Rossi Residencial: Lower costs and high availability for its SAP system in Google Cloud
About Rossi Residencial
Rossi is a major construction company and real-estate developer in Brazil. Established in 1980, the company operates in several segments of the Brazilian real-estate market and has delivered more than 115,000 units.
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About Sky.One
Sky.One supports its customers’ complete cloud journey, spanning migration, transformation, automation, support, and cloud management consulting.
After three migrations to different cloud providers, the company managed to migrate with no system outages for the first time, supported by partner Sky.One.
Results
- Migrated four SAP environments and four servers in just one month with no system outages
- Zero unavailability periods since migrating
- Less time spent worrying about operational issues increases the focus on business
50% savings on monthly cloud costs
Rossi Residencial, one of Brazil’s largest construction companies and real-estate developers, with around 150 employees, hundreds of business and engineering partners, and nationwide service, has used SAP solutions for financial management since 1999. Taxes, accessory obligations, accounting requirements, and other processes are managed through the system in an integrated and automated manner, which provides the business with crucial support.
Over the past few years, the company has begun to promote independent, sustainable business units to focus on strategic locations and products. This prompted its technology team to adapt as well, and they saw the cloud as an opportunity to add flexibility to SAP’s management.
“If I need to open a new branch or break ground on a project, the entire system core is already in the cloud and I don’t have to worry about local infrastructure,” explains Eduardo Araújo, Rossi’s IT Manager. “It also means our operational costs are significantly reduced.”
A few years ago, the company started working with the ECC component in the EHP 8 version, using modules such as FI (financial accounting), CO (controlling), MM (materials management) and TRM (treasury and risk management). But the dollar’s high exchange rate in 2020 increased costs with their then provider too much. The team was also not satisfied with the provider’s service, leading it to look for a new provider and a partner to support migration.
An essential requirement the new provider had to offer was high availability and scalability. Potential partners had to perform migration in a short time window (as the contract with the other service was about to expire) and be familiar with the previous provider to ensure the operation’s success. After spending some time searching, the company chose Google Cloud and Sky.One for the project.
“Out of the cloud options we researched, Google Cloud offered us the best financial conditions and a solution that truly catered to us. And out of the many partners we contacted, Sky.One offered the best work planning and service.”
—Eduardo Araújo, IT Manager, Rossi ResidencialFirst migration with no system outages
The tight migration deadline meant the company would not have the time to install every app in Google Cloud from scratch, so Rossi asked the Sky.One team to mirror its entire previous architecture, that is, migrate the virtual machines from the company’s four SAP environments and four servers from other apps directly to Google Cloud.
After mapping the source structure in detail along with Rossi, the partner was able to complete migration planning in a month. “If you map before migrating and thus understand the customer’s environment well, you are able to prepare the destination so it has every integration and its respective access,” says Ricardo Nunes, Solution Expert at Sky.One.
The tool chosen to move the environments was Migrate to Virtual Machines (previously known as Velostrata), which streamlines, facilitates and reduces risks for app migration to Google Cloud. Sky.One selected an expert in this solution to conduct the process, which was also supported by Google Cloud experts to make any needed adjustments.
The process took just a month to complete. The environments were successfully migrated with zero impact on operations, an unprecedented feat for the company. Now SAP environments run in a new infrastructure consisting of Compute Engine, a service for creating and running VMs, and Cloud Storage for data storage.
“This is the first time, after three previous migrations to private and public clouds, that our users have not felt any impact and we didn’t have system outages. It was a six-hands project that worked very well.”
—Eduardo Araújo, IT Manager, Rossi ResidencialFlexibility to deal with every business need
Since the migration, Rossi has not suffered system outages or handled related user requests and incidents. Performance has remained high even after the team resized the VMs. The flexibility to add or subtract resources based on the company’s demands proved crucial. “Rossi operates in a segment with elasticity. In any given year, we can have two/three projects or ten. That’s why it’s important to have that resource in the cloud,” says Araújo.
Since the company does not operate 24/7, another benefit from migrating was the ability to schedule when to switch on and off servers, bringing cost savings. Furthermore, billing in reais at a fixed exchange rate with dollars led to a 50% cost reduction versus the previous provider.
The ease of integration between Google Cloud and SAP’s tools pleasantly surprised the team. “We were worried about potential incompatibilities, and we didn’t know if we would be able to work like before. Today we can work even better than before,” says the IT manager. According to Sky.One, the fine adaptation between the solutions becomes noticeable right after migration.
“Google Cloud’s solutions support all SAP migration steps, but after migrating we noticed that daily operations had become even more tightly integrated.”
—Ricardo Nunes, Solution Expert, Sky.OneThe cloud’s stability and security have streamlined the IT team’s daily routine. They no longer have to go to the company outside business hours to perform updates or repairs. Currently, employees can work remotely with peace of mind and maintain business continuity throughout Brazil.
With more time to focus on business needs instead of operational issues, the team is contemplating the addition of new Google Cloud tools. Rossi’s next challenge is to bolster its business operations and customer service even further using data analytics and AI solutions, making the most of its broad database.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Rossi Residencial
Rossi is a major construction company and real-estate developer in Brazil. Established in 1980, the company operates in several segments of the Brazilian real-estate market and has delivered more than 115,000 units.
About Sky.One
Sky.One supports its customers’ complete cloud journey, spanning migration, transformation, automation, support, and cloud management consulting.