"Few companies that have deployed SAP applications have opted for an environment hosted in the Public Cloud. Today, we have maintained the same level of service, while reducing our hosting and facilities management costs by 15 %."
Richard Berlande, CIO of the Serge Ferrari Group
About the Serge Ferrari Group
The Serge Ferrari Group designs, develops and manufactures innovative composite fabrics for lightweight architectural and outdoor applications. The Group's history and development are in line with current environmental challenges: helping to build better, with less, now. Aimed primarily at four strategic global markets - solar protection, tensioned architecture, modular structures, furniture/marine - the top-of-the-range solutions offered by the Group (founded in 1973) combine durability, safety, design, comfort and eco-responsibility. They also offer strong potential for development and innovation in a wide range of construction and interior design applications, from everyday needs to the most spectacular projects.
More recently, in response to the COVID-19 health crisis, the Group announced the filing of patents for its AGIVIR technology, which reduces the viral load of coronaviruses by 95% after a quarter of an hour's contact and by almost 99.5% after one hour's contact (compared with an untreated membrane).
With more than 1,000 employees in over 30 countries, around 100 distributors, and 6 production sites (1 in France, 2 in Switzerland, 1 in Italy, 1 in Germany and 1 in Taiwan), the Serge Ferrari Group has become a key reference for the world's leading architects in less than 50 years, while retaining control over its own development.
Following an IPO in June 2014, Serge Ferrari's shareholders decided to embark on a process of modernising the company's information system (IS), with the threefold aim of professionalising the user service, securing the entire infrastructure and outsourcing the support side.
The issues
The first stage of the project involved inviting tenders from 5 or 6 market players, including Cloud Temple, which enabled Serge Ferrari to validate its decision to outsource and migrate its entire IT infrastructure and SAP applications to a Private Cloud at this stage of the project.
The aim was to move towards a more flexible and agile model, while rationalising the associated resource requirements. Given its international presence, the group also wanted to unify its databases and exploit the full benefits of the PaaS (Platform as a Service) model.
"Our ambition was to provide the company with the IT base it needed to support its growth and internationalisation, while maintaining the same level of security. What's more, we, The time freed up by outsourcing and maintaining our IS has enabled our teams to devote more time to development and interfacing with our various business lines (supply chain, production and industrial processes, finance and management control), as well as to organising and restructuring workflows and providing operational assistance to users.
Richard Berlande
The solution
Cloud Temple then decided to partner with a service provider specialising in technical consulting and cloud managed services, particularly for critical SAP applications, to support the project.
"As partners for the past 6 years, we are delighted that Serge Ferrari has once again placed its trust in us for this new phase in its digital transformation plan. This success confirms the hybridity strategy we initiated 4 years ago.
Sébastien Lescop, Managing Director of Cloud Temple
In 2018, Serge Ferrari took its first step towards the Public Cloud by deploying the Microsoft Office 365 collaborative solution.
In 2019, noting a significant increase in its hosting and facilities management costs, linked in particular to the group's growth, the group decided to carry out a market study and consult various players. Following an optimisation study for each of its existing IT assets, Cloud Temple suggested that Serge Ferrari switch to Microsoft's Azure Public Cloud.
"Few companies deploying SAP applications had opted for a Public Cloud environment. However, after validating the compatibility of each server with the new environment on offer, we quickly realised the benefits of this type of infrastructure. We therefore sized our entire new information system on the advice of Cloud Temple.
Richard Berlande
The switchover will take place in January 2020, without any incident and on a like-for-like basis, using a 'big bang' approach.
The benefits
Today, Serge Ferrari's IT teams benefit from the same level of security as before, as well as an extended catalogue of Cloud services at a significantly lower cost.
In concrete terms, a number of levers have contributed to these budgetary gains:
- Precise sizing of the resources required for each application, with pay-as-you-go pricing
- The automation of operating times for environments, particularly during non-production periods
- The elimination of servers, replaced by native Azure functions such as update servers
- Reducing the retention time for data back-up while complying with legal requirements and business needs
- Simplified deployment of new servers
- For 'permanent' resources, a long-term commitment ensuring more aggressive pricing from Microsoft
Serge Ferrari's technological choices are now enabling it to accelerate the implementation of new business projects, focusing in particular on digital services for its customers.
An open-source Kubernetes system is currently being developed, with the aim of automating the management of a catalogue of services via a digital portal.