WWZ Energie adopts Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions
WWZ Energie provides telecommunications, energy, water, and e-mobility services to residential and business customers in and near Zug, Switzerland. To meet the upcoming SAP S/4HANA support deadline, WWZ decided to migrate its Windows-based SAP solutions to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions. With this tailored platform, WWZ has enhanced its automation capabilities to improve system reliability, costs, and efficiency. Now, the service provider can deliver services to customers faster to stay competitive in expanding markets.
Benefits:
- Improved efficiency and cost of service delivery with automation
- Reduced risks due to complex configurations or human error
- Enhanced system security with supported, centralized platform used across all SAP systems
Adapting to new competition in energy and other markets
WWZ Energie AG has served the population and economy in Zug, Switzerland, and the surrounding regions for 125 years, offering telecommunications, energy, water, and e-mobility services to residential and business customers.
Facing new competition, WWZ is focused on adopting a more cost-effective, efficient production approach, including adopting automation to gain consistency and agility across all of its systems.
“The electricity market has had some restrictions lifted, with further upcoming privatization, creating challenges for our existing processes and IT systems to respond,” said Benno Hegglin, Leiter Systems & Operations, WWZ Energie AG. “Our telecoms business is also facing a rapidly more competitive market, with price pressure increasing.”
The service provider also faced a rapidly approaching technology deadline: the end of support for SAP S/4HANA® on Microsoft Windows.
“As we faced losing support for the foundation of our service environment, we needed to migrated our Windows-based SAP solutions to an alternative operating system,” said Hegglin. “We wanted to continue reaping the benefits of SAP S/4 HANA hosted on a stable, easy-to-manage platform.”
Industry
Energy and utilities
Headquarters
Zug, Switzerland
Size
More than 470 employees
Software
Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® for SAP Solutions, Red Hat Satellite
Partner
IDH GmbH
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions offered the automation capabilities and ease of management we were looking for.
Meeting SAP S/4HANA deadline by migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux
As an already satisfied customer of Red Hat Satellite—and with SAP HANA only available on Linux environments—WWZ decided to adopt Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions as its new operating system.
“We already had existing knowledge of Red Hat products and found them to be secure and stable, with the support structures we had in place working well,” said Hegglin. “Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions offered the automation capabilities and ease of management we were looking for.” Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions is tailored to the needs of SAP workloads, helping optimize operations and reduce costs by providing integrated smart management, high availability, and SAP-specific components.
After a proof of concept (POC), local Red Hat partner IDH GmbH created a custom installation image, deployed the new Red Hat platform, and migrated all of WWZ’s SAP workloads. IDH also expanded WWZ’s implementation of Red Hat Satellite for SAP lifecycle management.
Delivering high-quality energy and utility services faster
- Improved efficiency and cost of service delivery with automated patch deployment, configuration, and management
- Reduced risks due to complex configurations or human error by standardizing on an SAP-optimized operating system
- Enhanced system security with supported, centralized platform used across all SAP systems
Building on the benefits of simplification
After successfully adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux as its standard operating system, WWZ’s IT organization continues to expand its use of Red Hat technology to achieve further infrastructure optimization benefits. New use cases include OSS/BSS (operations support system and business support system), additional provisioning and communications needs, and a variety of services, such as email, Domain Name System (DNS), web hosting, LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network), Customer Premises Equipment (CPE), and customer portals.
“Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP Solutions has helped us build a strong IT foundation on a unified, reliable, and highly orchestrated operating system,” said Hegglin. “We look forward to building additional IT systems with Red Hat.”
About IDH GmbH
IDH GmbH was founded in 1996 with the goal of providing an entrepreneurial and social platform to IT specialists to completely be able to integrate their knowledge into complex projects. These specialists are people who, due to their education, experience and intellectual adaptability are able to recognise system or program problems and solve them quickly. With the know-how of these specialists, we would like to help our customers to master complex projects or sub-projects if the internal resources are lacking.
About WWZ Energie AG
The WWZ Group is one of the 100 largest employers in Central Switzerland and supplies customers in the canton of Zug and beyond with energy (electricity, heating, cooling, gas), telecommunications, water, and electromobility.
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