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Automation and standardization for SAP in the Azure cloud In association with:
Digital Report 2021
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NTT: Supporting a new generation of SAP capability in the cloud How NTT’s SAP capabilities on Azure can provide a trusted path for enterpriseready innovation in the cloud
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NTT Ltd. is helping its customers bring the intelligence, agility and security of Azure to their SAP applications. Kirk Compton, Vice President of Cloud & Enterprise Application Management Services for NTT Ltd. in the Americas, explains how NTT is partnering with Microsoft and SAP on a global scale working towards automation and standardization to help solve operations challenges. “When our customers are looking to move their workloads to the Azure platform, we've got the data center space, the network, and the people who can enable them to successfully migrate to a cloud strategy.” That partnership has matured over the past year. In December 2020 NTT announced a broader alliance with SAP around global supply chain and sustainability which will see the two working together to help develop the next generation of solutions for enterprise customers. Along with a partnership with Microsoft, announced in 2019 to develop global initiatives with Azure, the three companies are now in a unique position to offer solutions that draw on a collective synergy.
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“ We’re able to remove the barriers to cloud adoption and help our customers modernize SAP architecture to optimize processes and increase productivity.” Kirk Compton
Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.
Automation & Standardization For many organizations the SAP environment is a behemoth; a core application for business operations. It touches most business units and is critical to financial transactions, supply chains, HR, payroll and more. So, when customers are thinking about moving to the cloud the key considerations will always be time and cost.
“If I'm a CIO and I want to figure out what it's going to take to get me into the cloud environment. I've got to dedicate members of my team to analysing that proposition just to figure out my strategy; and that can be very expensive,” reasons Compton. “At NTT we’ve partnered with Microsoft and developed a micro-site with an assessment tool that allows customers to build that picture for free; they don’t need to hire us to make that assessment. What does their SAP environment look like? What applications do they have? What is the size of the environment? And through that intake, we're able to provide a report providing that picture and how long it might take to migrate these environments; and perhaps most importantly, what the estimated cost would look like. What is your business going to be like in the cloud environment? Is it truly a cost saving? Where is the ROI?” This assessment strategy is all about the automation and standardization of new
DP NTT Kirk Compton
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Migrating SAP to Azure cloud – the big business benefits • Optimize cost efficiencies Move from CapEx to OpEx, and drive down costs through pay as you go pricing models for both managed services and cloud consumption. • The agility to prepare for the future Imagine having an IT infrastructure that can flex with seasonal business requirements and achieve greater agility with Azure Virtual Machines. • Scale while reducing risk Safeguard your SAP platform against unforeseen events with our cutting-edge, proven technology. High availability options are simple when your ERP system is hosted on Azure.
• Gain valuable business intelligence Accelerate innovation with actionable data on your SAP systems to improve your decision making. • Empower your business to do more, on a global scale Enterprises have been fast to adopt cloud for non-critical applications but maybe nervous about migrating mission-critical SAP applications. Azure cloud is about speed, automation, scalability, time-tovalue, and innovation. Today, the cloud becomes more than just a deployment option, it becomes an enabler of expanded capabilities.
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NetApp: Agile and secure data handling Enabling visibility over performance, future proofed stability for upgrades and enhanced data management by Dan Brightmore
NetApp drives digital transformation for organisations migrating their data and SAP workloads to the cloud. You can trust the storage specialists to deliver business continuity, whether that’s in a private on-prem data center or in a public cloud with Azure, with a unified view. Data transformation “We’re on this journey with our customers when one of the key things they need is consistency,” explains Michael Zakariudakis, Business Development Manager for the SAP Alliance at NetApp. “They need guaranteed flexibility to scale up and down as required, and with our NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP solution we enable a seamless data transformation experience for them.” Secure speed of change When it comes to speed of execution, NetApp works with NTT to ensure their joint customers have the agility and visibility to execute change when their business needs to innovate. “When they need to act rapidly in a continually shifting market, we’re there for them,” assures Zakariudakis. “We make sure we can affect a total cost of ownership that considers operational change, business process change, and not just technology. Jointly with NTT, we provide the ability to transform their SAP application architecture securely.” Future-proofed data stability Dealing with numerous landscape refreshes there are many iterations to navigate during a business transformation. “We can help our customers invest in the capacity and the performance they need at any point in time on their journey,” maintains Zakariudakis. “Over-investment in a certain capacity, performance, tier, or stack can happen, and businesses find themselves locked in when faced with critical decisions. How can they move on with this transition? We help them invest in the right capacity performance at that key point in time.”
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strategic partners, help our customers reach their targets as quickly as possible so they can modernize SAP architecture to optimize processes and increase productivity.” Following on from the assessment process, NTT runs workshops fuelled by a design thinking methodology to make sure business and IT are aligned on a strategy with the right priorities to move forward. Business Intelligence Moving your enterprise environment to S/4HANA provides the ability to get access to your data faster with the accumulation of good data strategies one of the great benefits. Moving to that environment in the cloud allows businesses to take advantage of other Microsoft components and analytics solutions. “There’s a significant amount of collaboration going on between the companies with the Microsoft Azure IOT hub and the SAP Leonardo solutions suite helping customers navigate the IOT space,” notes Compton. “It's amazing to see how artificial intelligence and machine learning are really starting to become operational in nature for our customers. Alongside this, at NTT, we’re also developing our smart solutions evident solutions, reducing impact and cost for customers to be able to get to the cloud more efficiently with limited business disruption – a key component to these upgrades. “Downtime is something most companies don’t have the opportunity to factor in,” adds Compton. NTT uses its S Discover tool that goes out across the network analysing every application and data point coming into a company’s SAP environment. “With our assessment we’re able to remove the barriers to cloud adoption and, with the support of our 8
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“ NetApp’s toolsets and capabilities help our clients get visibility into their performance and where their data is being secured and stored.” Kirk Compton
Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.
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1952
Year NTT founded
USD11bn NTT Ltd. global revenue
40,000
Number of NTT Ltd. employees globally
in our work with the Las Vegas smart city project, the Tour de France and the IndyCar Series. We’re providing a lot of the live data analytics being used by sports broadcasters which shows how our collaboration with SAP on Azure provides speedy results.” Partner smart to prepare your business for 2027 and beyond… With mainstream support for the SAP ECC platform ending in 2025, and all core SAP products set to be optimized for the SAP HANA database, now is the time to consider transforming your SAP platform into an agile and flexible one that will remove complexities, improve efficiencies and drive your organization’s success for years to come. NTT believes Microsoft Azure is the ideal platform to support that migration and open up a world of new opportunities driven by continued innovation and business intelligence. NetApp is a key strategic partner supporting these migration efforts. “The way they manage file systems for data, means that when businesses make that move to the Azure platform they can specifically call out their storage strategy,” explains Compton. “NetApp’s toolsets and capabilities really help
Executive Profile:
Kirk Compton Title: VP Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd. Industry: Information Technology & Services Kirk Compton has a proven track record of continued success in delivering growth in global and regional leadership roles. A market leader in client focused solution development, delivery and management, Compton drives enterprise growth by aligning corporate strategy ahead of market conditions and ever-changing technology solutions. He has held expansive roles at NTT Ltd. providing global, regional, and vertical leadership across multiple technology platforms – including ERP, hyperscalers, private cloud and most recently Smart solutions.
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Reacting to a Covid-19 world “The big trend we’ve seen during the global pandemic is consolidation,” explains Compton. “With the work from home/work from anywhere methodology many organizations are looking to reduce their real estate spend on everything from office space to data centers. Moving a data center from a physical location that you're paying for to a cloud environment, that could be consumption-based, can help companies transition through the current challenges. As you migrate workloads, being able to spin up and spin down environments, to be able to do projects on demand without having to acquire infrastructure, without having to acquire a network, are part of that transformational
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experience for customers. How do I transform faster?” “Allied to the push towards consolidation, the other big trend we’re seeing at NTT is organisations facing up to their staffing challenges and the need to up-skill,” reveals Compton. “SAP has produced a few reports over the last two years around the lack of skills in S/4HANA trained individuals due to cost constraints and budgeting. But that's really where our sweet spot is at NTT. We have the right skills, capabilities, and partnerships to be able to provide strategic solutions using a shared service model that’s becoming more and more attractive in the current climate.”
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NTT Ltd.’s Managed Services client testimonial video
our clients get not only the visibility into their performance and where their data is being secured and stored, but as SAP matures, as the environments move forward, we've also got the NetApp capability to futureproof stability for our clients to handle upgrades and caching while managing the data that goes along with that. All of this makes it a really critical component.” Intel have also been investing in strategic partnerships with both NetApp and Microsoft for a number of years. “Using their IP, we’re utilising capabilities that have influenced our drive for automation and standardization,” reveals Compton. “It's the only way we can help customers reduce cost – that cost comes in many different areas across the decisionmaking process. Partnering with Microsoft to do the assessment, whether that's the actual performance of the environment or the
standardization of moving your environment to the Azure cloud, using the tools from NetApp and Intel are huge drivers for our customers.” Certifications, Compliance & Security Setting up a network infrastructure with a strong foundation on Azure in NTT’s
“ Using Intel’s IP we’re utilising capabilities that influence our drive for automation and standardisation.” Kirk Compton
Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.
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AWAKEN YOUR DATA The only data center CPU with built-in AI acceleration. The latest 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors feature Intel Deep Learning Boost to accelerate your AI inference up to 30x*.
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*Compared to previous generation hardware. For more complete information about performance and benchmark results, visit www.intel.com/benchmarks
THE COLLABORATIVE POWER OF THE ECOSYSTEM DELIVERING SUCCESS As an industry leader with the purpose to create worldchanging technology that enriches the lives of every person on earth, Intel has been and is at the forefront of technology growth and development, catering for all business solution needs. Through a broad ecosystem, Intel is focused on delivering an end-to-end data portfolio that stretches from the edge to the cloud, powered by artificial intelligence all while being more secure. All of this is enabled and achieved through the strong collaboration of the ecosystem mentioned. An often overlooked though integral part of the ecosystem is the Service Integrators (SI), also known as Solution Integrators, like NTT Limited, who have a global alliance with Intel, where together they solve difficult challenges and deliver business outcomes. The role of said Service / Solution Integrators is to influence IT decisions, recommend on the architectural designs and deployment across on-premise and cloud, and ultimately deliver complete end-to-end hardware and software solutions together with the broader ecosystem of OEM & ISV partners like SAP and Cisco. With enterprises embracing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and big data analytics, the solutions are required to access and handle large data sets faster, which can be addressed by Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory (PMem) which removes I/O bottlenecks to maximize CPU utilization. Intel & SAP have collaborated to bring Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory support to SAP HANA and Intel and the OEMs, like Cisco, have collaborated on system designs that support Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory modules allowing for a variety of configurations to suit all customer needs. Intel and NTT Limited have collaborated for a number
of years, designing solutions that meet customer needs in industries such as enterprise, manufacturing, agriculture, automotive, financial, and more all around the world, with great success being realized when forces are combined with the greater ecosystem. It is through insights gained while working through these relationships that Intel is able to create technologies like Intel® Software Guard Extensions (SGX). SGX enhances the last part of the data journey by securing data-in-use, enabling for example AI workloads to be performed on otherwise untapped data sources. In fact, 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors are the only mainstream data center CPU with built-in AI acceleration enabling organizations to deploy highly performant applications without using complex and expensive new hardware. By collaborating with Intel, along with Service / System Integrators like NTT Limited and the technology ecosystem clients can feel comfortable in the knowledge that their business challenges can be addressed, delivering the best possible outcomes.
THIS IS YOUR DATA ON INTEL Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, software or service activation. No product or component can be absolutely secure. Your costs and results may vary. © Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
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“ We have the vertical expertise across the globe to manage SAP environments for our customers and help them implement systems, automate their environments, deliver on business outcome strategies, examine the different vertical solutions they want to run and operate new revenue channels.” Kirk Compton
Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.
data centers allows the company to stack up from an applications perspective with industry leading certifications, compliance and security. “We're Azure experts,” says Compton. “We've got the highest level of certifications from an SAP perspective. Every year, SAP audits our operations and our data centers to make sure we stay at the highest level of compliancy for SAP environments. We’re really proud of the fact that for the past couple years, we've been the highest rated partner in the SAP ecosystem for these certifications with the highest level of security.” Compton maintains that the process of optimizing an environment makes it even more important to ensure data is secure, optimal, being backed up and stored properly to perform at the highest level. “We have the vertical expertise across the globe to manage SAP environments for our customers and help them implement systems, automate their environments, deliver on business outcome strategies, examine the different vertical 14
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solutions they want to run and operate new revenue channels. But in the end, the real differentiator is that we have the best SAP people working for our customers.” Time to transform The speed of business transformation, as witnessed in 2020, is changing. Legacy SAP solutions aren’t capable of meeting today’s
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business challenges. Meanwhile, the public cloud is past the tipping point of enterprise adoption. NTT are making it possible to run your business better with SAP applications, and their data, in the Azure global hyperscale cloud. “To succeed in today’s disruptive environment, it’s time to be decisive and start planning the move of your SAP systems to Azure,” affirms Compton. “By marrying your
SAP data to other data on Azure’s agile cloud platform, you’ll be able to use end-to-end, realtime insights to quickly enter new markets, fend off the competition, improve your margins, and grow your business.” So why wait? There’s never been a better time to migrate.
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