LU-VE Group Gains More Scalable and Responsive IT with Accenture and AWS

Following several acquisitions, global air heat exchanger manufacturer LU-VE Group found that its on-premises IT infrastructure could no longer support its increasing number of users. It needed a fully scalable infrastructure to cope with growing demand, and to provide faster processing speeds and higher levels of availability, reliability, and security. It migrated its SAP ERP and Siemens PLM software to Amazon Web Services (AWS). With the help of AWS Partner Accenture, it improved the scalability and agility of two key systems, meaning it could better meet its changing needs.

Following several acquisitions, LU-VE’s on-premises IT infrastructure was unable to cope with the increased load from the newly expanded company. It needed a more scalable infrastructure that could keep up with the growing demand, and support plans for the company’s future evolution.  

LU-VE decided to migrate its core applications to AWS to increase processing speeds and deliver higher levels of availability, reliability, and security. “We chose AWS to benefit from the flexibility of their cloud services, and to meet our IT needs and support better our path to digital transformation,” says Attillio Cordiano, chief information officer at LU-VE Group.

Working closely with AWS Premier Consulting Partner Accenture, the company began the migration with its two most important applications, SAP ERP and Siemens Teamcenter product lifecycle management (PLM) software.

Thanks to the acquisition of three new businesses, between 2019 and 2020, the number of users of LU-VE’s ERP software grew by around 30 percent to 870. Users of the PLM software increased from 220 to 275 in just 6 months. “This was really challenging because we had to provide an infrastructure and the compute resources for these new users,” says Alvio Bernard, IT project manager at LU-VE Group.

The SAP ERP system supports crucial business processes like finance and accounting, supply chain, production, and sales processes, with the PLM vital in the management of products from concept stage through to production and maintenance. “Those applications support the business and are used extensively across all the companies in the group, so it was necessary to ensure they were always available,” says Bernard. 

The Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG) helped LU-VE with every step of the migration, including the technical design and business case, optimizing migration costs, and the migration itself, which took around 5 months to complete. “The migration to AWS was smooth and fast. We didn’t experience any stoppages or critical issues and we are very happy with the result,” says Bernard.

Accenture helped LU-VE scale up to meet the increased demand on its IT infrastructure generated by the group’s acquisitions.
 
LU-VE has now implemented a fully scalable SAP ERP system based on the SAP HANA on AWS. By moving to AWS, LU-VE has increased availability of its existing ERP system, and plans to upgrade to S/4HANA.

One of the challenges of the project was establishing stable connectivity between the group’s various plants and the ERP and PLM systems. Accenture used AWS private cloud technology to perform an iterative rollout of the applications in the different countries in which LU-VE Group operates, including China, India, Russia, and the US.

Accenture continues to support LU-VE by managing the AWS infrastructure. The companies plan to move additional systems to AWS, now that the ERP and PLM systems have been successfully migrated.

LU-VE found that it often took its previous infrastructure provider time to respond to the company’s support requests and to implement new resources. One of the reasons LU-VE selected AWS for its cloud migration was the ready-made services it provides. This means the company no longer needs to prepare physical servers and appliances to launch new applications and capabilities. “Every time we needed to increase the server capabilities, it was really painful because we had to wait for the provider to find the right hardware,” says Bernard. “Now, this happens very quickly.” LU-VE can now add capacity and new services three times faster than it could before.

Accenture has also helped LU-VE to speed up the provisioning of new processes, by providing a quick analysis of LU-VE’s needs before rapidly provisioning the corresponding resources on AWS. This has helped LU-VE quickly add new capabilities, shortening the timeline for innovation. An example of innovation that the project has enabled, includes quickly delivering new virtual desktops for the technical department during the COVID-19 lockdown period.

Accenture used its extensive knowledge of AWS to fill gaps in LU-VE’s team and help the company choose the right solutions to fit its needs. “We needed Accenture’s support because we were missing some skills in our organization,” says Cordiano. “Accenture provided us with the competencies and resources we needed to pursue our goals and has helped us to develop the additional skills we need internally.”