Third stage: Operation from the cloud
At first, CEMEX ran its systems on servers in its data center, located in Mexico, but this configuration caused some performance and latency problems in the applications used by collaborators in other countries.
Faced with these complications, the cement company decided to continue migrating its digital architecture to the cloud. For this step, he chose Microsoft as the ally, since through Azure services it allowed him to develop his own app called CEMEX GO. In addition to moving their SAP applications to Microsoft Azure, another important decision was to integrate the SUSE Linux operating system. With this move he achieved higher availability, better performance and lower costs.
“By moving our SAP environment to Azure and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications, we have significantly improved performance by 40% to 70% for our migrated SAP applications,” said Juan Vázquez, IT architect at CEMEX.
He explained that after a scrupulous evaluation of various offers in the cloud, it was determined that the Microsoft Azure option was the one that benefited the most performance, mainly if SUSE Linux Enterprise Server was used for SAP applications (version) 15, and Oracle for databases. SAP HANA and SAP ASE data.
He explained that the main requirement was to find just the right cloud platform and operating system to host SAP, since it is an environment on which the efficient and reliable operation of his business depends. “We felt that Azure offered the best combination of performance, security, scalability, and services.”
CEMEX has moved the 16 most critical and needed SAP systems to Azure and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications, and over time, the company plans to move the rest of its SAP systems.