, spoke with InformationWeek concerning the wants that led the guitar maker to work with Lemongrass to run SAP on AWS.
How did operations run at Fender and what drove the adjustments you sought?
In phrases of cloud computing, we had been one of many earliest cloud adopters. When AWS began to get established, we began to use their compute programs. Many years in the past, we began offloading manufacturing servers into their surroundings. We have a very longstanding relationship with the AWS people.
We have a cloud-first technique; we’re very comfy with cloud. But when it got here to SAP, it’s actually our crown jewels. We run logistics. We run finance. We run manufacturing. We run HR. We run every part on SAP. We’re a world firm — about 3,000 workers — and every part hinges off this technique. We had been very reluctant in shifting that individual system, which was working in a colocation facility into the AWS cloud.
What has modified? Since the pandemic, now we have seen very vital enterprise progress. Since the pandemic, 60 million new gamers within the US alone picked the guitar for the primary time. Our SAP programs had a troublesome time simply maintaining with the enterprise calls for. We had to do one thing.
The two choices had been re-platform or migrate them into the AWS surroundings. We discovered Lemongrass; that they had very deep technical abilities. They satisfied me and my groups that we should always give you the chance to do that. We labored on this venture for about 12 months. Over a three-day weekend, we migrated all of our SAP masses into the AWS cloud. We upgraded the programs. We migrated to SAP HANA. We switched the working programs.
The consequence was very vital efficiency enhancements. Certain experiences, enterprise intelligence experiences that will run 10, 20, 30 plus minutes would run [in] subseconds. It actually had a very constructive influence, particularly on our customers, workers and executives utilizing enterprise intelligence. A whole lot of experiences like MRP, typical programs that run lengthy occasions are simply working a lot quicker.
It’s actually a mixture of the AWS infrastructure on one facet and the HANA database on the opposite facet.
We have since then resized the manufacturing system. We began off with very massive situations that AWS affords. We had been in a position to, in a stairstep strategy, cut back that dimension. These are very elegant, very sensible instruments to handle utilization and waste and, fairly frankly, spend.
What had been a number of the prior considerations about making the migration of SAP sources to the cloud?
Hesitancies had been a number of issues. One was safety. Availability and stability of the cloud. Just the technical know-how to do the migration. We had been working on a fairly dated model of SAP. Doing the migration in a suitable timeframe was the large problem and Lemongrass was the one firm that satisfied us they knew how to do this.
You can’t take an SAP system down for a week or two or three. It’s simply not potential. The firm stops working. It might be finished in a brief window of time. Lemongrass was the primary firm we felt strongly they knew how to do that.
I had little doubt that after we had been within the AWS surroundings issues would considerably enhance. We had been very conscious of all of the instruments that AWS affords. The linchpin of hesitation was this very tight window we had accessible. My guess is a lot of different firms battle with that.
What is the scope and scale of Fender’s operation?
Fender runs on SAP — we use it for manufacturing. We use it for our world provide chain. We have places of work in Europe. We have places of work in Japan and Australia. We have places of work in Mexico and Latin America. They all depend upon SAP and SAP functioning. It’s a single occasion; it’s not a multi-instance factor. Everyone interacts with and works with the system. From a monetary perspective, it’s important. Invoicing, audited money, all will depend on SAP.
Were there any surprises alongside the way in which to migration? What else does this open the door to?
It will assist us with simply the operational piece of those SAP situations. For occasion, we simply acquired a new firm, PreSonus. They’re working on an Oracle ERP system. We have plans to migrate them over to SAP. We actually are copying a sandbox to allow them to begin getting used to the system. It’s one thing that we’d have a actually troublesome time establishing with our increased surroundings with AWS.
That might be finished inside a day. That’s how highly effective these instruments are.
The different half that I’m trying ahead to — SAP is a rules-based system. What I’m trying ahead to is working with AWS, taking this enormous quantity of intelligence, of transactional knowledge now we have within the SAP system and utilizing that dataset with Amazon’s AI and machine studying algorithms to present perception that we simply can’t do at present with the basic instruments now we have accessible.
Were there any tradeoffs that had to be made within the migration?
The solely downside can be a vital Amazon outage. I imagine one of many [recent] outages actually impacted the SAP situations. Having stated that, we had a few outages in our personal surroundings. But there we had extra management. Other than that, there have been solely advantages. We use reserved situations to handle the price. Purely from a pricing perspective, it’s a very enticing resolution.
