Vodafone accelerates IT transformation with migration of SAP to cloud

Vodafone’s migration of its SAP system to Google Cloud is the latest step in its radical IT transformation. Dubbed Evo2Cloud, Google describes it as “one of the largest and one of the most complex SAP migrations in EMEA.”

Today, Vodafone’s on-premise SAP deployment, which supports its financial, procurement and HR operations, consists of 100 applications, accumulated over the last 15 years, according to Google in a blog. By moving SAP to the cloud, Vodafone aims to adopt standardized SAP applications, from which it can draw real-time, reliable data, AI/machine learning models and tap into the data in its SAP applications for analytics and process mining. New functionalities will include mapping “data with other external sources, e.g., combining HR data from SAP with other non-SAP data, resulting in data enrichment and additional business value”, according to Google.

Google expects the migration will take two to three years and will integrate SAP applications with the data ocean Vodafone is building on Google Cloud. Vodafone also expects to be able to introduce new features much more quickly, with the frequency of its release cycle set to increase from bi-annual rollouts to weekly releases.

In the past, IT has been “the biggest bottleneck” to innovation at Vodafone, according to Ulrich Irnich, Vodafone Germany’s CIO, speaking at TM Forum’s DTW 2022 in September. Irnich is responsible for Vodafone Group’s global “Modernization Garage”, which is driving transformation of business support systems (BSS) across the companies. Irnich believes the speed of innovation in telecoms will quadruple in the next five year. “This kind of speed increase – at the end equation for us, it’s very simple,” he said. “There is just one way: You’ll be part of that speed, or you’ll be out.” Irnich said his top priority is to create a nimble IT department that can react quickly to change. “We need to have a different speed,” he said, adding that he wants to “unlock digital IT to be really an enabler.”

In addition, Vodafone is reshaping its security architecture and “DevSecOps will need to be an integral part of its operating model,” according to Google. The new cloud-based SAP system will be designed from the outset to ensure privacy, data protection, and resilient threat detection mechanisms.

“Vodafone has a large ecosystem of SAP applications in varying states of advancement,” says Dean Ramsay, principal analyst, TM Forum. “In moving them all to the cloud they are addressing a wide range of inefficiencies across that ecosystem. We’re seeing this regularly; moving all these applications to cloud will have a cost, but it’s worth it for the ease of management over a unified data model, consistency and availability of the cloud version of the ecosystem.”