Covestro Uses AWS to Transform Operations and Drive Manufacturing Innovation

After considering several cloud technology providers, Covestro chose to migrate its applications to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to meet its business goals. “We needed a technology provider that understood our business culture, and AWS was the best fit,” Schuster says. “In addition, AWS understands that the cloud isn’t only about moving out of a data center. It’s also about changing an entire operating model within the IT organization.”

Once it selected AWS, Covestro engaged AWS Customer Enablement, including AWS Professional Services, to support the cloud migration and create the best platform architecture. “AWS Professional Services offered the right mix of AWS services and the architectural expertise we needed to best support our applications,” says Schuster. Working closely with AWS Professional Services consultants, Covestro moved more than 500 business applications and 1,000 servers from its data centers to an AWS Landing Zone.

Following the initial migration, AWS Professional Services helped Covestro build the Covestro Analytics Platform, a new data self-service analytics solution that uses machine learning (ML) technology. Covestro uses Amazon SageMaker to build and train ML models, and it uses AWS Glue to ingest and visualize data from SAP and other applications. The organization also uses the solution to analyze procurement, supply chain, and manufacturing plant data, as well as sales and forecasting data. It stores all this data in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets.

Running its applications on AWS, Covestro can provision capacity and storage in several minutes, compared with up to eight weeks in its previous data center environment. The company can also create and test new business initiatives faster before moving them into production. “What would traditionally take several weeks because of the need to procure and set up hardware now only takes a few hours,” says Schuster. “We can benchmark projects faster now and make data-driven decisions on which ones to move forward with.”

With faster time to market, Covestro can rapidly deliver results to the business. For example, if it has a new idea, Covestro can confidently explain to business leaders that they can have the solution in the next week instead of in five months or more.

Covestro is using its new analytics solution to democratize business data, which lowers the complexity required to access, analyze, and process data from disparate sources. Schuster says, “By using AWS to make the data available centrally, we can enable more people at Covestro to look at and experiment with the data for their specific business unit.” Covestro has accelerated its ability to innovate by working with AWS Professional Services. “We entered a ‘show, don’t tell’ mode very quickly by working with AWS Professional Services,” says Schuster. “That’s critical for us in order to enable innovation and differentiate in the chemical industry, which traditionally has been slower to embrace new technologies such as data science and machine learning.”

Covestro now has the elasticity to scale up or down based on specific workload requirements, which saves the company money. “We have certain workloads in R&D that need to be either highly utilized or not utilized at all, depending on the day,” Schuster says. “With the flexibility we gained by moving to AWS, we only pay for the specific time we use a given workload.”

As a next step in its journey with AWS, Covestro will work with AWS Professional Services to expand its analytics solution and explore more advanced AWS services. “Innovation has driven our business and our people for decades,” Schuster says. “Our work with AWS is the latest step in enabling that innovation.”