Keytree gives Dyson’s SAP Platform a refresh

Dyson, the renowned inventor of the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner, teamed up with Keytree to refresh and update its SAP back-office servers and storage.

“This project shows the strength of Dyson’s preferred model for resourcing complex IT projects.”

Glen Leakey – Interim IT Director at Dyson

Business needs

Dyson is a dynamic organisation and Keytree had the experience of delivering a similar project for a major utility provider – so Keytree was selected to refresh and update its SAP back-office servers and storage.

Dyson’s global business operations rely on SAP and their back-office estate featured SAP ERP, SAP BI, SAP SCM, & SAP PI running on Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2005. The operating system and database version were reaching the end of extended support and the hardware was more than five years old, so the high-level scope of the project was to ensure that the lifetime of SAP systems was extended for at least another five years.

System requirements

To ensure systems maintained the level expected at Dyson replacements and upgrades were needed, which started with a new server and storage hardware supporting back office applications. The operating system and database software was upgraded to the latest versions and high availability for BW and SCM was introduced. The team identified and completed changes to the DR process, which required updates as a result of server changes and upgrades, supporting SANs were expanded to house additional database copies and tape libraries replaced for the back office solution.

Keytree ensured that Dyson’s support teams had the right skills and processes to be able to continue to support the systems after the refresh.

logo Dyson

“A successful partnership between Dyson’s in-house IT specialists and third-party subject matter experts meant that the project could be delivered quickly and safely, with minimal disruption to our global business operations that rely on SAP”

Glen Leakey – Interim IT Director at Dyson

Collaborative working

The two teams joined forces to create the perfect environment and according to Adam Hislop, Technical Director at Keytree, “It was a case of our experts working with their experts in an excellent team.” He added: “It was very harmonious and based on mutual respect for each other’s capabilities, expertise and ability to get the job done.”

During the journey, Keytree was able to provide added benefits while meeting all requirements requested by Dyson – it was possible that while solving one problem, the opportunity was there to solve others along the way. Keytree identified additional benefits, opportunities, and future readiness potential, which we were able to achieve as part of the project. We were able to deliver on a significant proportion of those without changing the duration or cost to Dyson.

A high level of flexibility and agility was demonstrated over the course of the project after the original completion dates for the project were moved – this was due to a conflict in the internal change calendar, causing a potential risk to the service. Keytree was happy to support this change. Adam said: “We adjusted our plan to accommodate and did not amend the pricing at any stage.”

  • Implementation had minimal impact on business operations
  • New platform of ECC, SCM, PI, and BW – all multi-terabyte systems
  • Migrated SAP from physical machines to the Dyson private cloud – reducing TCO and adding real-time scalability and performance gains
  • Operating system upgraded from Windows 2003 to Windows 2012
  • SQL Server 2005 upgraded to SQL Server 2012
  • Deployment of SQL Server AlwaysOn High Availability
  • Offload of DB tasks to AlwaysOn replica to avoid production impact
  • Development of standard systems template for deploying SAP systems
  • SAP systems now provide true portability to support easy adoption of future technology changes
  • Compression of databases to reduce overall sizes by 80 percent
  • Reduced backup times by more than 70 percent
  • Reduction of SCM forecasting tasks by 30 percent
  • Data segregation to enforce security access controls and protect SAP system uptime

This was a challenging project. A complex re-platform and migration of multi-terabyte production-critical applications with a hard deadline, in an active change environment with many competing priorities. But with the commitment of both Keytree and Dyson to getting the best people together the project was able to deliver a set of applications and systems that are perfect for today and ready for any changes in the future. On time, budget and scope, with the minimum of fuss.