In partnership with Lemongrass, a software-enabled services provider known for delivering SAP to cloud migration to enterprise customers, leading guitar maker Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC) moved its SAP systems to Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.
Leading organisations, including experience management (XM) software provider Qualtrics, are already leading the way in reimagining SAP solutions by leveraging AWS to modernise and digitise their business processes while also gaining new market opportunities. More recently, FMIC has been added to the roster of customers running SAP on AWS worldwide. The stringed instruments and amplifiers manufacturer handles administration, product, sales, and export operations from its Scottsdale, Arizona headquarters and global satellite offices in Australia, England, France, Germany, Mexico, Sweden, and Japan, in addition to its flagship headquarters in Los Angeles.
FMIC decided to upgrade its SAP systems to the latest edition of SAP ERP Central Component in 2020, re-platform the application to SAP Suite on HANA, and migrate it to AWS. It has tapped managed services provider (MSP) Lemongrass as the partner to lead the SAP to cloud migration project that is intended to help improve the company’s reliability and security, while also enabling innovation.
According to Michael Spandau, Chief Information Officer at Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, the company chose Lemongrass due to its “wealth of experience and proven track record” in moving and running SAP on AWS.
“Straight away we noticed how much faster everything runs on AWS, which is allowing our business users to get through their work more quickly and efficiently. In the future, we will look to connect our SAP data to broader initiatives to drive insight and further value to the business,” Spandau explained.
Lemongrass Backs Fender’s SAP to Cloud Migration Project
With the demand for FMIC’s physical and digital products and services constantly increasing in the past few years, the SAP systems and the hardware on which the company was operating needed additional support. According to the statement released, Lemongrass’ collaboration with FMIC was a two-step approach that would allow the musical instrument manufacturer to keep running its SAP systems while they were being migrated to AWS. As part of the partnership, the SAP on AWS service provider did numerous test runs to ensure that the downtime would fit well within the allocated timeframe.
Currently, Lemongrass is in charge of the ongoing management of FMIC’s systems after the said successful project. Detailing more about the partnership with FMIC, Lemongrass Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer Eamonn O’Neill shared:
“Working with FMIC has been terrific. It’s a first-class organisation from the top down. The IT organisation truly understands how the cloud not only improves the performance of SAP but creates opportunities for innovation, too. Lemongrass is honored to have been selected to handle the migration and management of FMIC’s SAP systems on AWS.”
“We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial partnership between our companies,” O’Neill stressed.
Last October 2021, Lemongrass went beyond its SAP on AWS expertise and took advantage of the growing demand for SAP on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in the hyperscaler market. Under the partnership with Google, it will deliver its standard SAP migration services using GCP’s data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) tools. In March of the same year, Energy Queensland also selected the Atlanta-based firm — which has an office in Melbourne as its Asia-Pacific (APAC) headquarters — to move an SAP S/4HANA database environment and dozens of SAP applications to an AWS Landing Zone.
