Siemens Completes SAP Production Cutover in Under 72 Hours with Zero Disruption Using AWS Enterprise Support and AWS Incident Detection and Response

Siemens is a global technology leader focused on industry, infrastructure, and mobility. Its DI SW group plays a critical role in helping organizations of all sizes digitally transform using software, hardware, and services from Siemens Xcelerator—a digital business platform which connects the Siemens Software portfolio with tools and databases connecting operational, engineering, and technology environments. In early 2024, DI SW initiated a large-scale project to modernize its SAP landscape by migrating 10 production SAP HANA systems, including four highly critical ones, from an on-premises infrastructure to AWS.

The initiative was part of a broader cloud strategy designed to enhance scalability, improve agility, streamline operations across DI SW, and offer cloud-based solutions for its customers. Siemens saw an opportunity to modernize its SAP backbone while addressing fragmented infrastructure inherited through acquisitions. Several SAP systems had not been fully integrated into Siemens' internal frameworks, such as network, email, and operational structures. This transition would help Siemens to align these systems more closely with internal compliance and standards and build a strong operational foundation for future growth.

However, Siemens faced challenges with managing the migration internally. With financial, order-processing, and compliance-critical systems at stake, Siemens recognized the need for robust technical guidance and around-the-clock operational support to support its transition. Deoraj Alok, advisory/technical architect at Siemens Digital Industries Software, explained, “Our cloud strategy is about becoming faster and more flexible in addressing changing market and customer requirements. We knew we had to keep momentum and act decisively.”

To safeguard its business-critical SAP migration and maintain continuity, Siemens needed an infrastructure that could meet the complexity and scale of the project. It turned to AWS and engaged AWS Enterprise Support for a technical account manager, access to specialized SAP resources, and accelerated issue resolution. Mladen Ocko, SAP BASIS senior manager at Siemens Digital Industries Software, says, “This wasn’t a simple lift-and-shift. There were significant adjustments, and we didn’t want to do it without a more engaged support structure from AWS.”

The project involved over 45 SAP systems across development, quality assurance, and production tiers, supported by more than 200 virtual machines. These SAP systems underpin core business operations across the world at Siemens, so maintaining uptime and data integrity during migration was essential to avoid disruption. Siemens adopted a phased, tier-based migration approach, beginning with sandbox systems and progressing through development and quality assurance before reaching production. Jacqueline Bonorden, IT program manager at Siemens, says, “By implementing a methodical, tier-based migration approach, we were able to de-risk our cloud transformation journey. Starting with sandbox environments facilitated our teams to experiment and learn without pressure, while subsequent migrations through development and QA [quality assurance] environments helped us refine our processes and identify potential challenges early. This strategic progression built team confidence, optimized our workflows, and ultimately led to a seamless production cutover. The phased approach not only minimized business disruption but also helped us to achieve a faster overall migration timeline than initially projected.”

SAP HANA system replication was used to transfer database content, and the company conducted early go-lives for several non-transactional production systems to validate integration and test the landing zone before migrating more complex workloads. To support the required bandwidth and network stability, Siemens implemented AWS Direct Connect as part of its infrastructure—helping ensure reliable and high-throughput connections during data replication and synchronization activities.

Throughout the project, Siemens collaborated closely with AWS—drawing on remote technical guidance and expert support. To strengthen operational readiness, AWS Enterprise Support worked with Siemens to conduct a SCRAM (Simulated Crisis Response and Management) exercise, enhancing their operational preparedness. This simulation tested Siemens’ incident response procedures and recovery workflows across both internal and external teams, confirming their ability to effectively manage disruptions during and after the migration. In addition, the company used AWS Fault Injection Service to improve its applications’ performance, observability, and resilience by simplifying the process of setting up and running controlled fault injection experiments.

As the production migration neared, Siemens deployed AWS Incident Detection and Response to monitor its four most critical SAP workloads, providing real-time visibility through Amazon CloudWatch Application Insights for SAP metrics. Early in this process, the Siemens technical team received alerts revealing high IOPS usage on an Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volume during overnight backups, prompting Siemens to adjust IOPS thresholds. Alok says, “The AWS Incident Detection and Response tool gave us an early warning system we never had before. When we spotted high IOPS usage during our SAP backups, it wasn't just a quick fix—it opened our eyes to a pattern. We were able to get ahead of potential issues across our entire infrastructure before they impacted our business. That's the difference between reactive and proactive operations.”

In November 2024, AWS conducted intensive on-site support sessions over three days to prepare for the upcoming production cutover. During this period, Siemens and AWS teams worked side by side to complete the full transition. During this engagement, Siemens and AWS teams reviewed architectural plans, resolved networking and Availability Zone (AZ) challenges, and finalized strategies for the cutover. Discussions addressed key areas such as shared file system access across AZs using Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), DNS resolution methods, clustering for high availability, and best practices for workload segregation.

Siemens completed its production cutover within a 72-hour window in February 2025, which included data validation, and reintegration with dependent systems. SAP Cloud systems were operational within the first 12−16 hours, with the remainder of the window dedicated to reestablishing and validating the integrations to partner systems. The transition was seamless, with no business disruptions or end-user impact. Bernd Jordan, senior IT program manager at Siemens Digital Industries Software, says, “We launched our SAP systems on AWS, and everything went live without a single glitch.”.

The project delivered immediate performance improvements across key operations. A monthly financial reporting job that once took 3 hours was completed 50 percent faster. Database backups, which previously required several hours, were completed within 15–20 minutes. Latency complaints from global users were resolved, and high availability clustering was successfully implemented across AZs.

The migration also addressed legacy complexity by aligning previously separated SAP systems from Siemens’ past acquisitions and introducing a new common standard. Network configurations, email integration, and infrastructure management have been standardized, improving system consistency and maintainability.

Security and monitoring have also improved. With AWS Incident Detection and Response and AWS observability tools like Amazon CloudWatch Application Insights, Siemens now detects potential issues early and resolves them before they affect operations. Alongside this, the company gained clearer insights into infrastructure usage and costs and has since optimized cost management through Savings Plans and strategic licensing decisions.

With greater visibility and control over its infrastructure, Siemens is now evaluating additional strategies to strengthen system resilience and further enhance business continuity and fault tolerance. Alok concludes, “We’ve raised availability, improved performance, and now have more control over how we scale. It was only possible because of the support and expertise we had from AWS at each step.”