Customer Stories
Leveraging Microsoft Azure for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) operations.
Customer Name:
Tolaram Group
Industry:
FMCG
Business Problem:
Maintaining high availability for critical SAP system
Commercial Impact:
Improved brand image and reduction in revenue/financial loss of service disruption
Social Impact:
Tolaram's high availability ensures predictable and reliable distribution of goods; this impacts and ensures food security
Deal Size:
$500,000
Microsoft Solution:
Azure for Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Microsoft Partner:
Cloudware Africa
With Botswana’s Data Protection Act in view, we’ll implement Microsoft Purview and Priva, aligning with compliance standards and reinforcing our commitment to data protection.
Now, Tolaram Group already had its infrastructure hosted on Azure. But for their high availability and disaster recovery operations, they considered using a different cloud service. That is where Cloudware Africa stepped in.
Cloudware Africa demonstrated to Tolaram that Azure’s multiple zones redundancy could achieve the same goals as another public cloud service—only faster and with improved security. So, Tolaram decided to stick with Azure for their critical systems.
Customer Challenge
As a multinational organization, Tolaram Group places a high priority on the availability of their systems to provide services to all their business touch points across the world. It is paramount for their business to avoid an outage of critical systems warehousing applications for order processing, logistics coordination and inventory management.
Additionally, Tolaram identified a highly available system as key to meeting regulatory and customer expectations to support data security, immunity to disasters and operational continuity.
Solution Impact
Tolaram already had their ERP resources hosted on Azure, they however sought to achieve fault tolerance by replicating the applications with a different cloud provider.
Equipped with the understanding of Tolaram’s goal, as well as the future state the business sought to achieve, Cloudware Africa leveraged her experience to deliver envisioning sessions to Tolaram and successfully prove that using azure multiple zones redundancy will achieve their business objective.
Having proved to Tolaram group that Azure will not just deliver desired outcomes but higher speed and security, Cloudware Africa implemented high availability/disaster recovery solutions for the SAP application and Database on Azure to provide optimal RTO/RPO in almost an instant.
Unique Value Proposition
Cloudware Africa differentiated itself in the marketplace through its industry insight and unique blend of technical acumen in addressing customers’ challenges and delivering value beyond their expectations.
For Tolaram Group’s project, Cloudware leveraged its specialized expertise in Azure cloud solutions to meet the customer’s need for high availability for their critical Azure hosted SAP applications. The deployment showcased our capability for not just implementing technology, but also for envisioning a strategic roadmap aligned with the customer’s immediate and long-term goals.
The added value from Cloudware was evident in our commitment to collaborative partnership and continuous knowledge-sharing to ensure alignment with industry best practices. The result is that Tolaram is now at the forefront of innovation in their industry and is ever ready to meet market demand; thereby solidifying their reputation and boosting customers’ confidence in the their ability to always meet market demand.
Engagement with Microsoft:
We partnered with Microsoft’s SAP on Azure Subject Matter Expert (SME) – Al Morrison, who played a pivotal role in the project, by offering insights on industry best practices, this ensured that the solutions implemented were in line with industry standards.
The success of this project underscores the power of collaboration and the importance of leveraging industry expertise. It demonstrates how Cloudware Africa and Microsoft, by working together, were able to deliver a solution that not only met Tolaram’s needs, but a step further by providing added value (knowledge sharing/workshops) and ensuring alignment with long-term business objectives.
Business and Digital Transfromation
The implementation of SAP on Azure for high availability and disaster recovery poses inherent complexities, primarily due to the intricate re-architecture and integration of diverse SAP systems. Ensuring swift recovery from system failures or downtime is paramount in such scenarios.
Transitioning to a high availability architecture necessitated a shift from conventional Azure managed disks to an Azure File Share network file system. However, this shift raised concerns regarding potential data inconsistencies and system downtime for the customer. To mitigate these risks, our team devised a solution.
We introduced a new virtual machine into the system and seamlessly mounted the Azure File Share onto it. Subsequently, we meticulously transferred data from the managed disk to the file share within the virtual machine. This meticulous approach not only addressed concerns regarding data integrity but also minimized the likelihood of system downtime.
Cloudware Africa understood that implementation of high availability leveraging Azure is a means to an end/business objective rather than an end in itself. With this in mind, we carefully developed adoption and change management strategy with Tolaram’s stakeholders to ensure that beyond implementation, Tolaram successfully achieves their business objectives.
Our strategy entailed identification of technology champions across Tolaram’s team (at various hierarchy). With input from the stakeholders, Cloudware Africa identified and articulated how the implementation will impact existing systems; this ensured that all stakeholders knew exactly what to expect and how to adjust to the changes.
Testimonial
Tolaram Group’s strategic move to bolster our SAP application’s resilience through high-availability and disaster recovery on Azure, in collaboration with Cloudware Africa and Microsoft marks a significant milestone in our digital transformation journey. This initiative, crucial for maintaining continuous business operations, showcases Cloudware Africa’s deep Azure expertise and Microsoft’s support, delivering a solution that not only meets our immediate RTO/RPO objectives but also optimizes our cloud spend effectively.
Achieving higher uptime for our SAP systems (S4HANA, GRC, and Fiori) across multiple Azure zones, we’ve fortified our infrastructure against potential disruptions, ensuring reliability and security at the heart of our operations. The dedication to maximizing Azure’s advantages while ensuring cost-effectiveness from both partners has been instrumental in reaching our goal of seamless business continuity, reflecting our commitment to operational excellence and customer trust.
Charting the course ahead: Our Commitment
Following the successful project completion implementing high availability and Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery for Tolaram Group, we are poised to embark on a transformative journey to optimize the customer’s Azure resources. This initiative is not just a step towards technological advancement but a strategic move to fortify the customer’s digital infrastructure in its entirety against unforeseen events and ensure uninterrupted service delivery.
The upcoming project will focus on a comprehensive optimization of Tolaram’s Azure resources, the objective here will be to enhance high availability (HA) and BCDR capabilities by leveraging Azure’s cutting-edge cloud solutions, in line with Tolaram’s requirement, we aim to create a robust framework that guarantees operational resilience and agility.
