Pega: Optimizing business operations with SAP on Google Cloud
Snehanshu Shah
Managing Director, SAP
For Pegasystems, a leading provider of cloud software for customer engagement and intelligent automation, success depends on being able to provide highly scalable systems for its customers. But with its core SAP systems in a traditional data center, the IT department found it was spending too much time on day-to-day maintenance and less on strategic projects that generated value for customers.
In 2020, Pega chose to deploy its SAP environment, including SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) and SAP HANA data warehousing, to Google Cloud. The move has helped Pega overcome many of the challenges it faced with the previous deployment. It also made Pega’s SAP systems more reliable and offered powerful new data capabilities to support the business in making the right decisions.
The challenge: A lack of agility
Although Pega ran its SAP suite in a third-party data center, it was architected with traditional servers and storage and lacked the scale and agility necessary to keep up with Pega’s needs. Adding more capacity, for example, required too much work and coordination with the hosting provider, which often led to unacceptable levels of downtime. Instead of focusing on the transformational initiatives that Pega required for growth, the company’s IT team was putting time and resources into making sure its SAP systems were running correctly.
The solution: Less maintenance for IT, more insights for the business
Pega considered several public cloud providers with a particular focus on enterprise architecture, flexibility, and operating costs before settling on Google Cloud. “SAP on Google Cloud is a repeatable and proven architecture. We were confident that we would be in good hands and have a smooth transition,” says David Vidoni, Vice President of information Technology, Pega.
Working with Managecore, an SAP on Google Cloud Specialization partner, it took Pega just nine weeks to move 30 servers onto Google Cloud. Managecore helped Pega manage changeover, testing, and integration of the customer-facing solutions that run internally and integrate with the SAP environment. Additional assistance came from the Cloud Acceleration Program (CAP) from Google Cloud, a critical enabler for Pega, offering SAP customers tools to simplify the migration process and financial incentives to defray infrastructure costs.
For Pega, the move to Google Cloud is allowing them to deliver better service to their customers. According to Vidoni, “Google Cloud enables us to provide a higher level of service by minimizing downtime and outages. As we grow, adding capacity to meet our clients’ needs is a lot simpler.”
Other benefits of the SAP on Google Cloud migration include reliability, scalability, and agility:
Reliability: Google Cloud infrastructure has significantly reduced the strain on Pega’s IT resources. Pega has found that since moving to Google Cloud, the IT team has cut the time it spends on SAP operational maintenance by two-thirds.
New analytical capabilities: Having fewer maintenance tasks means getting more time to analyze data that reveals customer needs and how to fulfill them. The move to Google Cloud has made it easy to connect data from SAP HANA. Richer data integration makes for faster and better-informed decisions. Per Vidoni, “Data is our lifeblood. We are making it easier to find the information we're looking for to get actionable insights and to gain an edge over our competition.”
Scalability and performance: Pega has benefitted from improved performance and a new ability to scale up and scale down resources as needed. For example, Pega will now be able to provide field teams with sandbox SAP HANA environments where they can test out new integrations with its software development platform. Spinning up these development environments is much easier and faster than it was before migration.
Security and compliance: Google Cloud has helped provide a much stronger security posture for SAP HANA implementation. Pega’s disaster recovery processes are now more streamlined, and compliance testing is easier as well.
What’s next for Pega
Now that Pega’s SAP applications are up and running on Google Cloud, the company is setting its sights on moving its SAP ERP environment from ECC to S/4HANA, which will allow it to take advantage of entirely new, cloud-centric capabilities within the suite. In the meantime, however, Vidoni continues to explore the opportunities that Google Cloud offers to transform the way it provides systems and services to customers at scale. “Running SAP in a future-ready environment means that we can deliver the best possible service to employees and customers today and tomorrow.”
Hear directly from Pegasystems about their SAP on Google Cloud deployment and also how other SAP customers are having similar success.
