{"id":1531,"date":"2021-01-19T13:57:22","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T06:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vticloud.io\/?post_type=case_study&p=1531"},"modified":"2021-03-05T15:44:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T08:44:00","slug":"dich-chuyen-sap-len-cloud-cec-day-nhanh-viec-ra-quyet-dinh-kinh-doanh-va-tang-hieu-nang-su-dung","status":"publish","type":"case_study","link":"https:\/\/vticloud.io\/en\/case_study\/dich-chuyen-sap-len-cloud-cec-day-nhanh-viec-ra-quyet-dinh-kinh-doanh-va-tang-hieu-nang-su-dung\/","title":{"rendered":"CEC Improves Business Decision-Making and Performance Visibility Using SAP on AWS"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“We have a great opportunity to learn more about the ways in which the AWS Cloud can help us be more efficient and agile as a company and respond quickly to business opportunities.” – Kevin Chueh, Vice President of IT, CEC, says.<\/p>\n

About CEC <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Continental Engineering Corporation (CEC) is widely recognized as one of Taiwan’s prominent contractor and developer, excelling in major public and private-sector construction as well as long-term land and community development. CEC is one of only a handful of companies licensed in Taiwan to engage in both construction and development.<\/p>\n

Using Data to Build a Better Business<\/h2>\n
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In the construction industry, there are numerous risks. If a large construction project overruns, costs can stretch to millions of dollars, and accidents on construction sites can be fatal. Large construction companies like\u00a0Continental Engineering Corporation<\/a>\u00a0(CEC) in Taiwan require huge amounts of materials, like concrete and steel, to complete projects, and small fluctuations in prices can eat away at margins. To help control risks, construction businesses rely on IT to help personnel carefully manage the complexity of building projects, onsite safety, and purchasing. CEC, for instance, uses a SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to store its data and serve end-of-month reports the company needs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Cloud for Peace of Mind<\/h2>\n
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Traditionally, CEC ran SAP and all its IT systems on premises but looked to migrate to the cloud. The move, which began in 2018, was triggered by servers in the data center approaching end-of-life. Kevin Chueh, vice president of IT at CEC, says, \u201cIt was an opportunity to modernize our IT and move to a more flexible infrastructure.\u201d CEC believed the cloud could reduce its costs through a pay-as-you-go model and give the company the power to scale up its infrastructure for month-end reporting when work was most hectic. What\u2019s more, CEC could run SAP on powerful cloud-based servers optimized for large ERP systems and get better performance out of the software, avoiding the upfront costs of refreshing CEC\u2019s aging servers.<\/p>\n

CEC looked for a cloud service provider to support the migration and chose Amazon Web Services (AWS). Chueh comments, \u201cWe didn\u2019t need long to decide on the cloud service provider. The AWS Cloud was more mature than the clouds of competitors and running SAP on AWS gave us peace of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A Well-Thought-Out Collaboration<\/h2>\n
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CEC worked with Taiwan\u2019s\u00a0CKmates<\/a>, an\u00a0AWS Partner Network<\/a>\u00a0(APN)\u00a0Advanced Consulting Partner<\/a>, to lead the migration. CKmates also joined forces with CEC\u2019s technology partner, which supports its SAP systems. Together they spent one month defining the AWS infrastructure to support the SAP system, and two months on a proof of concept (POC). They then spent another month refining the infrastructure based on the results of the POC before pressing ahead with the migration. Kane Pan, ERP systems manager at CEC, says, \u201cThe project was well managed from end to end, with CKmates and our technology partner collaborating well and ensuring we stayed on schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Delivering a Powerful Stack<\/h2>\n
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The company\u2019s SAP applications run on\u00a0Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) R5 instances<\/a>, which are designed for memory-intensive systems like SAP ERP. The R5 instances are powered by\u00a0AWS Nitro System<\/a>, which delivers virtually all the compute and memory resources the host hardware has to offer. CEC\u2019s SAP database sits on\u00a0Amazon Elastic Block Store<\/a>\u00a0(Amazon EBS), whose single digit\u2013millisecond latency is suited to high-performance database workloads. In addition, CEC uses\u00a0Amazon Simple Storage Service<\/a>\u00a0(Amazon S3) for SAP backups.<\/p>\n

Pan says, \u201cThe time period between a construction project\u2019s inception and its completion can be many years, so projects tend to accumulate a lot of data, all of which needs processing multiple times. Amazon EC2 R5 instances were ideal because of their capacity to hold data when generating reports. Pulling out 8\u201310 years\u2019 worth of data on a construction project was no problem with these instances.\u201d<\/p>\n

CEC still runs some applications on premises and uses\u00a0AWS Direct Connect<\/a>\u00a0to enable the free flow of data between the cloud-based SAP solution and its on-premises applications. It\u2019s only a temporary measure while CEC plans its all-in migration to the AWS Cloud. Chueh adds, \u201cWe\u2019re currently investigating whether our older applications can run on the cloud. Nevertheless, our long-term goal is to migrate everything to AWS.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Generating Reports up to 83% Faster<\/h2>\n
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Since the company migrated SAP to the AWS Cloud, its ERP system\u2019s performance has increased. Month-end reports that used to take 1\u20132 hours to generate are now delivered in 10\u201320 minutes. Because personnel know reports can be generated so quickly, they are asking IT to produce more of them, thereby getting a deeper level of insight into areas of the business where more details were needed. \u201cKnowing more about how all areas of CEC are operating will help us make better business decisions,\u201d says Chueh. \u201cWe\u2019ve had great feedback from our finance and accounting department because of the way this makes their lives easier.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"CEC<\/p>\n

Seizing the Opportunity to Increase Agility While Saving Time and Cost<\/h2>\n
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Compared with on premises, the cost of running SAP on the AWS Cloud is about 10 percent lower. Furthermore, the IT team is saving time managing its SAP environment instead of its data centers. In the few months since the migration, CEC has also seen a reduction in network latency of 30 percent and backups are 5 percent quicker. The cost and time savings are being reinvested in the IT team learning more about AWS services to accelerate the development of CEC\u2019s cloud environment. Chueh concludes, \u201cWe have a great opportunity to learn more about the ways in which the AWS Cloud can help us be more efficient and agile as a company and respond quickly to business opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n