IBM Cloud for SAP

Cloud for SAP Community

Join us to learn more about deploying SAP landscape on IBM Cloud from this community of collaborative experts and IBM Cloud product users.

 View Only

IBM CIO Transforms Hardware Manufacturing with RISE with SAP® on IBM® Power® Virtual Server

By Sridhar Seshadri posted 8 hours ago

  

In 2024, IBM’s Hardware Strategic Initiative took a bold step forward by migrating its global SAP® application to RISE with SAP® on IBM® Power® Virtual Server. This mission-critical system supports over 2,000 users across IBM’s flagship hardware portfolio—including IBM Z®, IBM Power®, IBM Storage, Quantum, IBM Tape Drives, Outsourced Supply Chain and appliances like CP4D, QRadar, and DataPower—spanning IBMs manufacturing and fulfillment sites in different countries.

Infrastructure Transformation: A CIO-Led Innovation Journey

The IBM CIO team led a comprehensive transformation of the SAP landscape for the hardware manufacturing group. To prepare for this migration, over 100 team members across four continents were trained from the IBM CIO team in SAP S/4HANA® core competencies via SAP Learning Hub and targeted learning sessions. The SAP MaxAttn was selectively engaged to provide expert consulting in areas requiring additional upskilling.

A proven project management methodology—a hybrid agile approach combined with iterative sprints—was used across five project phases: Discover, Prepare, Explore, Realize, and Deploy. This structured yet flexible approach enabled the team to successfully execute the transformation over a 15-month period

From Legacy to Future-Ready: SAP S/4HANA Migration

The transformation began with Custom Code Lifecycle Management, retiring legacy code and archiving over 1TB of historical data. The Customer Vendor Integration (CVI) prerequisite was implemented more than a year ahead of the S/4HANA preparation phase.

The SAP ECC6 system was migrated from on-premises infrastructure on IBM Power to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud environment via RISE with SAP on IBM Power Virtual Servers. A Brownfield approach preserved existing configurations and customizations while converting the core data model to S/4HANA—with a remarkably smooth cutover and just 80 hours of downtime.

Hardware Manufacturing SAP S/4HANA- Architecture in IBM Power

Rigorous Testing and Seamless Execution

The migration included

  • 6 test cycles
  • 292 user acceptance test records
  • 82 connectivity tests
  • 191 system integration tests
  • Testing covered high availability, disaster recovery, and volume & performance validation

Our goals were ABAP Modernization and Optimization and establishing a Clean Core—both critical components of the migration to ensure that ABAP code is optimized for the in-memory database and can fully leverage its capabilities. The IBM CIO team leveraged smartShift to analyze custom code and remediate over 5,000 custom objects.

After extensive end-to-end system integration and user acceptance testing, the team conducted three complete BASIS dress rehearsals to optimize downtime. The move to production was carried out on time, with ZERO incidents or technical issues.

Operational Excellence and Business Impact

The migration involved

  • 271 high-level activities
  • 300+ individual tasks
  • 51 checkpoint calls
  • 6 working group sessions
  • 8 management status calls

Outcome

  • A stable and efficient SAP S/4HANA environment
  • The operation team observed 20% operational efficiency in the overall transactional processing time and in batch processing
  • Operating system upgrade was performed with ZERO downtime
  • Disaster recovery was performed with targeted RTO (recovery time objective) and RPO (recovery point objective)
  • Attained 30% reduction in the infrastructure costs
  • 100% continuous availability

Business and Platform Benefits

Business Benefits

  • Code and Data Simplification
  • New and enhanced finance capabilities.
  • Enhancement and Integration with SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)
  • Clean Core compliance for one of the country’s Digital Invoice processes

Platform Benefits

  • Instant data retrieval
  • Cloud Application Services (upgrades, patching, DR, refreshes)
  • Standardized infrastructure configuration
  • Optimized cloud operations via the RISE environment
  • Foundation for enterprise-wide archiving

What’s Next

IBM is working on to:

  • Leverage SAP BTP for strategic partner collaboration.
  • Deploy SAP Global Trade Services (GTS) & SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM).
  • Enable and access archived data.
  • Continue the evolution of the SAP S/4HANA landscape on IBM SAP Hyperscaler.
image source: IBM
0 comments
7 views

Permalink