Heavy equipment manufacturer and supplier Kubota ANZ has transitioned its mission-critical applications to a local cloud instance, following an SAP to Azure migration, in order to add value to operations through alterations and enhancements to core SAP systems depending on local needs.
Kubota has been one of the leading providers of agricultural, construction, and power equipment in Australia and New Zealand for over four decades now. With a mission to providing agricultural machinery and services to meet the world’s growing food demand, the company works directly with customers in the agriculture industry to ensure that they have what they need to manage their fields. In early 2020, Kubota Group established a multi-year strategic alliance with Microsoft aimed at accelerating the digital transformation of the business. Part of the initiatives include migrating its IT infrastructure and SAP mission-critical systems onto Microsoft Azure’s cloud platform.
Many of Kubota ANZ’s digital platforms were formerly hosted centrally and on-premises by its parent company, Kubota Japan. The firm’s business growth strategy pushed the company to move core applications to Azure — initially with its SAP ERP system — enabling it to scale and use a broad range of cloud-based tools and services to further drive innovation.
Moreover, the SAP to Azure migration establishes a foundation to support a more responsive and resilient platform to serve the company’s 186 dealerships across the region. Tapping Zag, which is now part of Accenture, as the implementation partner for the project, Kubota ANZ has taken advantage of the means to rebuild IT governance to ensure that any system upgrades are in line with the organisation’s strategic goals.
The Auckland-based SAP specialist and cloud solutions technology firm assisted Kubota ANZ in completing the SAP system migration from Japan and shifting to a local cloud instance in a span of five months. Additionally, Zag also supported the company’s disaster recovery upgrade and technical re-platforming.
Nick Mulcahy, CEO at Zag and Head of Technology at Accenture New Zealand, said:
“It was important for Kubota Australia and New Zealand to simplify workloads and scale up to meet the changing needs of local dealers and stay ahead of the curve in such a competitive landscape.”
Kubota ANZ’s SAP to Azure Migration Lays Foundation for Planned S/4HANA Upgrade
According to Mulcahy, the moving of the company’s large SAP workloads from Japan into Microsoft Azure in Australia was performed 100{8bf2b29f36318f0ac46ab1cc03d7035abce669a1cea16c9ed62389a818fa22fd} remotely — from the first kick-off meeting right through to project completion. Expressing his delight at the recent collaboration with Kubota ANZ, he remarked:
“It is exciting to see Kubota leap towards becoming a more agile and autonomous enterprise by transitioning to Microsoft’s innovative cloud technology.”
Furthermore, data sovereignty has been addressed now that crucial SAP applications are hosted in local Azure instances. This has also allowed the company’s IT team in ANZ to directly support employees and provide value to operations by modifying core SAP systems tailored to local requirements. In addition, the company stated that the SAP to Azure migration paves the way for a planned upgrade to SAP S/4HANA in the medium term.
Jonathon Bonicci, IT Service Delivery Manager at Kubota ANZ, maintained:
“We have been able to simplify things with just having a workload in Azure. From a cost perspective, we have been able to realise a significant amount there. We intend to leverage a lot of other functionality from Azure and the Microsoft stack.”
Describing the project as “one of the biggest and most complex” given the numerous Azure migrations he has worked on previously, Daniel Lodder, Head of Enterprise IT at Kubota ANZ, said the transition was smooth and successful. According to him, the digital transformation enables Kubota ANZ to be more responsive to the needs of its dealers, which is vital for maintaining distributor loyalty in a highly competitive market.
