Case Study | Airnov Healthcare Packaging

"Monday morning after cutover, we were up and running on a global scale, in one big bang migration, during COVID, with no consultants in any location."

~ Amy Hasty, Global Director of IT

Challenge

Private equity backed Airnov was slated to be carved out from $4B parent company’s on-premises data center, forming a new company while replicating, modernizing, and outsourcing the company’s SAP and non-SAP systems on the cloud.

Airnov leadership was challenged with successfully completing the carve out in nine months while building an entire IT organization within the first year to accommodate current business needs and scale for future strategic growth both organic and through acquisition. Focused on adding immediate value within a tight budget, Airnov Global Director of IT, Amy Hasty, worked with Protera to complete the carve out and provide ongoing application services for all workloads on AWS.

Solution

Protera, the first to migrate and run SAP workloads on AWS, was selected to design and architect the target environment for the carve out project, supporting both SAP and non-SAP systems as a full IT outsourcing solution on AWS. Protera designed a migration approach where the parent company was not impacted by the carve-out activities, utilizing different technologies across multiple AWS regions.

Hasty worked with Protera to complete three rounds of testing, ensuring a smooth transition for the global team from business units to manufacturing facilities. The cutover of new production systems on AWS was one month ahead of schedule and Monday morning after go-live, all locations around the world were able to operate per usual.

“When I look back on go live, we didn’t miss a beat,” says Hasty. “On Friday our company was operating on the old systems. Monday morning after cutover, we were up and running on a global scale, in one big bang migration, during COVID, with no consultants in any location.”

Along with a team of highly skilled resources supporting the business 24/7/365, Protera provides the Airnov team with expanded comprehensive Basis support and a proprietary cloud management platform providing full visibility into system monitoring, cloud architecture on AWS, performance metrics, and cloud spend.

Protera worked diligently with Airnov to right-size systems while balancing cost versus what is needed to run systems effectively. Recently, leadership strategized with Protera to architect a new disaster recovery solution on AWS, focused on a solution that met resiliency and cost parameters for the business. “As a private equity backed organization, we were investing in initiatives that would add value for our customers, but also provide an immediate return for the business,” says Matthias Brommer, President and Managing Director of Airnov. “Our partners have to bring us opportunities to continuously optimize cost and improve performance, enabling us to focus on establishing Airnov as the go-to solution provider in the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and diagnostic industries.”

Looking into the future

With a sound technology foundation, a secure and rightsized modern AWS cloud environment, and a partner they can count on, Hasty and her team have developed a secure application and IT operations strategy to build upon. “We are focused on modernizing to add value,” says Hasty. “With the right partners, the right cloud, and the strategy in place, Airnov will continue to proactively, and securely, remain a competitive force in the industry.”