Google Cloud and Vodafone said it was “one of the largest and most complex” SAP migration programmes in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.
Mona Abdalla (pictured) of Google and Christian Hegmanns of Vodafone said in a blog post: “Vodafone uses SAP for its financial, procurement and HR services; it’s the backbone of its internal and external operations.”
They added: “High availability and reliability are fundamental requirements to ensure smooth operation with minimal downtime. Moreover, hosting SAP on Google Cloud is a foundation for digital innovation and maintaining cybersecurity.”
Vodafone is calling the project “Evo2cloud”, saying it will enable the transformation of a broad SAP ecosystem that has been running on-prem for the past 15 years.
The telco says that it sees this project as the first step in a three-phase transformation, not just migrating SAP to Google Cloud, but also integrating SAP with Vodafone’s data ocean that sits on Google BigQuery, and using cloud-based data analytics tools to optimise data usage, processes, and how Vodafone operates its business.
The migration to Google Cloud is already under way with Vodafone, Google Cloud, SAP and Accenture working together.
Accenture’s Antonio Leomanni described it as “an innovative and strategic initiative, co-shaped with a truly integrated partnership”. He said it is “a complex SAP estate” and said the aim is “rapid benefits realisation and accelerated innovations in the cloud”.
Google lists other telecoms operators as cloud clients, including NTT DoCoMo, Optus, Orange and Telus.
