PLIXXENT – SAP HEC connected to Amazon AWS

PLIXXENT – SAP HEC connected to Amazon AWS.

PLIXXENT Holding GmbH is a leading provider of polyurethane-based system solutions, developing, producing and processing polyurethane at six sites around Europe and leveraging SAP for the data generated as a result. When PLIXXENT rolled out SAP HEC, Bechtle connected the SAP Cloud with the centrally used Amazon AWS Cloud to guarantee reliable and secure communication. Bechtle took responsibility for SAP system migration and connectivity between SAP HEC and AWS, allowing PLIXXENT to make more efficient use of SAP HEC and AWS.

Project details.

Services

Professional Services
Software
Cloud

Industry

Manufacturing

Manufacturer

AWS, SAP

Company size

250 – 1,500 employees

Challenge.

Founded in 2019, PLIXXENT Holding GmbH produces innovative polyurethane-based (PU) technologies. No matter if a standard solution or a newly developed product, everything made of PU is developed, produced and processed by PLIXXENT’s European team with decades of experience. All data is processed using SAP which was running on on-premise servers, but PLIXXENT decided to make the switch to the cloud and collaborated with IT service provider Bechtle to design an Amazon AWS-based centralised IT landscape true to its motto ‘service over server’.

Even SAP—one of the PU specialist’s most important applications—was to be operated in the cloud so that the majority of the SAP instances could be managed by SAP itself rather than PLIXXENT. In order to be able to more efficiently use and maintain the SAP systems, the company wanted to migrate some of its own SAP instances to SAP HEC—a private cloud environment provisioned by SAP for the secure and reliable operation of SAP HANA applications. In addition to the migration to SAP HEC, PLIXXENT wanted a suitable infrastructure, over which AWS and SAP HEC would be able to reliably and securely communicate with each other. A huge challenge as SAP HEC was not designed to connect with AWS.

Thanks to Bechtle, our systems are now optimally connected with each other. Without the company’s knowledge and commitment, we never would have been able to migrate all SAP systems into the cloud, which would have meant our Solution Manager and other SAP systems would have stopped working. However, Bechtle’s determination and specialist knowledge were the key to getting us connected.

Sebastian Biele, IT Infrastructure Specialist, PLIXXENT Holding GmbH.

Solution.

Together with Bechtle, PLIXXENT took a two-pronged approach to the complex project. In a first step, Bechtle migrated the SAP systems to SAP HEC before a connection was established between it and AWS with both stages requiring careful planning and implementation. It was of great help to the communications interface between SAP HEC and the AWS infrastructure already in place at PLIXXENT that SAP Cloud is based on AWS, but a connection to AWS is not standard and had never been tried before.

After intensive negotiations with SAP, Bechtle was able to bring the two systems together using a connection provided by SAP, which also ensured SAP HEC was furnished with the right options to allow Bechtle to connect PLIXXENT to the AWS Cloud. To ensure communication between the two cloud zones, Bechtle set up several different accounts, while to guarantee connectivity between the SAP systems and AWS, the IT company also activated all connections between the PLIXXENT AWS Cloud and SAP and determined which of those were actually needed. In a final step, Bechtle implemented the components needed for incoming and outgoing data traffic between both systems and defined rules for how they should work. Using AWS’ built-in security mechanisms, Bechtle protected the connection between SAP HEC and AWS and secured communications and data traffic, too.

Business benefits.

Through the close collaboration of Bechtle and PLIXXENT, SAP was persuaded to meet the PU specialist’s requirements and now, data in the SAP HEC Cloud can also be securely and quickly opened and edited in the company’s own AWS Cloud. Bechtle was able to merge both systems to that PLIXXENT no longer has to worry about SAP HEC or AWS as both are managed services that can now communicate perfectly with each other. Thanks to this interface, PLIXXENT will be able to migrate other systems into the cloud in the future so it can focus on services rather than servers.