Lion uses expert migration support to move to RISE with SAP on AWS

For years, Lion has depended on SAP, which connects with 40–50 systems to support key business functions like finance, logistics, manufacturing, sales, and HR.

As part of a cloud modernization strategy, Lion aimed to migrate its self-managed SAP S/4HANA deployment on AWS to Rise with SAP on AWS environment. Moving to the SAPmanaged solution would provide Lion with the opportunity to remove customizations, enhance long-term scalability, and simplify future innovation. “Our goal was to remove legacy custom code and create a clean-core, innovation-ready SAP foundation,” says Ram Kalyanasundaram, group technology and digital transformation director at Lion.

Given SAP’s role at the heart of Lion’s operations, the team needed to transfer large volumes of sensitive business data within a critical timeframe—without disruption. “We had to move quickly and with confidence,” adds Nathan Hennessy, program manager, digital operations at Lion. “This was a large-scale project that required precision planning and minimal risk.”

To support the migration, Lion used MSSR—an SAP-orchestrated service for RISE with SAP migrations on AWS—powered by AWS Countdown Premium, which provides access to AWS technical support engineers for troubleshooting, guidance, and go-live support. Lion also worked closely with SAP specialists, who became an extension of the internal team during planning and execution, offering input on environment setup, bandwidth planning, and infrastructure readiness. “The AWS team gave us daily reports on the cloud environment’s status as we approached the migration, which gave us peace of mind,” recalls Hennessy.

After 10 months of planning, flawless execution during the 80-hour cutover was critical, requiring deep collaboration between SAP, Accenture, and AWS teams. SAP and Accenture led the transition, coordinating with Lion and AWS Countdown Premium. To ensure a smooth cutover and mitigate risk, Lion engaged AWS Enterprise Support, which provided 24/7 monitoring throughout the four-day migration, with status updates every two hours and rapid issue resolution. This included handling Amazon Elastic Block Store gp3 micro-bursting by increasing IOPS and throughput, and resolving latency issues linked to c-state configurations. “AWS experts were instrumental to our success,” says Hennessy. “Their immediate response to infrastructure-level challenges and continuous monitoring meant we could execute our migration with confidence.”

Thanks to detailed planning and monitoring, Lion migrated approximately 4 TB of sensitive data and preserved approximately 50 connected system integrations without downtime or disruption. With migration complete, attention turned to stability. “It was a Saturday night when we spotted a potential reporting issue in SAP across different plants,” Hennessy recalls. “We pulled in an AWS Countdown Premium architect immediately and resolved it before it became a problem.”

For Lion, the value of deep SAP and AWS expertise went far beyond basic support. Jamie Grande, head of enterprise applications, adds, “Having experienced cloud specialists involved throughout the Rise with SAP migration was extremely valuable. SAP workloads have unique requirements around Amazon EBS configurations, network throughput, and instance-specific tuning. For example, Countdown Premium engineers understood intricacies of SAP on AWS, from IOPS optimization to cross-AZ latency management, and could communicate solutions in a way that aligned with both our SAP and infrastructure teams.”

Lion’s migration to Rise with SAP on AWS has boosted efficiency and decision-making, with SAP-based reports across finance, logistics, manufacturing, and HR now generated in half the time. Month-end closing is faster, giving leadership earlier insights. Data extraction from S/4 to AWS Data & Analytics now takes 6 minutes instead of 20, helping teams close books faster.

The move has also cut total cost of ownership by 25 percent, freeing IT for higher-value initiatives. Kalyanasundaram notes, “AWS helped us move our SAP environment to the cloud smoothly, securely, and faster than we could have asked for. From the AWS Account team to the Countdown Premium team, each group played a role in delivering our transformation goals.”

With a clean-core SAP, Lion is driving innovation with AI, from fraud detection using Amazon Bedrock to exploring Amazon Q Developer. Grande says, “AWS gives us the tools outside of the SAP ecosystem that we need to keep a clean core for building whatever comes next. The maturity of AWS’s AI capabilities aligns well with SAP’s offerings and supports Lion’s efforts to maximize the value of its investments.”