In just over 4 months, TeamWork teams upgraded the Seqens Group’s SAP ECC ERP and migrated it to the Amazon cloud. The new infrastructures are managed entirely by TeamWork (including billing), freeing up resources within Seqens’ IT department.
Seqens is an integrated global player in pharmaceutical solutions and specialty ingredients. The Group offers contract manufacturing services (as a CDMO), as well as a wide range of active ingredients and pharmaceutical intermediates. Seqens has 24 production sites and 10 R&D centers, with a presence in 10 countries (France, Germany, Finland, UK, Canada, USA, Israel, India, China and Thailand). The Group employs 3,200 people, with annual sales in excess of 1.2 billion euros.
Faced with aging on-premise infrastructures requiring heavy investment, the Seqens Group is embarking on a project to migrate its SAP ECC ERP to the AWS cloud in 2021. “The watchword at Seqens is to favor the cloud,” explains Emmanuel Fau, SAP Competence Center Manager and Business Partner at Seqens. “So we push as much of our infrastructure as possible onto the cloud, particularly Amazon’s.”
For this project, Seqens is calling on long-standing partner TeamWork. “TeamWork manages the operational maintenance of our SAP IS. We also call on it for support and maintenance, in conjunction with our SAP Competence Center. We also sometimes entrust it with projects and call on it as a VAR. In short, it’s a partner with whom we interact on a regular basis. So it was natural for us to turn to TeamWork for this migration.
Cloud infrastructures managed by TeamWork
The choice of the Amazon cloud – Amazon Web Services – was motivated by the solidity of this offering, its attractive rates and the possibility of having dedicated Windows servers located in France: an essential element for hosting the Group’s SAP information system.
The choice of the Amazon cloud – Amazon Web Services – was motivated by the solidity of this offering, its attractive rates and the possibility of having dedicated Windows servers located in France: an essential element for hosting the Group’s SAP information system.
“TeamWork was able to reassure us about our choice of the cloud and AWS, of which it is a long-standing partner. However, we were still wary of the complexity of the AWS contract and invoice management. TeamWork offered us an interesting model, in which it takes charge of all interactions with Amazon and optimizes the costs of using AWS services, which it then re-invoices to us.”
Emmanuel Fau
SAP Competence Center Manager and Business Partner at Seqens
Le projet de migration se transforme rapidement en projet de modernisation de l’ERP de Seqens. La base de données se doit en effet d’être mise à niveau, ce qui se traduit par ricochet par le passage de SAP ECC 6.0 EHP6 vers SAP ECC 6.0 EHP8. SEQENS veut également profiter de l’occasion pour basculer vers la dernière version de SAP GUI. Notez qu’en plus de l’ERP, le projet comprend également la migration d’un data warehouse SAP BW et l’adaptation des solutions mobiles connectées au système d’information SAP.
A complex project… and a success
After POC and risk analysis phases, Seqens’ IT department is launching the start of work in December 2021, with a go live scheduled for Easter weekend 2022, four and a half months later. “Our project combines a move to cloud and an upgrade of our SAP ECC ERP. We had to ensure that there would be no regression, but also revalidate our entire SAP system, as we work in a highly regulated pharmaceutical context”, recalls Emmanuel Fau.
The teams therefore proceeded very cautiously, in order to complete the migration and upgrade of the SAP IS on schedule and without any noticeable regression. Among the project’s challenges were the need to ensure parallel maintenance of two systems, and to switch network access to the new infrastructures (SAP GUI clients, mobile applications and printers) during the go live.
“We took advantage of the three-day Easter weekend in 2022 to switch over from the old to the new system. It went very well, with very few regressions. Since then, we haven’t experienced any availability problems on Amazon’s infrastructure. We can only emphasize the quality of the infrastructures set up in the cloud. The project has therefore been a success.”
Emmanuel Fau
SAP Competence Center Manager and Business Partner at Seqens
It should be noted that, following production start-up of the new system, Seqens entered a hypercare phase lasting just over a month, in order to secure an initial financial close. At the end of June, with all the indicators in the green, this post go live support phase came to an end.
An optimized MCO contract
Previously, the IT Department had to juggle between its in-house teams, responsible for managing SAP servers, and TeamWork, responsible for maintaining SAP IS in operational condition.
“Thanks to the cloud, our in-house teams no longer have to manage SAP servers. We’ve also been able to free ourselves from managing SAP system backups. TeamWork now takes care of all this, which is much simpler than before. All in all, the move to the cloud has enabled us to get more out of our maintenance contract with TeamWork.
Seqens is now working on the next stage in the evolution of its SAP information system. “We have initiated a process to converge all our sites to the SAP ECC ERP, which should continue until 2025. The flexibility of the cloud in terms of infrastructure sizing is an element that gives us confidence in the success of this project. The new technical foundation of our ERP, which is sound, future-proof and scalable, should help make this convergence a reality,” concludes Emmanuel Fau.
