Amrest

Established in 1993, AmRest operates nowadays over 2,200 restaurants under franchise brands such as KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks and Burger King and proprietary brands like Sushi Shop, La Tagliatella, Bacoa, Blue Frog and KABB. The company also has in its portfolio virtual brands like Pokai and Lepieje.

With a presence in 26 countries worldwide, AmRest ensures that each of their 50,000 employees deliver delicious food and exceptional service at affordable prices.

AmRest wanted to migrate their entire SAP environment (including SAP BW, ERP, Portal, and PI) to Microsoft Azure Cloud. They have been using SAP ERP since 2008. In the beginning, the system was operating on AmRest’s own infrastructure but later own they decided to use outsourced hosting.

That solution worked for AmRest for many years but as the company further developed, it was no longer sufficient. When the company decided to consider cloud solutions, they started discussing the possibilities and advantages of the Azure Cloud with their long-lasting and proven partner, Microsoft.

This required external specialized support with migrating their full SAP environment to Microsoft Azure Cloud. AmRest found in SE16N a reliable partner, with a competent and experienced team of consultants that was able to deliver the desired outcomes and ensure minimum business disruption across the company.

The goals set by AmRest in the context of the project:

1. Increased flexibility and scalability.

   With the company’s ongoing expansion, AmRest wanted a solution that would accommodate the business fluctuations and provide the ability to scale up or down to meet its volatile needs.

2. Improvement of backup security.

   The company needed to improve the backup security measures for its SAP environment while ensuring increased levels of performance.

3. Transparency of fees and cost optimization.

   In addition to making the system easier to use, the company wanted to have better control over their IT budgets.

The main activities that ensured the successful migration of SAP systems to the Microsoft Azure Cloud were:

• Pre-implementation analysis with actionable recommendations;
• Preparation of project documents and technical concept;
• Technical preparation for the migration;
• Migration of SAP ERP 6.07 to Microsoft Azure Cloud;
• Migration of SAP BW 7.3 to Microsoft Azure Cloud;
• Migration of SAP Portal 7.3 to Microsoft Azure Cloud;
• Migration of SAP PI 7.3 to Microsoft Azure Cloud;
• Reimplementation of SAP Solution Manager 7.2 in Microsoft Azure Cloud;
• Upgrade of operating systems to MS Windows Server 2016;
• Upgrade of databases to MS SQL Server 2016;
• Post-migration support for users.

The collaboration between AmRest and SE16N was carried out for less than 3 months and during this period, a total of more than 20 migrations to the Microsoft Azure Cloud have been performed.

Prior to moving forward with the full migration, AmRest decided to perform a Proof of Concept (PoC), and its success was proof that they were heading in a good direction. The results of the PoC showed that it was technically possible to perform migration in a very short time and that close attention should be paid to the verification of the connection between systems. Migration was of ’brownfield’ type, based on existing infrastructure in MS Azure, that had to be extended to suit new need.

As part of the project, the following systems have been successfully migrated to the Microsoft Azure Cloud: SAP ERP, SAP BW, SAP Portal, SAP Process Integration and SAP Solution Manager. Taking technical issues into consideration, everything was possible for SE16N in terms of SAP and Azure.

Achieved Goals

1. Increased flexibility and scalability.

   With Microsoft Azure Cloud, AmRest benefits from high availability and redundancy because of Microsoft’s vast global footprint. Additionally, the cloud can meet any volatile business needs, Azure making it easy to change the level of computing power needed with a simple mouse click.

2. Improvement of backup security.

   After implementing the Azure Cloud, AmRest’s SAP environment benefit from enhanced protection powered by Microsoft.

3. Transparency of fees and cost optimization.

   With Azure’s pay-as-you go payment plan, AmRest has a better overview of their IT costs because they purchase only what they need. Additionally, their infrastructure and maintenance costs are optimized with SaaS applications.