To ensure the success of Vodafone’s transformation efforts, the multinational telecommunications corporation has teamed up with tech giants Google Cloud, SAP, and Accenture for its SAP to Google Cloud migration project.
Leading telecoms provider Vodafone is speeding up its transition to become a “tech-co” by offering 5G services, Internet of Things (IoT), television, and hosting platforms, among other digitally enabled products and services. Having 300 million mobile users in 21 countries, the business is among the top five mobile network providers worldwide. Vodafone’s EVO2CLOUD initiative is a strategic push to shift from an on-premises SAP S/4HANA enterprise resource planning (ERP) deployment to the Google Cloud Platform.
SAP is the backbone of Vodafone’s internal and external operations, used for finance, human resources (HR), and supply chain functions. To run efficiently with very few interruptions, high availability and reliability are necessary prerequisites. With this, Vodafone understands that SAP systems hosted on Google Cloud lays the groundwork for digital transformation and data security.
Antonio Leomanni, EVO2CLOUD Program Lead at Accenture, describes the latest industry development as “an innovative and strategic initiative, co-shaped with a truly integrated partnership.” He further shared in an official statement:
“A daily collaboration among four parties, Vodafone, Google, SAP and Accenture are executing the cloud transformation of a complex SAP estate within a compressed time frame, for rapid benefits realization and accelerated innovations in the cloud.”
Upon completion, the EVO2CLOUD program is anticipated to be among the biggest migrations from SAP to Google Cloud. After 15 years of on-premises operation, the scale of Vodafone’s SAP system has grown, making the transition both the largest and the most sophisticated of its kind across all of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Using SAP as part of its cloud and data ecosystem, bringing data analytics capabilities inside the company, and supporting future technology innovation are all ways in which Vodafone hopes to boost operational efficiency, enhance its Net Promoter Score (NPS), and maximize commercial value. Therefore, the EVO2CLOUD initiative offers standardized SAP solutions and contributes in the shift to a data-centric model that makes use of quick and accurate data to drive business decisions.
Moving SAP to Google Cloud
It is worth noting that up until November 2019, Vodafone was operating with a single instance of the SAP Enterprise Core Components (ECC) solution. However, the company was able to successfully upgrade its on-premises system to the five SAP S/4HANA instances located around the world through a program that lasted approximately 18 months.
According to Vodafone, it was challenging for them to extract and utilize their SAP data before moving to Google Cloud. Now that it has moved to the cloud and is using Google Cloud infrastructure and tools, it may increase the amount of data it utilizes for analytics and process mining.
Moreover, there are now opportunities to map data with other external sources during operations and monitoring. For instance, HR data from SAP can be combined with other non-SAP data, leading to data enrichment and increased business value. With the help of Google Cloud, Vodafone hopes to find even more ways to harness the power of its SAP data.
In New Zealand, Vodafone’s successful adoption of numerous SAP cloud solutions exemplifies remote collaboration in a COVID-19 pandemic setting. Key members of SAP, Vodafone Group, and Vodafone New Zealand, together with implementation and change management partners Infosys and EY, spearheaded the cloud transition project. Since July 2021, a remote team of experts from nine locations has worked together to streamline support tasks and systems while reducing business risks.
