Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - Accelerating the migration of large-scale SAP systems to AWS (ENT210)

Summary

• Vimal Jain, an SAP consultant at AWS, and Mark Wagner from Siemens Smart Infrastructure, discuss the migration of Siemens' SAP workloads to AWS.
• Siemens Smart Infrastructure focuses on digital transformation, customer impact, technology with purpose, and empowering people.
• Siemens' SAP landscape was complex, with multiple system lines linked to factories, making it mission-critical.
• Drivers for migration included organizational changes, desire to avoid on-prem investments, cloud benefits, and financial considerations.
• The migration approach involved selecting AWS as the cloud provider, choosing an implementation partner, detailed business case development, cybersecurity considerations, and establishing a Direct Connect with IPsec encryption.
• Challenges included internal IT resistance, business stakeholder concerns, cybersecurity, partner selection, and network connectivity.
• AWS Professional Services played a crucial role in architecture design, automation, migration planning, deployment, and testing.
• Siemens managed internal coordination, testing, and go-live planning.
• The project organization was not hierarchical; it involved representatives from SAP, AWS, and the implementation partner in decision-making.
• The migration timeline spanned 20 months, moving six system lines with 16,000 users.
• The architecture design focused on security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and operational excellence.
• Migration used HANA system replication, minimizing disruption and allowing lift and shift of configurations.
• Siemens achieved agility, flexibility, scalability, performance improvements, and high availability.
• Key learnings included the value of AWS Professional Services, stakeholder involvement, decentralized project execution, go-live planning, automation, and financial considerations.
• AWS innovations for SAP workloads include Gen 7 EC2 instances, AWS Backup, migration hub orchestrator, CloudWatch application insights, systems manager, AWS SDK for ABAP, Amazon Bedrock, and AWS Supply Chain solution.

Insights

• Siemens' migration to AWS was driven by a need for agility, scalability, and a future-proof infrastructure, as well as financial incentives.
• The project faced internal resistance, highlighting the importance of stakeholder engagement and clear communication of cloud benefits.
• AWS Professional Services played a pivotal role in ensuring a smooth migration, emphasizing the value of expert guidance in complex projects.
• The multi-account strategy and Direct Connect with IPsec encryption addressed Siemens' stringent security and data privacy requirements.
• The use of infrastructure as code and AWS-specific services for SAP workloads facilitated operational excellence and cost optimization.
• The migration approach minimized business disruption and allowed for a controlled integration testing environment, showcasing the benefits of cloud-native tools and methodologies.
• Post-migration, Siemens experienced improved performance, high availability, and disaster recovery capabilities, validating the effectiveness of the cloud environment for mission-critical applications.
• AWS continues to innovate in the SAP space, with new instance types and services enhancing performance and integration capabilities, which could benefit future migrations and modernizations of SAP workloads.