Pharmstandard, a Russian pharmaceutical manufacturer, will place its critical SAP business systems in the Croc Cloud Services data centre. The ERP system, the warehouse management system, the production planning system, and the analytical data storage and forecasting system were moved to the new site. By implementing the project, the Company managed to almost halve the costs of maintaining outsourcing infrastructure. The launch of services in the new data centre, taking into account the design, procurement and commissioning of equipment, as well as the pilot migration of systems, was carried out in record-breaking short deadlines in just three months. On average, such migration takes at least six months.

A comprehensive solution based on SAP software for ensuring business continuity has been used at Pharmstandard over the past five years. The outsourcing platform was provided by one of the providers of hosting services for SAP systems.

Since 2020, the new provider for this pharmaceutical giant is Croc Cloud Services, which won the tender and offered the best conditions for the implementation of the project, including in terms of the price and quality ratio. The specialised business unit of the IT company Croc provided computing resources based on a network of data centres, as well as services for migration and subsequent maintenance of the infrastructure up to the level of application software. The uninterrupted operation of SAP business applications in this project is ensured by itelligence, which is an SAP partner.

"The selection of a new service provider was carried out based on the results of a multivariate assessment, taking into account the professionalism of the team, the availability of proven experience, the failure statistics, the willingness to conduct an audit and the absence of significant comments on quality control documentation. Since Pharmstandard is guided by the principles of GxP, it was the openness to the audit of the data centre and the availability of all the necessary documentation in the field of quality control that played an important role in making the final decision. In preparation for the migration of data from SAP systems to new resources, our professionals promptly made the necessary changes to the system settings and network infrastructure. This allowed mitigating the risks of possible disruptions in the work of SAP and their impact on the continuity of the Company's business processes, as well as performing a site change without significant impact on the core business. The migration of critical business systems was carried out in an extremely short time. This was achieved thanks to the coordinated collaboration of the project teams of Pharmstandard, Croc Cloud Services and itelligence. All data was transferred in stages on non-working days and without suspension of business processes. As a result, the migration was carried out unnoticed by employees and clients of Pharmstandard," said Evgeny Golikov, IT Director, Pharmstandard.

"Half a year of our cooperation with Croc Cloud Services once again confirms that we were not mistaken in choosing a new service provider. Our technical experts have already noted a significant improvement in the quality of services received in terms of interaction with the technical support service, receiving feedback, as well as service proactivity. In addition, infrastructure productivity has increased. This has a positive effect on the effectiveness of our business units," said Evgeny Golikov.

"The process of creating a dedicated infrastructure for SAP systems of large corporate clients has characteristic features. Firstly, the basis of such infrastructure must be vendor-certified equipment. Secondly, the amount of RAM per one server is important. The project for Pharmstandard involves the provision of more than 2 TB of RAM. We design the computing environment in our data centre according to the request, while providing guaranteed quality of service. A team of IT professionals with unique experience in maintaining systems for large corporate clients is responsible for this performing task," said Maxim Berezin, Business Development Director, Croc Cloud Services.

"Now the service provider is fully responsible for the quality of the services provided. The provider must think in advance and prepare all the necessary technical infrastructure and the organisational model for maintenance. Together with the end customer and Croc Cloud Services, we developed and implemented a project for the migration of systems, launched tripartite processes for the interaction of technical support teams with each other and with users from Pharmstandard, and also provided professional services for administering SAP and HANA DB applications. This project has become a vivid example of how the collaboration of several companies, each of which is an expert in its field, provides a synergistic effect," said Dmitry Surilov, Director of Business Development, itelligence.

Source: 

https://www.cnews.ru/news/line/2020-06-11_farmstandart_perenes_kritichnye