STORIES

A massive
cloud
migration
—in a flash
SAP SuccessFactors
transforms itself to help
other companies
transform
Call for change

An opportunity The enhanced platform

to be a better partner would enable its
customers to integrate
with customers on their and extend capabilities
from across SAP’s entire
business transformations software portfolio,
facilitating their
company-wide
Over the last few years, numerous large companies real-time—and ultimately helps companies transform.
around the world have initiated company-wide SAP saw an enormous opportunity to support its vision transformations.
transformations to reimagine their businesses and and its customers’ transformations by transforming
become more competitive. itself—in essence, doing what it encourages its
customers to do. As part of its ambitious Next-
SAP, the global enterprise software developer, aims to Generation Cloud Delivery initiative, launched in 2020,
support these transformations through its end-to-end SAP redefined its business model to focus on delivering
software suite, which helps companies manage supply software, services, and support from the cloud—rather
chains, finance, human resources, customer than from on-premises facilities.
relationships, manufacturing, spending, sustainability,
and more. To drive this transformation, SAP leveraged its next
level resilient, scalable cloud computing infrastructure
SAP’s vision is to enable companies in every industry to and extended centralized platform, called SAP Business
become a network of intelligent enterprises. An Technology Platform.
intelligent enterprise uses AI, automation, analytics, and
other advanced technologies to optimize businesses in

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 Call for change

An important part of SAP’s transformation initiative was migrating to

hyperscalers the nine large data centers that serve SAP SuccessFactors, a
customizable, comprehensive suite of human resources management software
including core HR, payroll, talent management, and much more. Migrations
typically involve addressing a single customer’s needs on timing, logistics, and
other issues. This project would require communicating and coordinating with
SAP SuccessFactors’ more than 9,000 customers and 150,000 separate
tenants.

A top priority for SAP was ensuring zero service interruptions for SAP
SuccessFactors users—more than 120 million company employees in 200+
countries. The migration had to occur entirely during existing 24-36-hour time
slots slated for maintenance. That meant it would need to be split into 38
separate runs executed with precision and speed. To minimize extra
infrastructure costs, SAP needed each data center to be fully decommissioned
in 15 days.

Copyright © 2023 Accenture. All rights reserved

reserved.
When tech meets human ingenuity

A phased approach
with substantial
automation
When SAP approached Accenture for support on one of the data centers (Toronto). Phase 2
on this ambitious migration, both companies would apply the lessons learned and tools
knew that assembling large, collaborative developed in Phase 1 to migrate the other eight
teams with the right skills—and doing so data centers rapidly and reliably.
early—would be a prerequisite for success.
Together, the companies trained and ramped In Phase 1, the teams developed migration
up project staff to more than a thousand runbooks, which described over 1,000 steps and
employees in just a few months. Accenture tasks along with the responsible people and time
created a dedicated focused training facility allotments. The runbooks enabled the teams to
covering 56 specialized skills. identify and resolve technical challenges as well
as optimize the efficiency of the steps. The
Establishing the right technical plan early was runbooks were the base to build advanced
also essential. SAP and Accenture decided to automation tools needed to meet the
split the migration into two phases. Phase 1 demanding timeline.
would design and build the migration
procedures and methodology and refine it

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 When tech meets human ingenuity

Tools were developed to automate the building and testing of the databases, networking, monitoring, and
other components of the migration infrastructure. There was automation for project management tasks
such as onboarding new staff, billing, and processing timesheets. The decommissioning of the computing
“It was wonderful to see and storage resources at the data centers was automated. This included tasks like deleting data and
how SAP and Accenture implementing security measures. Many automation scripts will provide good value and increased efficiency
also in the future.
teamed up to meet the
massive Next-Generation Based on lessons from the Toronto data center migration at the end of Phase 1, the teams refined and
optimized processes, runbooks, and automation. All the 38 migration runs in Phase 2 were successful on
Cloud Delivery mission the first attempt, and the last seven data centers were migrated in less than six months. The very tough
decommissioning deadlines were also met in every case. Throughout the project, SAP hosted dozens of
and timeline,” webinars to keep its customers informed.

MEG BEAR
“The excellent collaboration and shared mission have helped us achieve our program with outstanding
President and Chief Product
success. The Accenture colleagues’ expertise played a key role in all of it. Their experts really came through
Officer of SAP SuccessFactors for us. We couldn’t have done it without them,” said Meg Bear, President and Chief Product Officer of SAP
SuccessFactors.

“This project is the story of great Accenture and SAP teams coming together,” said Bernhard Schulzki,
Accenture’s Managing Director for SAP Cloud and Infrastructure Technology Consulting. “We worked
closely with SAP and co-innovated on the processes, runbooks, and automation to achieve a 100% success
rate on the migration runs.”

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reserved.
A valuable difference

Toward a network
of intelligent
enterprises
The project migrated nine data centers with Post-migration, SAP SuccessFactors can take
a multitude of teams and infrastructure advantage of the cloud’s many benefits. It can
platforms to three major public cloud scale its computing resources much more
platforms and SAP’s Converged Cloud. This quickly, enabling a larger base of customers.
significantly reduces complexity and enables
much more efficient operations for SAP The cloud infrastructure enhances the security,
SuccessFactors. reliability, and performance of SAP
SuccessFactors applications.
SAP continuously works on its goal of net-zero
carbon emissions along its value chain by 2030.
The cloud infrastructure is powered by 100%
renewable electricity.

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A valuable difference

The new setup also lays the foundation for SAP SuccessFactors to make user
experience improvements not possible previously. For instance, SAP SuccessFactors is
planning new capabilities that enable its customers to provide employees with more
engaging, useful, individualized experiences informed by data.

Now, SAP SuccessFactors is much better positioned to achieve its vision of a network of
intelligent enterprises to power business transformations around the world. It is providing its
customers with better technology to transform their human resources, empowering them to
take better care of their employees and improving employee well-being. These benefits in turn
equip SAP SuccessFactors’ customers to adapt continuously to opportunities and disruptions
and transform their entire businesses.

Copyright © 2023 Accenture. All rights reserved.

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