Transmeri took SAP smoothly to Azure

In 2019 Transmeri Group, a Finnish family company that specializes in manufacturing, importing and wholesaling, selected ISLET Group to implement its SAP S/4HANA innovation project. Transmeri’s digital strategy is divided into two main sections: improving and digitizing existing processes, as well as uncovering new business opportunities. The company group is growing through acquisitions, so the scalability of SAP’s platform will continue to be particularly important to Transmeri in the future.

In the “SAP S/4HANA on Azure” project Transmeri wants to achieve a modern technology architecture that enables the implementation of digital strategy with agility and the latest technologies. In the first phase of the project, Transmeri’s current SAP ERP system was migrated to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. The Group’s business management now runs on the Azure public cloud platform and the experiences have been positive.

We wanted to be cost effective, but also to maximize the future benefits. In addition to our ERP, Transmeri has other systems in Azure. We selected Azure because we work closely with not only SAP but also Microsoft, and SAP on Azure supports our digital strategy nicely.

Kimmo Koho

CIO, Transmeri Group

Globally, SAP ERP systems have been exported and maintained on Azure for 10 years, and this is a natural first step in preparing companies for the SAP S/4HANA transition. The joint Embrace program of SAP & Microsoft was released at the end of 2019 and will further deepen the collaboration between SAP and Microsoft.

SAP is investing heavily in Microsoft collaboration to facilitate and accelerate customers’ transition to S/4HANA digital platform, while enabling customers to achieve cost efficiencies by leveraging Azure’s cloud-based capacity to drive SAP operations.

Marika Auramo

Managing Director in the Nordic and Baltic Region, SAP

Why should SAP customers take their ERP system to Azure?

“The biggest benefit for the customer is that thanks to the SAP & Microsoft collaboration, they get the best parts of both and are able to cross-use products, for example. Our customers have also noticed a clear improvement in system speed and stability. Microsoft invests a billion in security services every year, which means that customers can have peace of mind because we constantly guarantee the latest security standards”, says Kari Aarvala, Microsoft’s Director, SAP on Azure.

Globally, more than half of SAP’s public cloud customers have exported SAP to Azure, and most of those who haven’t yet migrated to public cloud are planning to do so. Azure is by far the largest cloud platform, which means that know-how can be found worldwide, and the transition path has been well tested.

Kari Aarvala

Director, SAP on Azure, Microsoft

“At Transmeri we are strongly centralizing the ICT to the cloud, so taking our ERP to Azure is a natural part of our transition to cloud. In addition to synergies, Azure allows for a variety of experiments at low thresholds. I am glad that Islet carried the transition out on schedule and on budget, and the system has worked well since its introduction. In particular, we had high expectations for performance, speed and data usage,” Kimmo Koho explains.

How do I export SAP environments to Microsoft Azure?

Islet Group assists customers in the transition process by modeling business value chains, reference architectures, and relevant paths for the transition, and creating a road map for the selected path toward S/4HANA and the cloud. Islet provides best practice models and tools to help you find the most risk-free, easy, and fast way to transition to S/4HANA and Azure.

“Azure has been a topic of many recent discussions with SAP customers, especially in terms of its scalability and efficiency. In the SAP environment, the scalable Azure platform enables many things, e.g. the need for flexible and fast provisioning of SAP environments, the creation of new value chains and the deeper utilization of SAP and Microsoft technologies in the overall architecture. Islet has firm expertise in SAP and Microsoft Azure, which is critical in migrating SAP business systems to the public cloud service,” says Tommi Luoto, Islet Group’s Chief Technology Officer and one of the owners.