AWS Case Study: Wisol

Wisol was founded in 2008 to develop and sell mobile Radio Frequency (RF) solution products. Its RF module modulates Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) filter, duplexer and RF filter installed in cell phones with other components. Currently, it is preparing not only modules for 4G, its flagship product, but also RF solution products to be installed in 5G devices. Wisol’s main customers are Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics. Wisol is also exporting to the Chinese market, and it has established and operates overseas subsidiaries in China and Vietnam.

Wisol found that it was difficult to manage and operate on outdated legacy systems in an on-premise environment for its traditional ERP systems. It needed to upgrade its existing IT systems or introduce new systems, and required a scalable solution that allows for organic links to manufacturing execution systems (MES) and product life management (PLM) systems. It also needed to integrate with its overseas subsidiaries which were running on independent ERP systems.

Unlike MES systems, where business continuity must be guaranteed, ERP-related tasks seemed suitable for operating in the cloud, and so it decided to migrate this to the cloud. A pre-condition was that it was necessary to connect with other solutions being used internally and how easily its headquarters could manage ERP solutions for its overseas subsidiaries.

Hyunbo Shim, Senior Engineer at Wisol, explained: “After we decided to run SAP in the cloud, we needed a cloud service provider that could support systematic infrastructure construction and migration as well as stable service operation for overseas subsidiaries.”

Wisol had started running SAP services in other cloud environments, but it decided to switch to SAP on AWS to enhance business growth and competitiveness, and improve production efficiency, supply chain, and other management requirements.

Shim said, “At first, I was concerned about whether to continue using the cloud, which cloud vendor to choose, and what to do when there are so few materials to refer to. But AWS has an extensive global infrastructure and the highest level of security. We were able to get support for SAP migration and deployment through APN partners with technical expertise in a variety of industries and solutions.”

Wisol was able to complete the migration in a month with the support of APN partner, Megazone Cloud. After configuring and testing SAP, the service was launched. Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), were provisioned to create an AWS environment for SAP HANA. Shim says that it is using a SAP in-memory database with processing speed much faster than traditional servers.

By migrating to AWS, Wisol was able to address concerns about the duration and cost of infrastructure deployment. With the support of Megazone Cloud, the migration was successfully completed in a short time, and the cost of backup, security, and server operations kept low with the added benefit of reliable operations. “Stable operation was possible with support for SAP operations and SAP workshops on AWS Best Practice from Megazone Cloud.” Shim added. Wisol was able to reduce costs by about 20 percent through the operation of SAP on AWS when compared to its previous system. In addition, while building SAP in Seoul, Wisol configured the system to be used by its Vietnam and China subsidiaries, connected via a virtual private network (VPN) to enhance quality and security. The ERP systems, which were previously managed by each subsidiary individually, can now be managed from headquarters, eliminating the need to deploy additional IT personnel, to save on labor costs.

According to Shim, “The previous system did not have a 24-hour monitoring system, but with AWS, it is much easier as there is no need for engineers to respond in real time. Previously, there were no server management experts, so engineers had to take on development and server management duties as well. Because of this, it was only possible to maintain the status quo rather than improving the process. After moving to the cloud, AWS does all the system management, allowing us to focus on more productive work. Three corporations are now able to use one system. Costs were reduced, and reliability secured.”

Megazone’s ERP on Cloud team leader Shin-woo Kim said, “Megazone Cloud was able to stably migrate the customer’s domestic ERP system from SAP HEC (HANA Enterprise Cloud) to AWS, and expanded its SAP service to Vietnam and China, providing the optimal cloud environment for business growth.”

Thanks to the support of AWS and Megazone Cloud, Wisol has successfully built and is operating SAP, laying the foundation for the cloud. From this, Wisol can analyze and visualize data generated by SAP in the future, and use Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technologies to enhance its business insights.

For more information, visit SAP on AWS.

• AWS Partner Network (APN)’s premier consulting partner. Megazone is a company that provides IT infrastructure design, construction, and management services for enterprise customers. It provides integrated services of AWS infrastructure, security, management, and cloud migration and management operations to domestic and overseas SAP ERP customers.
• For more information on how Megazone can help you in your AWS environment construction and management, see Megazone List in the AWS Partner Directory.