Like many successful manufacturers, Raj Petro relies on SAP ERP to manage its operations from end-to-end: from the back office to the factory floor. For years, the company has trusted IBM Systems to support its mission-critical applications, and ran its SAP solutions on IBM Power Systems™ servers and the IBM AIX® operating system at an on-premises data center.

“Our joint venture [JV] with Brenntag brought a wide range of new demands on our SAP solutions,” explains Prakash Subramanian. “As well as introducing strict compliance standards for SAP ERP data integrity and disaster recovery, one condition of the JV was that we deliver financial and operational reports in more-frequent cycles. We knew it would be difficult to meet these requirements using our existing infrastructure.”

Jitesh Save says, “After weighing our options, we decided our fastest route to compliance was a managed services solution. By moving to the cloud, we’d gain the performance and scalability to support our compliance use cases at a significantly lower cost than building a new on-premises infrastructure. Choosing the cloud would also remove the need to build a data center in our new headquarters—reclaiming floorspace and reducing our environmental footprint.”

After evaluating offerings from several leading cloud vendors, Raj Petro determined that Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM Cloud was the fastest and most cost-effective route to unlock the new compliance capabilities.

“We were looking for a trusted managed services partner that would help us to focus on our core competencies, and IBM came to us highly recommended,” recalls Prakash Subramanian. “IBM provided us with many strong client references, which gave us great confidence that Enterprise Application Managed Services for SAP Solutions on IBM Cloud would meet our needs. In fact, I have had a previous—and highly successful—experience with a move to IBM Cloud in the past, so I had first-hand experience of the professionalism and expertise of the IBM India team.”

Jitesh Save adds, “The success of the JV initiative, as well as our move to a new headquarters, depended on the timely execution of our cloud project. Of all the vendors we considered, we felt that IBM had the deepest experience.”

Working with experts from IBM, Raj Petro completed its move to the managed services environment in just 60 days—well ahead of the deadline for the JV and the opening of its new headquarters.

“Even in the face of considerable external pressures, the IBM team helped us achieve an incredible result,” comments Prakash Subramanian. “IBM made the time for in-depth meetings with our team during the scoping and planning phases of the project, which really paid off further downstream. The switchover from our on-premises environment to the cloud was as smooth as we could have wished for, and the support we received from IBM played a key role in that achievement.”

By embracing the cloud, Raj Petro is empowering its IT organization to spend more time focusing on value-added activities. Jitesh Save confirms, “We recently successfully completed a full test of our disaster recovery capabilities, which would have been too risky to attempt in the past.”

Prakash Subramanian concludes, “We’re already measuring strong commercial success—and we consider IBM a strategic partner on our ongoing transformation journey.”

Solution components

Raj Petro, a Brenntag Group Company (external link), is a petroleum and lubricant manufacturing and marketing company with a global footprint in more than 95 countries worldwide. Offering a complete range of industrial, automotive and specialty lubricants, the company employs more than 500 people and generates annual revenues of around USD 250 million.